Three cheers for accountability buddies!

In which I reflect on starting book ms revisions, and on the writing buddies who keep me honest.

A typical day in the John Carter Brown Library. Photo by Surekha Davies.

This week I returned to my book manuscript, albeit not to the desk above. I hoped that the book had developed by itself, like a favourite cheese. With any luck, it had not morphed into a never-forgotten, forgotten cheese sandwich, re-discovered in a school lunchbox one summer, giving off a delicate “poof!” of fungal spores when Pandora’s box was opened.

I was on assignment from a writing accountability group. We had declared our goals via email, and planned to meet up on Zoom a week later to report back and to brainstorm.

My goals:

1) Outline three book chapters looking at the arc, the scope, and the takeaways of each - a total of a page of writing.

2) Identify possible expansions of perspectives/content, and possible critiques of what's currently in/excluded, for the chapters.

3) Identify and flick through books in my house that might help with these problems.

The aim was to have a 3pp book summary, and a 3pp to-do list, by February 16. Telling people what I was going to do made me create a to-do list rather than gliding around a potentially gargantuan assignment.

The John Carter Brown Library. Photo by Surekha Davies.

Almost a decade ago, at the John Carter Brown Library (Providence, RI, USA), I discovered the power of camaraderie for putting book words on the page. 2013 contained a tough assignment: turning a complete book manuscript that had passed peer review (very favourably, but with one report that urged me to let out my inner Type AAA [as I saw it]) into something better.

I had just had months of distraction: the job market, moving continents, a full teaching load of four courses per semester, and a regular Everest of grading.

The threshold of the JCB Library. Photo by Surekha Davies.

That summer, I finally made it to the JCB Library, a renowned and beloved institution among early Americas and Atlantic world scholars. As I stood on the doorstep under a charismatically primply lampshade, I slowly raised both fists in the air. It had taken a lot from me to make it here.

But it had also taken the blood and toil of many others, and particularly that of enslaved African Americans, to build the institution and to pay for the books within it. These were people to whom I owed my privilege and comfort, despite being a brown Brit who had just moved to the US, rather than, say, an nth-generation white American.

That threshold marked a moment not just of excitement at a summer with books and scholars. It also activated a deeper sense of moral obligation to the work than I had felt before.

To return to accountability of a different sort…. As an early riser, I was soon coming down to the dining-room of the Fiering House for fellows before 7am, to write and revise words over breakfast. The library (a four-minute walk away), didn’t open until almost 9am - plenty of time.

The Fiering House in 2013 A bit like a haunted house, only friendly.

“What are you working on?” asked another early bird (Adam, I think), one morning. When I told him, his eyes widened, and he asked if he could join me. Charmed, I said yes. As other fellows drifted downstairs, a few joined us at the dining-cum-writing table.

The writing-table. Fiering House, Providence, RI. Photo by Surekha Davies.

Overnight, this became a regular occurrence. We began sessions by declaring writing goals. I was regularly flabbergasted that just saying a number - like 600 - out loud, and having a fixed amount of time in which to wave my fingers, made words appear.

A few weeks later, I departed for a month in London, leaving behind new friends, but taking a trunkload of memories with me. I was crushed to be leaving my new happy place. Don had an idea: I could join the writing gang via Skype on his iPad.

That’s how I ended up in a certain medieval library courtyard, dialling in on Skype, chatting via headphones, and carefully carrying my audience into the library before sitting at the back of the room so that I was the only person on camera. (No privacy laws were broken during these escapades.)

That fall, one of my fellow Fellows and I continued to write in our pajamas over Skype, a few mornings a week. I was in Connecticut, Amanda, in Newfoundland, yet the sense of support and camaraderie was profound. Sometimes we were both home on a snow day courtesy of the same weather system - this or that nor’easter or blizzard: bonus writing time.

A year later, I was in Washington, DC on fellowship. Amanda and I continued to write, now on Google Hangouts and joined by Pepa from Madrid. I woke every morning around 6:30am, peered at my phone, saw that Amanda (1.5 hours ahead) and Pepa (6 hours ahead) were already writing, and dragged myself out of bed to join them.

Years later, Amanda and I still do an accountability session most weeks. We have long since graduated from using them for writing to using them for whatever activity needs moral support or accountability. Once, Amanda joining us on Skype on my laptop while I sat in the Fiering House with Nick, one of the fellows from the latest cohort. We won’t ever forget the time that my computer sneezed.

We have since discovered the mute button.

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Beginning the book revision

Did I do the writing I promised for this week?

I’m not quite done yet… But I did figure out some surprising stuff.

1. It was easy to fill up the “how could this be improved” page. Having a page limit was a good idea: it made me distil out a finite number of critiques. After all, peer review will only provide much more food for thought. 

2. I had grown as a writer since I pressed SEND in late September. I could see that the key revision was going to be literary, not More Erudition. I needed to spend weeks immersed in the best trade-list writing, developing my ear for storytelling. I was already looking at my manuscript and thinking, ‘hmm, this section could do with a story around which the history of ideas unfolds.’ This is huge for someone whose entire published work is on the history of ideas - pieces of paper seemingly talking to other pieces of paper. It’s the narrative that will direct what new content I should add.

Perhaps I could actually become a storyteller! It was as if something had flipped a switch.

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Postscript: many sorts of accountability

My appreciation for accountability buddies deserves a longer essay than this long newsletter, but here are three shout-outs to my longest-running connections. Our writing/life hacks may help anyone wishing to build creators’ communities of their own.

Helena and Rachel and I were three new assistant professors trying to keep our heads above water, extroverts living alone and trying not to fall asleep at 6pm with a combo of fatigue and lack of company. The solution? Regular Monday-night joint working sessions. We took turns to have one another over for dinner, gossiped, and worked. We figured out our new institution together. It was only fitting that we were at my place on a Monday in 2013 when we learned that all three of us had been awarded summer research grants.

2013 was also the year historian Lora Burnett set up #theGraftonline Facebook writing group, which I have adored being a part of ever since. We post our (attempted) word counts, laugh at ourselves and our funny little lives of cats, blankets, coffee, and typing, and wave enthusiastically across oceans. This too is glorious.

Finally, Marika and I have idyllic brainstorming sessions in person and online. We are fans of how-to books, podcasts, stationery, and productivity talk, now in our tenth year of scheming. A few years ago we found that we’d both been journeying away from the academy, Marika into fiction-writing, and me into trade-list history. We both gave up permanent jobs in the academy.

Writers often talk about how lonely work-life can be. The pandemic and scholarly nomadism have exacerbated that problem. But, somehow, I’ve been lucky, finding communities that feel like they are all here with me in spirit, no matter how many travel bans and quarantines and blizzards and hurricanes separate us in space.

Thank you, dear writing and accountability buddies!