This gave me pause:
Why To Not Write A Book · Gwern.net:
So, a book is a lot of work for a writer, even if it is mostly already-written writing, which crowds out new writing or exploration, and which tends to freeze them in place. But it gets worse.
A book commits you to a single task, one which will devour your time for years to come, cutting you off from readers and from opportunity; in the time that you are laboring over the book, which usually you can’t talk much about with readers or enjoy the feedback, you may be driving yourself into depression .
It reminded me of why I spent over a year on a first draft of the ODB manuscript and now the better part of a year editing, rearranging, doing deeper readings and thinking, thinking, thinking. You see, I’m writing for me, not to pursue a new career as a published author. For a long time, I’m been frustrated with the blog format to outline complicated ideas in depth. I’d write a post, but I had trouble writing it to be self contained enough to stand alone as an essay. Or having to repeat background over and over across essays to provide the background to understand the underlying framework.
Clearly, the answer to these problems is the extended format we call a book. Where development of ideas can proceed step by step with enough room to dig a bit deeper. That was the impetus to collect the ideas into a single work.
What I didn’t expect, but should have known, was the enormous value to me as author in working through the process of explicitly laying out the ideas clearly enough that an interested reader with limited background could grasp the big picture. Explaining the ideas to a reader means that you have to understand them yourself. Can’t get away with half baked ideas and unjustified assumptions. Plus, as one thing leads to another, one discovers all sorts of implications and truths that the writing process uncovers.
Now I will admit, as Gwen points out well, is that there is a huge opportunity cost in communicating on a regular, more limited basis. So often I’ve thought about writing here, but the priority just isn’t high enough to put aside the current activity to spend even a few minutes on a brief post.
Let this post stand as the justification to myself of the choice of working on the manuscript for hours when I could be writing here.
