I can now explain how I actually go about writing a trade book (how I do it with a scholarly book is a bit different, mainly because it is a much slower and laborious process).   As I’ve indicated, before I start writing at *all*, I have already read everything that I have needed to read (nothing still left!  Otherwise it’s a disaster), taken notes on everything, reviewed my notes assiduously, and made detailed and lengthy outlines of each chapter.   Then I’m ready to go. The writing of the book itself is the only anxiety-producing, tense, emotionally difficult point of the entire process.  I feel no nervousness or anxiety or dread in any of the other stages of the work – only in the writing.  Moreover, this is far and away the most intense point of the process, where I completely go into a zone and live in an alternative universe. Different people have different views of how to write.   Some scholars prefer to write slowly, carefully crafting every sentence, being sure that one sentence is [...]

OK, I’m back from my tangent.   This thread is about how I go about writing a trade book.   So far I’ve discussed how I decide what to write on, how I imagine communicating with a popular audience about it, how I know where to begin reading, how I go about acquiring bibliography once I start, and how I try to read everything of relevance and take notes on it all.   Now I can get to the writing process itself. For years I used to tell my graduate students what, in my opinion, was the best way to go about writing a book (when they were starting to work on their dissertations).   To my knowledge, none of them ever took my advice.   So I quit giving it.  Not so much because I was disappointed but because I realized that everyone works differently.  Then I met my now-wife Sarah and realized that some people work *completely* differently. Sarah could never do what I do (I’ll explain what that is in a moment).  Her mind doesn’t work like [...]