#SecretBookProject: How to Document Progress
What academia and journalism taught me about research...
I find research fun, especially when it’s about subjects I’m passionate about. That thrill as a kid getting an old set of encyclopedias and just inhaling… I still love the smell of old books to this day, bonus points if it’s an old shop like Peter’s in Sheringham, where I spent many a Saturday growing up.
The key question, in this AI-saturated world, is how does one research? So look, while I do pre-date the internet and I also find some uses in AI purely when dealing with data or very rarely when I need a visual check on a specific hand gesture (mudrā) from some obscure Buddhist statue… I do everything by hand. I still triple-check the result, even if it seems accurate because I’m not an idiot.
AI is a tool, it’s all about how you use it, and my job is all about being human. Every word in my articles and manuscripts is one I’ve typed manually. Or occasionally cut and paste when it’s complex kanji that I really don’t want to type out manually… Sue me…
The point is I write. I think. I mull. I type. I check. Then I double-check.
I’m also trying to take care to document my process. We have everything being run through AI checkers, even classic literture is coming back as ‘AI-generated’ because AI was trained on those same works.
Epic fail. Honestly.
Anyway, with this (justified) rage against the machine when it comes to novels, books and research. I find myself leaning into my academic background. Back when I was studying for my BA (Hons.) in Theology and Religious Studies (I got a 2:1 as well), I was lucky enough to be the first wave of internet academia but, as is the way of things, I started in the analogue age: with books. with papers, with citations (I can do Harvard in my sleep…).
What this taught me was how to think, how to research, and how to develop a train of thought from idea to publication or submission.
The issue with AI is not that it can do everything for us, it’s that it's going to destroy our ability to think, to ask, to question, to explore. To be able to tell when something is true or made up.
So while I’m no longer in a ‘cite your sources’ frame of mind. I keep those lessons close. I have hundreds of links (I do so love being able to use the internet to do almost all of my research… But I’m hoping to add some museum visits for my next book project, just for variety…) I have a notebook, my own version of an academic’s field journals, where I write down ideas, mindmap, plan chapters and add in notes to remind myself if my laptop is shut…
My academic senpai, Kaitlyn, recommended this book to me a few years back and it’s just what I needed. It also doesn’t matter if you’re a scientist or a humanities academic, notes can and will save your butt, as well as being easy to have on you and much more reliable than a phone…\
Because, as we learned in my Journalism series, you’re battery will not respect your ideas at 3am in the morning or when you have a brilliant idea and it’s down to 8%.
The idea goes hand-in-hand with what I learned at journalism school. Contemporaneous notes (aka notes made at the time of a thing, it’s my favourite term from my law class). Always have them. I still remember being taught why, in shorthand class (Teeline, if you needed to know… Gods, I am OLD), keeping notes is so important.
Shorthand notes, if you didn’t know, like those made when covering a story, are legally admissible in court. So by keeping a reporter’s notebook, starting at the front, dating and timing every entry, and then flipping over and working back, you create an improbable document to forge which records everything as you go…
(I said ‘improbable’ because it’s entirely possible to fake, but WTFF would you? Honestly? In shorthand???)
I’ve honestly not been quite as diligent about this for the #SecretBookProject as I’d like, but I’m still finding my system, so it’s a work in progress…There will be a follow-up article through, once I figure it out.
(I have two boxes of unused Field Notes, they’re the right size and perfect for shorter projects and longer ones… Time to use them…)
Hmmmmm… Stationery.
Until next time!
#SecretBookProject: From Pitch to Publication is a periodic series in which Asha discusses writing their first non-fiction book.