Cornelius N. Grove's Blog: Pleasures & Perils of Writing Non-Fiction

We are continuing to consider Phase Four of the non-fiction writing process. For an overview of the four phases, see Post #2.

The fourth phase is, “Carry Out the Actual Writing of the Piece.” Let’s move on now to the step after initial drafting: sending your draft to colleagues and friends for their inputs.

My perspective on this step is conditioned by the fact that I’m an independent scholar, which means that I have scholarly credentials (a doctorate) but no affiliation with a university or institute. I also should add that for years I supported my family not as an independent scholar, but as managing partner of a business consultancy.

I share this because many of the scholarly books I read have an acknowledgment section in which the author thanks literally dozens of people who contributed their thoughts in one way or another, most of whom are other university-based scholars. If you’re a member of a university faculty, part of your job is to discuss the current issues and controversies with other scholars in your academic field at conferences and meetings, and to read each other’s drafts. This type of scholarly activity is only a minor part of my experience.

However, I don’t write books for fellow scholars. I write books for members of the general public in which I use accessible language to acquaint them with the research findings of anthropologists. Anthropologists make uniquely valuable contributions to our understanding of human behavior, but most people aren’t aware of their work. I am trying to change that.

By the way, “general public” in my case means, realistically, people who are at least high school graduates. The people most likely to read my books are those with a college degree. So when I finish a chapter, I’m primarily interested in its being read and reacted to by others who meet my expectations about “people most likely to read my books.”

It turns out that I have a half-dozen faithful friends, some of whom are former colleagues, who regularly serve as my “readers.” All these folks have at least a bachelor’s degree; only one has a doctorate. From time to time, each receives a chapter from me with a request to read and react. When I added a new “reader” recently, I formalized my request as follows:

“I ask my readers to simply read the draft and then share their observations and reactions with me. I am especially eager to discover whether they found the chapter to be readily understood. Was any part of it opaque? Did I over- or under-explain anything? Did I create boredom at any point? Should any sentence or paragraph be left out? Did I use a word or phrase that you had not encountered previously? In general, what suggestions do you have for improving the chapter? Don’t worry: I do not expect readers to serve as editors; I hire a professional editor to do that.”

Any “draft” that I send to others for comment is a highly readable document over which I have long fussed. I’m determined to NOT impose on them by sending them documents that I don’t consider “finished.” For example, no reader will find a parenthetical note in which I ask a question such as, “Can you think of a better way of making this point?”

By the way, for a recent draft chapter about the Quechua of Peru that I sent to my readers, I also was VERY fortunate to have it also read by Inge Bolin, the anthropologist on whose book – “Growing Up in a Culture of Respect” – I relied most heavily.

We are discussing Phase Four of the non-fiction writing process. For an overview of the four phases, see Post #2.

The fourth phase is, “Carry Out the Actual Writing of the Piece.” This begins with initial drafting. When you are ready to draft a chapter, you have two items in front of you: a blank page on a screen, and a bunch of notes.

As I said in Post #6, note-taking is foundational to the non-fiction writing process. Now that you are going to begin drafting a chapter, you need to have the notes relevant to the topic of that chapter within reach – which in my case means pieces of paper right here on my desk.

Some say that you should have a third item in front of you: an outline. In my experience, an outline is not only unnecessary but also detrimental to the writing process. I’m specifically talking about a formal outline here, what some folks call a “Harvard outline.” I’m not talking about some “back of the envelope” notes you’ve jotted down about topics you want to include, maybe even in a rough sequence. And I’m not talking about the ideas swimming around in your mind about how the chapter might proceed; if you don’t have those, why are you drafting a chapter?

There are two reasons why I never begin with a detailed outline. The first is related to my creative process. The second is related to transitions.

I find that an outline restricts my creative process. When I’m actually word-for-word drafting a chapter, I frequently have ideas about what I’ve already written and what I’ll be writing soon. I’m engaged in contemplating not merely this sentence but also the context in which this sentence resides. What best precedes it? What best follows it? Is its topic best dealt with in this section, or another? Occasionally, I recall a fact I read but didn’t take a note on; suddenly it seems relevant. So I grab that source from the library shelf and consider whether maybe that fact should be included. This type of creative freedom is severely hampered if I’m adhering to a formal outline. Of course, I can ditch the outline, but then why did I go to all the trouble to develop it when a “back-of-the-envelope” list of topics would have served perfectly well?

I also find that a formal outline preoccupies me about transitions. “Transition” refers to a sentence or two that one writes to guide the reader from the topic that’s ending into the topic that’s beginning. Rather than abruptly ending one topic and plunging into another, a transition alerts the reader, often by reflecting a relationship of some kind between the two topics. They’re sort of like those yellow diamond-shaped road signs with twisted arrows. Well, if I’m working from an outline, I feel that I must plot the transitions in advance: “How am I going to transition from that topic into the next one?” I’ve even seen outlines that include specific notes about each transition!

In my experience, worrying in advance about transitions simply isn’t necessary. As I’m writing I’m also entertaining ideas about how to slide more or less smoothly into a new but related topic. Here’s the thing: IF I don’t have an outline, what the new topic will be remains flexible. Usually a range of options emerges, including how to bring the current topic to a close, what the next topic will be, and how to slide into it with a transition sentence at the end of the previous topic or the beginning of the new topic.

In Post #2, I said a non-fiction writer’s process has four overlapping phases. Let’s move along to Phase Four:

4. CARRY OUT THE ACTUAL WRITING OF THE PIECE: By “writing” I’m including initial drafting, sending drafts to colleagues for comment, re-drafting, submitting to editing, finalizing and, let’s not forget, giving credit to the sources of your information.

But first, a digression. A decade ago, I purchased a copy of “Émile, or On Education,” by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. At the time, I was deep into writing “The Aptitude Myth,” and I was confident that “Émile” would be central to the historical story I was piecing together.

OMG! What a meandering, interminable tome “Émile” turned out to be! I struggled through maybe a third of it. Fortunately, its philosophical impact is captured by its first sentence:

“Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the Author of Nature; but everything degenerates in the hands of man.”

So here was I, trying to write a book in which I expressed myself straightforwardly in each sentence and paragraph, and at no more length than necessary to plainly get my thought across. I was shocked! How in the world did Rousseau, already a famous author when he wrote “Émile,” manage to write THIS!

I envisioned Rousseau writing “Émile.” It’s roughly 1760. He’s sitting at a rococo desk, ink well open, quill pen in hand, scratching down each sentence. Let’s suppose he realizes, “I could have expressed that sentence more clearly.” Rewriting it is not an attractive option. He’d need to draw a line through the former words, then write the new ones – but where? In the margin? In tiny letters scrunched between lines? And what if he later had an even better idea?

What we don’t know is how coherent and concise were Rousseau’s thoughts to begin with. What we do know is that, even if he DID recognize that a word-string could be tightened up, it was not easy to do that.

Being someone who is naturally inclined to write, I am deeply grateful that I have been granted by fate the opportunity to do so during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. I’m alluding to the wide availability of computers, and especially of word-processing programs such as Word and WordPerfect. (I first used a Wang word processor during the late 1980s.)

Whatever you write using a word-processing program can be effortlessly improved, with no limit on the number of improvements. Think; twitch your fingers; improved! Repeat at will.

To me, this is a Gift. Maybe I appreciate it more because earlier in my life, I used a typewriter. OK, not as laborious as pen and ink. Still, what you typed was what you got; improvements weren’t simple. If you had to present a clean manuscript, you’d need to retype the page. (Remember White-Out?)

One more thing: If you write a lot, you’ll know that it is impossible, all by yourself, to read and flawlessly correct your manuscripts for typos, left-out words, etc. Why? Because you are too familiar with what you’ve just written. Everyone needs an editor, at least a friend who will read your draft with fresh eyes.

I’ve discovered that my Word program – Word version #2104, part of Microsoft Office 365 – includes a feature called “Read Aloud,” part of the “Review” option. When I think I have finished a draft, I ask this feature to read it to me. I find that HEARING my draft read aloud to me enables me to catch more mistakes than reading it. “Read Aloud” doesn’t replace an editor, but it’s a welcome improvement.

In Post #2, I posited that there are four overlapping phases of writing non-fiction. We’re ready now for the third.

3. DECIDE ON OR REFINE THE MAIN POINTS YOU WANT TO MAKE: Achieve clarity with yourself about your purpose in writing a book before you finish writing it!

Did that sentence surprise you? Did you expect it to end “…before you BEGIN writing it”?

My experience convinces me that it’s perfectly fine to begin working on a non-fiction book with no more than a general sense of purpose. A detailed sense of purpose is OK, too, and it’s probably preferable for certain projects. But clarity before beginning is not essential.

Consider my halting progress toward clarity as the author of, “The Aptitude Myth: How an Ancient Belief Came to Undermine Children’s Learning Today.” As a scholar in the fields of anthropology and education, I knew research had established that Americans tend strongly to attribute a child’s good, or poor, academic performance to their inborn intelligence. Americans are aware that how much a child studies can affect performance, but that isn’t their go-to explanation. What that child inherited at birth explains more than their effort.

It turns out that in much of the rest of the world, a child’s academic performance is attributed much more to their own effort than to “how many smarts” they happened to acquire at birth.

By what path did this unusual belief come to characterize Americans? To discover the answer to that question was the general sense of purpose that animated my quest.

Each time I investigated what seemed the likely origin of our belief the in determining power of inherited intelligence, I found that I was mistaken; it had originated earlier. For example, I felt sure that Jean-Jacques Rousseau was the cause of it all, but the more I learned about him, the more I recognized that his views reflected earlier perspectives. Only after I had probed all the way back to Plato and Aristotle did I discover the origin!

My research also revealed other fascinating explanations for Americans’ typical mindset regarding children’s capacity to learn – especially girls’! Each discovery was unexpected.

Based on my experience with “The Aptitude Myth” and other book projects, I’d like to share three realizations with you:

A. FORGET OUTLINES. I never outline a chapter before I start to write it. Sure, I know in broad terms what the chapter needs to discuss. For the chapter I’m drafting about Navajo child-rearing, I have hundreds of notes about details that could be included, and I know I’ll discuss the setting of Navajo life before I narrow down to child-rearing. Good enough!

My creative intuition is never more engaged than when I’m fashioning the sentences and paragraphs of a chapter. Why voluntarily confine my mind in a straightjacket? If I’m worried that I might forget something, I simply jot down the key topics on the back of an envelope.

B. FINE-TUNE YOUR PURPOSE AT THE END. Whether it’s a chapter or the entire book, the time to clarify its raison d’etre is when you’re done drafting it. Yes, the question of purpose was in your mind while you were creatively drafting it, and you allowed yourself the flexibility to redirect, amplify, or restrict its purpose. Now that its drafted, you can gauge its impact, finalize its purpose, and ensure that readers will grasp its purpose as clearly as you do.

C. SAVOR THE PROCESS. For me, writing non-fiction that tackles social issues is fulfilling. I begin with curiosity, I control the process, I end with answers, and I contribute to human betterment.

In Post #5, I discussed sequencing of the information you’ve collected. Let’s stay with that.

In my experience, note-taking is a foundational ability of efficient and effective non-fiction writing. “Note-taking” refers to the intermediate step between locating factual information on the one hand and drafting your book on the other.

For me, the purpose of note-taking is realized while I’m making decisions about sequencing and while I’m drafting my book. During these phases, I shouldn’t need to reach for any of my sources – books, articles, etc. – because my notes prove sufficient. That’s an ideal worth striving for. Here’s why:

Books are awkward! Maybe not awkward when you’re reading them, but terribly awkward to use as sources of information in which you need to find a passage after you’ve started drafting your book. Books must continually be forced to remain open to a particular page while you copy or paraphrase information. Copies of journal articles stay open more easily, but they’re also multipage documents in which a specific paragraph is elusive. Physically wrangling sources is a distracting, time-wasting activity that you do not want to interrupt your concentration during sequencing and drafting.

Again, I realize that I’m revealing myself as old-fashioned. No doubt, young writers of non-fiction, those who grew up using computers, have figured out how to accomplish all the steps I’m describing on a screen – no physical books or articles needed, thank you very much. I can’t imagine how that’s done efficiently, but more power to them!

But for those non-fiction writers who, like me, prefer to work with physical books, I’m recommending a product. (Does this make me an influencer?) It’s for the note-taking stage, when a book must be held open to a certain page while you extract the details you want. See the photo [corneliusgrove.medium.com] of my Levō Book Platform #33701, held in place by my Levō Table Clamp #33764. It’s made my note-taking activities FAR easier! Visit www.bookholder.com.

In Post #5, I suggested that each note should deal with one set of closely interrelated facts, include the citation, and reside on one sheet of paper. Let me expand on that advice.

First, “include the citation”: There’s no need to type the full citation on each note. You need only two or three words to remind you of its source: Smith 2014, 78–80.

Next, “set of closely interrelated facts”: When I type a note, I paraphrase the source. My goal isn’t to be creative; it’s to streamline my upcoming sequencing and drafting processes. Paraphrasing is good enough. BUT if I foresee that I might want to quote the author, I painstakingly copy their sentences (and indicate this for my own future reference).

This way of generating notes served me well through three books. For my new project, I’m trying something different.

What hasn’t changed is my resolve to handle only pieces of paper, not books, during my sequencing and drafting processes. What’s different is that I type more than one paraphrase-plus-citation onto each note page, thus reducing the number of note pages that I must shuffle around during sequencing and drafting. For this to work, I must identify each note page with one broad category of experience about which I expect several sources to supply information.

For example, currently I’m writing a chapter about Navajo child-rearing. Within that chapter, one broad category I’ll discuss is birth and infant care. To prepare for writing about that, I’ve made individual note pages with headings such as “pregnancy/giving birth,” “cradleboards,” “care prior to weaning,” “care after weaning,” and so forth. On each page, I collect paraphrases from several sources.

In Post #2, I said a non-fiction writer’s process has four overlapping phases. We’re ready to explore Phase Two:

2. CONSIDER HOW TO APPLY THE INFORMATION COLLECTED: From all the information you collect, what will you use? How can it best be sequenced in your book?

During 2014, I became aware that there were hundreds of reports by researchers who had traveled to East Asia to determine why students there academically outperform American students. I foresaw that if I studied those reports, I could write a book to make the researchers’ findings clear for ordinary folks, people without scholarly backgrounds.

I began reading. After three months I had scratched the surface pretty well. I realized that the researchers had been examining not only East Asian teaching in pre- and primary schools, but also East Asian parenting in homes there.

Short books are more likely to be read, right? So I made a basic decision about applying this mountain of information: not one book, but two. First I’d write about East Asian homes.

I continued reading for several months, learning from dozens of research reports how parents in China, Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Korea are guided by the fundamental values of their cultures to raise their children. The details were rich, nuanced, and many.

For non-fiction writers, the question soon becomes how to keep track of the myriad facts that are tumbling in. In my experience, copious note-taking is indispensable. Here’s the goal: When it’s time to start making sequencing decisions, all notes collected need to be available in a format that facilitates decisions about which ones to use and in what order.

O.K., I’m old fashioned. “Note” means a typed-upon, 3-hole-punched sheet of 8½x11 paper that can be snapped into a three-ring binder labeled with a certain category. It can easily be moved into a differently categorized binder. It can be laid out on a table and shifted around with other notes as possible sequences are pondered. Being able to manipulate notes with my own hands is satisfyingly efficient and a highly effective aid to decision-making.

I’ve included a visual aid with this post. Have a look [https://corneliusgrove.medium.com]. The examples given of binder titles and subcategories are based on “The Drive to Learn.” Pay attention especially to this: “Each note should deal with only one topic and include the citation.” “One topic” doesn’t mean one fact; it means an interrelated group of facts such as a researcher’s description of an event.

How to distribute information within your book? For the moment, let’s sidestep the topics of chapters in your book’s “body.” Consider other potential locations such as preface, introduction, and postscript (none of which must be included). Information also can be placed in the endnotes. In my books, endnotes are extensive because I want to keep the “body” short and easily readable. Technical stuff goes into the endnotes.

Pondering where within your book various topics will most effectively reside is something you’ll do even when you’re not at your desk. In my case, key sequencing decisions are still being pondered after my book was published! Here’s an example:

How many people actually read prefaces and introductions? My hunch is that some readers glance at them skeptically, wondering, “Do I really need to read this?” That’s why I still worry about “The Drive to Learn.” I placed a pivotal statement in its Preface, on page xiii. It’s pivotal because it drives the sequencing of topics in Chapters 1 through 9. Yes, the statement is repeated – in the Introduction, pages xx-xxi.

Given another chance, I’d probably sequence “The Drive to Learn” differently.

Post #3 discussed Phase One of non-fiction writing: locating and collecting accurate information. Let’s think more about that.

Post #3 suggested that non-fiction authors always use documents of one kind or another. OK, not always. There’s another way: direct contact with human sources. One can interview or, better, observe or “shadow” people to better appreciate the nuances of their situation.

Historians work very largely with documents. But if they’re dealing with the recent past, they’re dead keen to interview participants in the events they’re recounting. This wasn’t a source I could consider for my history book, “The Aptitude Myth,” which begins in the days of Aristotle and ends in 1926.

Typically, my work relies on the reports of anthropologists, those intrepid “participant-observers.” Reflect on what it feels like to travel alone to a location that, often, is totally off the grid, to live for months or longer with strangers whose language you speak haltingly, and to take copious notes on everything they’re doing and how they think about it. I have unbounded respect and admiration for that undertaking, which might explain why I’m drawn to the reports of anthropologists and want to help others become aware of their insights.

(Once I did a somewhat similar project. This was for my doctoral dissertation. I lived in a New England town for three months and attended middle- and high-schools almost every day, sitting at the back of classrooms. I interviewed students, teachers, administrators, and parents. My goal? To understand the experience of immigrant Portuguese students in American schools. My discovery? They found our schools laughably easy, “not serious.”)

These anthropologists whom I respect and admire, could I actually meet a few? Worth a try! Some declined because they’d never heard of me and I don’t hold a university post. Persistence paid off and I spent a few hours with three of them.

Dr. Jin Li of Brown University was the first scholar I met. She has a fascinating background: As a child during the Cultural Revolution, she was “sent down” to the countryside. Later, she excelled in Chinese schools. After coming to the U.S., she got a job as a substitute teacher (of German!) in a Vermont high school. She was appalled by what she experienced there. Li’s Harvard dissertation was published as “Cultural Foundations of Learning: East and West,” on which I draw in both my books.

Dr. James Stigler of UCLA is the living scholar most extensively involved in the decades-long research effort to discover why East Asian students learn more effectively. He co-authored “The Learning Gap: Why Our Schools Are Failing and What We Can Learn from Japanese and Chinese Education,” which was unusual in being written for the general public. Stigler wrote an endorsement for “A Mirror for Americans,” which appears on its back cover and includes this: “As one of the researchers whose work is included, I can say that Grove gets it right.” :-)

Dr. David Lancy of Utah State University was not involved in the East Asian research. He collects and analyzes the works of scholars of all types who explore how children are raised and socialized worldwide, including in societies that flourished in the distant past. Lancy’s magnum opus is “The Anthropology of Childhood.” This book’s bibliography is 104 pages long, and its Index of Societies lists 450+ including all the usual ones plus Pirahã, Qashqa’i, Baulè, !Kung, and many others that people don’t know exist but where scholars have studied children and parenting. Lancy recently tried his hand at a book intended for the general public: “Raising Children: Surprising Insights from Other Cultures.”

In Post #2, I said a non-fiction writer’s process has four overlapping phases. Let’s discuss Phase One:

1. LOCATE AND COLLECT ACCURATE INFORMATION: In short, do your research. What your research looks like day-to-day depends on your objective. There are two types.

The first type of objective is to reveal totally new information to human beings. This requires original research, meaning that you examine a phenomenon that no one has ever examined before. Many research topics of scientists such as chemists and biologists are good examples, for their goal is to make paradigm-shifting discoveries.

Social scientists sometimes do original research. An example is Serhii Plokhy, author of the just-published “Nuclear Folly,” about the Cuban Missile Crisis. Previously, several books by respected authors had discussed that event in voluminous detail. Yet Plokhy’s relentless research is now revealing directly relevant documents that were previously unknown to the general public – and to those earlier authors.

The second type of objective is to begin with information that’s publicly available, often in published form, then analyze and recombine it so that fresh insights result. Much non-fiction writing is of this type, so I’ll discuss it further, using my books as examples.

“Encountering the Chinese” is a book for Westerners interacting professionally with Chinese people. How did I locate information? I worked with a co-author. As a Chinese person, Hu Wenzhong knew Chinese values and behavior, and he had worked in the West. As an interculturalist, I knew what causes misunderstandings for people in unfamiliar cultures, and I was working in China. Initially my role was to select the topics to be covered; Wenzhong’s role was to supply the facts of Chinese culture. These roles soon blurred.

“The Aptitude Myth” is a history book. I was not a trained historian, i.e., trained to unearth long-lost documents and interpret their significance. No problem! I was content to work with “secondary sources,” the publications of established historians in journals and books.

This is when I discovered a free, highly useful resource, hugely appreciated by anyone like me who completed graduate work using library card catalogs: the Internet, notably Google Scholar, Google Books, and BarnesAndNoble.com (superior to Amazon.com because B&N provides much more information about each book). This is also when I came to appreciate the value of combing through the bibliography of every journal article and book I was using. Bibliographies are the final element of what I call “The Four Pillars of Research.”

I know personally how much research goes into an encyclopedia entry. Yet I rarely use an encyclopedia, including Wikipedia, as my sole source for any fact. Use of encyclopedias suggests laziness. But they can be helpful; they provide bibliographies and good overviews.

Newspapers and news magazines, print or online, are acceptable information sources. Prefer those with national circulation because they have robust fact-checking operations. But stay far away from social media (unless your research topic is social media!).

“The Drive to Learn” and “A Mirror for Americans” are grounded in the research of hundreds of anthropologists and other social scientists who, since 1970, have been traveling to East Asia to study why students there tend to be academically superior to their American peers. I collected more than enough information from their books and journal articles, which I readily located using The Four Pillars (especially their bibliographies).

Writers of non-fiction are entitled to their own opinions, but not to their own facts. The purpose of Endnotes is so that readers have citations with which to double-check the accuracy of facts you discuss. Make sure no one can discount your opinions because your facts are false.

Let’s first consider the processes a writer uses to create a non-fiction work.

Hold on! Does “create” really belong in that sentence? If this blog were about writing fiction, no one would question “create” in that sentence. Already we’re encountering a fundamental difference between writing fiction and non-fiction. It’s about different meanings of “create,” which means that something unique is caused to exist as the result of someone’s thought or imagination.

If IMAGINATION causes the unique thing, the implication is that it’s formed out of something wholly internal to the person who caused it, like God creating something out of nothing. Perhaps this whiff of divinity helps draw many people’s fascination with fiction and the writers of fiction.

I’m confident that writers of fiction, to some extent, draw their raw material from sources external to themselves, from the characteristics of real people, places, and events with which they’re familiar. Their mental effort goes into imaginatively, selectively, using those external things to make up a unique story, many features of which are not experience-based.

If THOUGHT causes the unique thing, there’s not necessarily an implication that its formation is God-like. The whiff of divinity is gone, but the created thing still can be unique even though it’s formed out of pre-existing things. This describes the creativity of non-fiction writers.

Writers of non-fiction draw ALL their raw material from sources external to themselves. The whole point is, or ought to be, to keep their free-flowing imaginations and biases out of the process. Their mental effort involves selectivity among pre-existing things but not imagination. The story that results might very well be unique, and all of its features are experience-based.

Let’s turn now to the processes of the non-fiction writer. My decades of writing lead me to propose four phases. (I’m skipping the prior step of deciding what to write about).

First, locate and collect myriad accurate information about the topic at hand; this is one’s raw material. Depending on the topic and how long ago and far away the relevant events occurred, this phase can be huge, and can overlap with the phases listed below. It might also be necessary to somehow verify the accuracy of items of information collected.

Second, decide how all that information will be applied. This involves selectivity in the sense of including and equally of excluding, for one quickly amasses more facts than can be used in a book of reasonable length. Also involved is deciding on the sequence in which the facts will be presented. These decisions do not all need to be made before the writing begins.

Third, decide on or refine the main points that you want to make. Of course, wanting to forcefully make a particular point might well have been the motive for the entire project. My experience illustrates that one can begin with a general sense of purpose, to be refined as one gathers and applies found information. Again, this need not all occur at the beginning.

Fourth and last, carry out the actual writing of the piece. By “writing” I’m including initial drafting, sending drafts to colleagues for comment, re-drafting, submitting to editing, finalizing and, let’s not forget, giving appropriate credit to all sources of your information via both endnotes and a bibliography. (Just between you and me, I really miss footnotes!)

We will revisit each of these phases beginning in my next entry. The thought I’d like to leave you with is this: Do not think of the above four steps as needing to occur sequentially. The only thing that’s certain is that all four need to end simultaneously!

I write non-fiction at the intersection of anthropology & education. This is my author’s blog.

Most readers of authors’ blogs, I imagine, are curious about how writers of fiction go about creating their work. How much do the authors draw on their personal backgrounds? Which luminary fiction writers do they try to emulate? Do they have ways of keeping track of all the little details about their characters? Have they ever wished they’d created a different ending?

In this blog, I’ll be sharing with you my experience of the pleasures and perils of writing NON-fiction. The experience of writing non-fiction is quite different from that of writing fiction. Sure, both types of writers must physically get words onto paper, but it’s the mental and practical processes readers are interested in, right? So that’s what I’ll be discussing.

Are you wondering whether I’ve ever attempted to write fiction? Yes. Here’s how it came about: Evangelical Christianity played a large role in my early life – then I went off to college. Four years at a secular university (Johns Hopkins in Baltimore) put my childhood faith to the test! At first, I responded by becoming more committed to it; that lasted through my junior year. In my senior year, the realities of trying to live an exemplary life 24/7 became just too overwhelming to sustain. Giving up my faith proved mentally and emotionally wrenching. Some years later, I wrote a work of fiction based very largely on my religious evolution: “The Damnation of Stephen Gensemer.” I couldn’t get it published.

With that exception, I’ve spent my entire professional career as, largely, a writer of non-fiction expository prose, some of it in a business context because I managed a global consulting firm for 31 years. My personal bibliography includes some 150 titles. Nearly 30 professional pieces of mine can be read on https://www.researchgate.net at no charge.

I’m also proud to say that I was invited to write entries for two encyclopedias. For the “Encyclopedia of Intercultural Competence” (Sage, 2015), I wrote ten entries, more than any other contributor. For the “International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication” (Wiley-Blackwell, 2017), I wrote two long – 6000 words – entries, including “Pedagogy Across Cultures,” which represents my academic specialty.

In this blog, “Pleasures & Perils of Writing Non-Fiction,” I’ll be sharing entries that, at 600 words maximum each, should take most people about five minutes to read. Here we go…