Closing the gap
Bridging the divide between research and writing
Here’s my hot take: 75% of writing a nonfiction book is just keeping track of what you’ve learned. Ok, maybe not 75%, but a lot—and maybe the most important part. Because it doesn’t matter what you’ve read or who you’ve talked to if you can’t call upon your research when you actually need it.
When I first started this newsletter, I naively compared the research process to making bread. I thought it involved feeding information into your brain, where it “ferments like a big bubbling blob of sourdough and emerges fully (or mostly) baked as whatever you ultimately write.” Ha. What a fool I was!
It turns out that the inside of my brain is not a fermentation vat, but a black hole—or maybe a trash chute—where information falls into a dark abyss, never to be seen again. UNLESS I tether that information to something outside of my brain.
Put another way, I have find ways to put my research self in better communication with my writing self.
I realize this is not really a hot take. Every reputable research guide hammers home the importance of taking good notes and organizing them so that they make sense later. (I wrote about that in one of my early posts.) As Jaime Green wisely put it in her research class, “don’t trust future you to remember anything”!
However, establishing a system to keep track of information is easier said than done. There are a lot of different ways to take notes and organize material. And what works best for you probably depends on what you are trying to write and how you think. In other words, it’s personal. For me, it took a lot of trial and error.
Almost two years into the process, I’ve finally landed on a system that works. And it is all about trying to close the gap between learning a thing and using that thing in my writing, both in terms of time and theme. (Full disclosure: I developed this system with significant input from my fantastic book coach, who I’ll tell you all about another time.)
On the off chance that it is helpful to anyone, I’ll tell you what I do.
Closing the time gap
When I first started working on my book, I approached each chapter the way I typically tackle a newspaper or magazine story: research first, write second. I read a lot and called a lot of people. Then I sat down and thought for a while, sketched an outline, and started drafting.
Unfortunately, this turned out to be a terrible way to write a book chapter. There was far too much ground to cover and I went down way too many unnecessary rabbit holes. When I finally came up for air several months later, I would be completely lost, with no idea where I was or how I got there. The writing was agonizing and slow as I fought my way back to my point.
Enter my wonderful book coach, who helped me see that this was a bad plan. Against my vociferous protests, she pushed me to experiment with different ways of working. And together, we came up with a new system.
It boils down to integrating my research and writing in ways that felt radical and terrifying. But it has turned out to be far superior.
It works like this:
At the very beginning of each new chapter, I make a list all of the elements that I *think* belong in it. These include scenes and areas of explanatory or thematic exposition.
Every afternoon, I research one of these elements, highlighting important passages from books and studies, pulling good quotes, and writing my reflections in the Scrivener notes pane for each document.
As I go, I also start to populate a blank Scrivener writing file, cobbling together a rough outline of the major points the section needs to make and dropping in key quotes, facts, and figures.
The next morning, I open that file and quickly churn out a very crappy first draft, adding citations while they’re fresh in my mind. Then I move on to the next section.
Only after I’ve written a draft of every section do I start “chunking” the chapter together, figuring out what’s missing (or what’s unnecessary) and finessing the language and flow.
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I cannot tell you how resistant I was to this plan at first. I hated it! I could not believe that one afternoon would be enough to research an entire section of a chapter. But, friends, it usually is.
In fact, it makes my research much more efficient because it forces me to make deliberate choices about which materials to read, instead of deluding myself that I can somehow read everything. The time pressure also helps me work with greater focus.
(A few side notes: For those materials that I cannot get to in one afternoon, I keep a list of materials to return to later. As my friend Becca Clarren observed, “a book is a marathon, and you might not get it in the first pass.” I also conduct interviews outside of this schedule, based mainly on my sources’ availability.)
The benefits of combining my research and writing processes have been enormous. For one thing, I work faster. Not like a little bit faster, but like, twice or three times as fast. It now takes me one to two months to write a chapter, versus my personal worst record of six months.
More importantly, though, it has made my writing so. much. better. I am able to hold the argument of the chapter in mind and I don’t get nearly as lost (at least, not nearly as often). I also don’t worry so much about dropping those little gems—punchy anecdotes and fun facts—that feel so easy to misplace when you are mired in research and weeks away from writing words. Even my kid-addled brain can remember a juicy tidbit for 24 hours.
Closing the thematic gap
The other strategy I use in parallel is to organize my research materials by theme.
At the beginning of my book project, I created individual files for each thread of the book. For instance, I have one for the various meanings we project onto grass. I have another on humans and nature. And another on narrative—the stories we tell ourselves about our place in the world.
Every time I read a new book or study, if there is anything relevant to one of these themes, I add the quote or excerpt to the appropriate file. These documents have admittedly become long and chaotic. But they are starting to pay dividends as the manuscript takes shape and I focus on weaving thematic threads throughout the book.
I don’t have to wrack my brain for that thing I read a long time ago that suddenly seems relevant… Everything I need is right there.
I know I am not the only one who does something like this. Ben Goldfarb told me he uses “thematically organized” Google docs and Evernote tabs. Likewise, Jaime Green describes breaking up her notes on a particular source into multiple themed documents. (I know she and others use Scrivener’s collections feature, which I have only dabbled in.)
For my brain, it works best to have everything I need in one centralized location, rather than attached to various primary sources. Hence the research spreadsheets I make for each chapter (which I build through the above process and then reference heavily during revision) and my habit of compiling interview quotes into a single document to reference while writing (the one form of pre-writing organization that I religiously followed for magazine stories).
This feels like another way to close the gap, not in space-time, but in idea space.
Ok, that’s probably TMI. If you have made it this far, congrats! You are a true research nerd, just like me :) Speaking of which, I’d love to hear how the rest of you keep track of your research!