The value of a convergent writing process
Writing is never finished. Only abandoned.
While there’s controversy about who said that first, it’s absolutely true. Books go to the publisher at the deadline, and always with authors regretting they don’t have more time to work on them.
The key to ensuring that what you turn in is the best it can be is a convergent writing process. That means that each revision is getting closer to some ideal version of the perfect book.
In mathematics, a series that converges to a limit gets closer and closer to its ideal value, even if it never gets there. Think about a man who is two meters from a wall. In the first 10 seconds, he goes halfway to the wall; now he is one meter away. In the next 10 seconds, he again covers half the distance; now he is half a meter away. If he covers half the distance to the wall every 10 seconds, how long will it take him to get there?
He never will. But if you wait long enough, he’ll get arbitrarily close to the wall. His position converges to its limit.
Similarly, a convergent writing process gets closer to ideal, complete perfection, even it never actually gets there.
Not all writing processes are convergent
It’s certainly possible to write in an non-convergent way. You can do your research at random, assemble bits and pieces, and stitch them together in a way that seems to make sense. Then you’ll have to find duplications, holes, and logical inconsistencies. You can have “aha” moments along the way and completely revise what you think the book is about. This process might eventually get to a finished product, but it does not converge to that product.
The reason is that at any given moment, a writer using this process cannot answer the question, “How close it this to finished?” Their answer is: “I seem to be getting better here and there, but I don’t know where this is going.” And if you don’t know where it’s going, you don’t know how close you are to getting there.
The challenge with this process is that as the deadline approaches, you can’t really be sure what you’ll be handing over at the moment when you need to abandon it. It might be great. It might be “done.” But without a sense of convergence to a destination, you can’t know.
How to create a convergent writing process
A convergent writing process goes through stages. You know what stage you’re in and what you’ll be doing next.
- First work on the idea until you have that settled. The idea includes the audience, the problem you are solving for that audience, the solution you are offering, and how your book is different from other similar books. Develop the idea before you do anything else.
- Now work out the table of contents — the list of chapters that will address your idea.
- Now do the research to find the ingredients for each chapter: case study interviews, existing evidence, thought frameworks, and advice.
- Now draft the chapters one by one. The first one becomes a template for the others. It may take several tries to get that chapter in acceptable shape.
- Next, revise the chapters from first to last, based on what you learned from writing them all.
- Finally, identify global problems in the manuscript and fix them from start to finish.
- Turn the book in to the publisher and then deal with copy edits and page layout.
This is a process designed to converge. At any given time, you know how close you are and what is left to do. For example, in stage 4, you know which chapters are “done” and which are still under constructions. In stage 5, those chapters get better. If somebody asked you how close you were to finished at stage 6, you could say, “Pretty close, just fixing a few remaining problems.”
The convergent process has many benefits.
- Because it breaks the process of writing the book down into multiple smaller tasks, it tells you what to work on and when.
- You can explain it to others with whom you are collaborating, such as editors, coauthors, or, if you are a ghostwriter, clients. They know what you’re working on and what you expect from their contribution.
- If you have an epiphany somewhere in the process — say in stage 4 — you know just how and where to go back and revise things you thought were “done,” like the main idea.
- You can plan what you’re working on and when, so you can hit your deadline.
You still won’t finish the book — you’ll abandon it — but when you do abandon it, you’ll know just how close it is to your perfect ideal for it. (Hopefully, pretty close.)
Why the lack of convergence really bugs me
I’ve worked on book processes with authors who had no sense of convergence. They gave me major heartburn.
When you’re editing a book and the author doesn’t know where they are in the process, it’s unnerving. You edit a chapter, then the author sends you some completely new chapter based on some idea you’ve never discussed before. How does this relate to the work you already did? Who knows? I can’t easily help you if you work like that. We’ll have to fix your process first.
When you’re working with a coauthor, a lack of convergence is deadly. If, for example, you don’t agree on the idea and the table of contents ahead of time, how is your work supposed to fit together? If my coauthor is reviewing the work I just produced, how should they understand what stage it’s at and where it fits into the whole project? Without a sense of convergence, you’ll end up at odds with each other, just because you don’t know what to expect of each other.
When you’re ghostwriting, you and the client must agree on what part of the process you’re in. It is the ghostwriter’s job to explain this clearly to the client and make sure they understand it. Otherwise, the client is going to offer unhelpful feedback at the wrong time, which will make everyone feel a little unhinged.
Every time I have ensured that my collaborators knew how my convergent process worked, it was worth the extra effort.
Every time I failed to explain the convergent process well enough, or the collaborator didn’t understand it well enough or failed to heed it, it was a disaster.
Convergent writing will keep you sane, especially if you work with others. Don’t lose sight of that, unless you really love chaos.