Early on Saturday morning, before the family awoke, I typed the last few paragraphs… yes! A new book is en route! It’s working title is Postcapitalist Economies of Care.
The book argues that care is a powerful force that can be invested in transforming our economies, developing a methodology for inventorying care surplus flows — from generation, to appropriation and distribution. It asks how different patterns of care surplus flow create space for different kinds of transformations, including space for different kinds of actors in transformative work. Care can be part of maintaining capitalism, we know that, but it also contributes to survivance of noncapitalist ways of being, and can even be collectivised for more widespread transformation.
Of course, I subscribe to the ‘shitty first draft’ school of writing, which means that there is editing to do now before it is ready for widespread sharing. But since I have worked with a book mentor all the way through, I have had regular light edits, conversations about direction, and feedback to guide me. I feel like it is in pretty good shape. Maybe not even a ‘shitty’ first draft, but a reasonably readable first draft?
One can always hope.
But what comes next? Well, I have put together an ambitious edit schedule, hoping to get the book manuscript and proposal off to an appropriate publisher before the end of the year. I am also ‘road testing’ chapters through presentations over the coming months at a few conferences and in the Political Economy Research Centre’s seminar series on hope. This helps me see whether the ideas are landing, and what adjustments might be needed for different audiences.
As I edit the chapters, I will also have the proposal open and be editing the proposal to fit what I actually ended up doing in the chapters (slightly different from what I initially proposed). For this book, I have decided to submit proposal and manuscript together. Usually, I sign a contract before I begin serious work on the book, but this time, I was not yet sure exactly where I wanted to publish. So I decided to write the book I want to write, with five or six possibly publishers in mind, then reassess when I got through the first draft.
What do I do when I am editing the first draft? For me, it’s usually about reducing length and increasing clarity, as well as keeping an eye on transitions and coherence. Here’s my plan for this set of revisions:
- read the introduction and conclusion against each other and edit to increase coherence.
- Rewrite the rationale section of the proposal.
- Work my way backwards through the chapters. I like to do it backwards, so I can make sure the preceding chapter sets up what is required in the argument for the following chapter to work. When I do it forwards, I am mainly focused on flow. For argument, I feel like it works better to go backwards!
- Rewrite chapter summaries in proposal as I go.
- Print out the whole thing and read through for copy and line edit.
- Enter changes and update proposal.
- Find a couple of extra pre-readers.
- Edit according to their feedback
- Start submitting to publishers.
Watch this space for links to talks, pre-reading opportunities and general reflection on the book’s argument and progress.
