Planting Seeds
Karl Giberson
Writer’s Log: Stardate 5-2-12
I got so distracted last night I forgot to put up a blog. I was distracted chatting for several hours with Dean Nelson about future book projects. We have two ideas for future collaborative projects and were trying to get them clarified to see if there actually was a book proposal hidden inside them.
The gestation process for books can take a long, long time. It starts with an idea—let’s write a biography of John Polkinghorne, I said several years ago—but that is just the beginning. All kinds of other questions immediately emerge: Who is the audience? What level will it be written at? How long will it be? How will you approach the subject? An “idea” for a book is a long ways from a book proposal and very different books can emerge from the same idea. Thinking all these thngs through is important groundwork.
One of our book ideas—which we are calling Looking for God in all the Right Places—is over a year old but we haven’t had the time to get started, partly because I have had too many other projects underway. The other one—a biography of another interesting science and religion personality—is relatively new.
I wonder how long it will take until either of these projects gets underway…