Book writing boot camp

With baby on the way in 15 weeks, the pressure is on to get work on my book done. Turns out, I'm actually working on two books--one a history of the Joint Religious Legislative Coalition and the other a texbook about interest groups using the JRLC as a case study. Technically, I have all of next year to work on these...after all, that's what a sabbatical is for. But, since I won't have quite as much free time next year with baby K around, I concocted a book writing boot camp plan for the summer. I have a writing goal for each week and it basically works out to about a chapter a week. My first two weeks, which ended today because of an all day workshop I have tomorrow, were focused on writing the history of the group.

Last week was basically worthless and I spent way more time dinking around than I did writing. This week was much better. I'm still very far behind where I planned to be, but I only got up to 1975 in the history (the group didn't even start until 1970!). Nevertheless, I still have a good 22 pages (single spaced) of manuscript that's in pretty good shape.

But, as per the boot camp plan, I'm moving on! Next week I write the first chapter (a draft, anyway) of the other book, focused on "the problem of factions"--or in other words, why people seem to hate interest groups. Fun times!

My goal is not to actually have a finished book by the end of the summer, but to at least have a solid draft of a book that will make it much easier to work on in the fall when I'm sleep deprived and only have bits of time to work. I'll keep you posted as to how my plan turns out :)