My Favorite Reads of the Week
Greetings from book revision immersion land
I’m at my favorite adorable cottage in Stone Ridge, New York, this weekend for another writing retreat, trying to get tons of book revisions done. I really can’t believe how quickly the past eight months have flown by since I started reporting and writing my book. It’s been a whirlwind. But I’m almost there.
Yesterday afternoon I revised a couple of my more straightforward chapters and then made a huge pot of Korean noodles to get me through the weekend. (I also have crumb coffee cake, which I recently deemed a requirement for writing retreats.)
This book writing process has, for me, been SO different from my last one — even though both are science-based parenting books. I’m not sure exactly why, but I discovered early on this time around that the approach I took last time — reporting and writing full, discrete chapters, one after the other — didn’t feel right. The topics in this new book felt bigger and messier, and so the process became bigger and messier, too. I worked on multiple chapters at once, sometimes writing half a chapter and abandoning it for a while because I didn’t feel ready to finish it. It all felt rather insane until I realized that it was in part because there were important overlaps between chapter topics that I could only discover by digging into the issues simultaneously and sitting on them for a while. I know the phrase “trust the process” drives some people bonkers, but it felt very apt — I kept having to reassure myself that I was drawn towards this chaotic approach for a reason and that I’d get there in the end. But what it means is that the revision process, too, is much messier than it was with my first book. So this will be an intense few weeks. Wish me luck.
Today, in lieu of an essay, I’m sharing links to newsletters and stories I’ve read over the past couple of weeks that I’ve found particularly thought-provoking or inspiring. Enjoy!