Resolve and the Second Book
As we step into the second week of 2021, how many of us have resolved to write more?
January shimmers with possibility, a new beginning. We might experiment with the Pomodoro technique by jotting down each 25-minute increment of writing. Or we warm up our fingers by starting the day by writing 750 words. Yes, I’ve tried these techniques, and they did get me to write more. At least until their magic wore off, and I slipped back into my old routines. Or until the bleak news cycle and the trial of daily life pull us back to 2020.
How then do we summon resolve?
Resolve is the root of resolution. It does not respond for long to external measures alone like increments of time, number of words. Nor can we depend on creative impulse or inspiration to arise. Resolve requires a reckoning with why we write. And just as important, why we don’t.
This blog is about the second book, so-called because I am interested in what sustains academic authors who write multiple books. Non-academic authors refer to the “dreaded second book.” For academic authors, the problem is different, a problem intimately connected to the first book, the “tenure book.”
The Tenure Book
For many academics who write books, the first one is the “tenure book.” It is the ultimate external motivator, a requirement for keeping our job. The tenure book is a sine qua non for some faculty in some disciplines at some institutions. I’ll note that some institutions require a book on the table, meaning it is published. Others require a book under contract or in production, two distinct stages in the publishing pipeline. Some institutions even expect two books. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll refer to the tenure book in the singular.
The value of the tenure book is in how it secures promotion, which may confer job security. Given the high stakes, many academic writers learn to respond to this external motivation. The career trajectory, not the creative process, leads many of us to write a book. I wrote a tenure book. And I can say my strategies weren’t sustainable. Or repeatable.
A tenure book has a looming external deadline. For many tenure-track faculty, the clock or the probationary period is extended under dire circumstances—a natural disaster, a global pandemic, or parenthood. I received two such extensions and welcomed them both.
A tenure book rests on a foundation, the dissertation. Ph.D. programs in the humanities and qualitative social sciences train students to write books. Of course, academic authors must still justify the book, a point elaborated by William Germano in his classic From Dissertation to Book. But the book is built from dissertation research and the input and approval of the dissertation committee, the bedrock for the eventual tenure book.
If a first book is motivated by tenure, where do we find the resolve to write a second book?
The Second Book
For some scholars, a second book can be liberating. Some people are free to embark on new lines of research. They acquire new skills or become versed in new sets of literature and debates. Or they may pursue a thread of something that that emerged in the writing of the first book.
Some scholarly societies recognize that the second book presents a different challenge than the first book. Emily Conroy-Krutz and Jessica Lepler recognized the need for more social support and developed the second book writer’s workshop (2BWW). Their efforts led other associations and universities to offer faculty support in recognition that a second book is a different creature than the tenure book. They organized annual workshops and related conference panels through the Society of the Early American Republic (SHEAR). In 2017, their panel, “How NOT to write your second book,” inspired a series of blogs worth readings.
Faculty are now more experienced, but they are also pulled in more directions, leaving them less time for their scholarship, especially if they act like foxes, not hedgehogs.
Italo Calvino invoked the metaphor of a fox to describe his style of experimentation, a playfulness spurred by anxiety. He contrasted his style with that of the hedgehog, or a writer in command of one big idea. Maria Popova explores these two archetypes, while Tamara Plakins Thornton applies them specifically to the second book.
In my second book, I acted more like a fox than a hedgehog. I was fortunate. My editor was understanding about the bumps in the road. “You’re learning along the way,” my editor said when we met at an annual conference, back when such face-to-face meetings were still possible. As grateful as I was, and still am, I think my experience holds lessons. The second book is an object lesson about writing as much as a project requiring practical solutions.
At first, the problem of the second book appeared practical: What makes a good title? What is the ideal length of a chapter? How do I respond to a scathing critique and recover my self-esteem? What makes an index useful? Should I hire a book coach? Those questions were ultimately a ruse, a means of buffering against my anxieties about writing, a form of non-writing. If my questions were endless, it was because my anxieties were as well.
Ultimately, the questions were not just diversions. I did find answers in books, blogs, and online articles. For this reason, I want to make these available for other scholars who embark on writing their second. Writing a second book project requires a different mindset. Please join me in resolving to reflect not just on writing but on writing the second book.
