Turning the thesis into a book

This is me a little while ago, having just passed my PhD viva:

(The boyfriend would kill me if I put a picture of his face on my blog so I decided to replace it by another face I also like (and which, coincidentally or not, looks pretty much exactly like him (and yes I know, I’m a genius at Photoshop.)))

This is me a few months later with the hard-bound multicoloured thesis:

Look at that self-satisfied little face. Oh if I had known.

At the time, in the words of J.K. Rowling, all was well. I had passed the viva, the thesis was bound and was going to write the Book from the PhD which I already had signed a contract for.

AND A DEADLINE

which at the time sounded very very faraway (this was July 1st; deadline January 31st).

‘OH I’VE GOT AGES!’ she said at the time.

‘I will have all the time in the world to turn the thesis into that perfect thing it was supposed to be!’ she said at the time.

And the PhD viva was mostly about what I should change in order to turn the thesis into a book anyway. So I felt Guided, Secure and Happy.

Please don’t think I procrastinated and didn’t start working on the Book immediately. I barely took two weeks off after my viva and then started working on the Book. But somehow it’s already November The Endth and this is what I’m looking like now:

The book is not going well, people. But this is the opportunity for me to theorise about book-writing from the thesis (hurrah). And this is what, according to my theorisation, I’m doing wrong:

I’ve basically decided to rewrite the whole thesis. I’m only going to be reusing something like a quarter of it, and most of it completely transformed. It’s a stupid idea.
I somehow seem to be acting as if this is the only academic book I’ll ever write in my life. I’m therefore cramming every single thought I’ve ever had about children’s literature into it. It’s a stupid idea.
I’m panicking that I’m running out of time, therefore I’m writing faster than I should, therefore it’s not good writing. It’s a stupid idea.
I’ve taken on zillions of hours of teaching and lecturing and marking and doing tons of other things which are preventing me from writing the book. It’s a stupid idea.
I randomly decided to spend two weeks writing an article on something completely unrelated. It’s a stupid idea.
I randomly became interested in a different theory which will not in any way find its way into the book, instead of working on the theories that are important for the book. It’s a stupid idea.
I keep whining about the book. It’s a stupid idea.

Yes, the whole thing is currently driving me insane. Of course there’s a voice in my head (aka that of my ex-supervisor) which helps me a bit:

So yes, I know it’s completely normal. It’s still terrifying. Some days I feel like I’ve said all I’ve got to say, and I still have forty thousand words to write. Some days I feel like I’ll never be able to cram all I’ve got to say in forty thousand words. Some days I want to restructure the whole thing entirely, some days I just think ‘whatever, let’s just take the old structure from the thesis and be done with it’.

My main problem is that the book presents a theoretical model articulating several different concepts, and I’m finding it really hard to do without a super-long overall introduction. It’s pretty hard, too, to introduce the different parametres of the theory as I go along, because they’re all related to one another. I also feel like I’m being extremely repetitive in my effort to be understood. I also feel like I’m being very descriptive when I talk about the philosophical system I’m using.

And why wasn’t that a problem for the thesis itself? Because a thesis is an academic exercise, where it’s perfectly acceptable to have a very long intro that spells out your theoretical framework, explains what you’re going to do, what your methodology is, etc. And it doesn’t matter if you repeat yourself a bit because it shows that you’re signposting your work. But in real academic books you can’t do that because it’s ferociously boring and not good practice.

When I submitted my thesis I wrote about the pain of realising that it’s never going to be what it should have been (see “How my real thesis was kidnapped by trolls“) (oh God, typing this last sentence I Freudianistically wrote “How my real life was kidnapped by trolls”). I’m having, predictably, the same symptoms now. Even if I hated the thesis in the end, I was still hopeful it would be turned into a Perfect Book. And it’s not going to happen, of course. It will always be a draft in my mind.

For now I’ve made a list of Things to Remember When I’m Having an Acute Book Crisis:

It’s completely normal.
No academic book is a perfect and coherent whole, without repetitions, clear and concise all the way, and revolutionary in both form and content (that’s definitely true).
I’m twenty-four and it’s my first academic book so people will be nice to me (HA. SURE.)
The reviewers will have good advice and recommendations to make it better (if they don’t reject it outright).
There are some good ideas in there.
The publishers won’t let me publish something completely rubbish.
There will be other books, articles, talks and ideas.
The sun will die one day and swallow up the Earth and everything that has ever lived in it, including the ruins of our long-extinct civilisation.

The last of which is the only truly comforting one.

Anyway, I’ll keep you updated on how it’s progressing (or not). In the meantime I need to stop blogging and start drafting again and leave you with this memegenerated kernel of wisdom.