Day 21 - First major structuring exercise

Today I don’t have sudden inspiration for new content, so we will attempt some structure today

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My original structure of the book, in my original table of contents, involved sections like before the negotiation, during the negotiation, after the negotiation. It was based around this concept of negotiation in relationships, but expanding the parts that people consider.

but i am not sure if that is what i want. but it did seem that something around “negotiation” was in the original draft.

but i didn’t like the “before, during, after” thing actually

Maybe something like this is a better vibe

Part I “Why this is so hard,” Part II “Tools,” Part III “Edge cases.”

*****I should probably find my 10 strongest essays that i like the most, and then do something with those ******

kind of burning out with the writing every day, but mostly because i am doing other writing.

i think perhaps my next chunk of time on this project would be to take some of the previous notes, here on this blog in the daily writing, and to turn them into something like “my 10 best essays” in forms I like. I worry if I don’t figure out something about the organization first, i will have to do a lot of rewriting. but maybe not.

I should probably look up how to write a nonfiction book

akkk

Atomic Habits has a great table of contents

Table of Contents:

• Introduction: My story

• The fundamentals: Why tiny changes make a big difference

• The 1st law: Make it obvious

• The 2nd law: Make it attractive

• The 3rd law: Make it easy

• Advanced tactics: How to go from being merely good to being truly great

• Conclusion: The secret to results that last.

Realistically, I should be able to “find” my favorite chapters, without fleshing them out. i know my own content well enough that i can imagine many versions of each section. that’s part of my problem

but if that is true, then “writing the titles of the essays” and arranging them, then changing the titles, and doing those rotations in my head, should not be a problem.

first, i will do an exercise where i take out some paper, play some music that feels connected to the book somehow, and write from memory what are some of my favorite essays

here is a photo the ensuing cluster of notecards

Next, i will go through my blogposts, and write down additional ones not from memory, but from my past writing…

ooops there are a lot.

the way to do this next step would be to go through each blog post one by one, see what things inspire me / what cards i come up with, write them in a google doc, as that is going to be a lot easier, with the blog post that inspired that note card, under it.

i imagine every blog post, each of the 50, will inspire some note cards, at least one. so that will take a few hours of sitting down and doing that

then, i will have a document of sections. then i can begin organizing htem, or seeing themes

already i see large sections around negotiation, and negotiation tips, and large sections about energy games. and then sections about philosophy and theories of relationships

i do not really want to separate them into separate books. i am hoping an expecting a spine to appear

but now i have approximately 40 or so blogposts that are just content.

and so this will probably mean 40 - 80 sentences summarizing things i want to explain in the blogpost generated from those

i shall not despair yet

i will do this activity on a full stomach, after a night’s sleep.

tomorrow tomorrow