Writing non-fiction

[Ari]

So does have anyone with experience writing non-fiction books?
Im considering writing one about Lucid Dreaming and the brain and have a few questions.

[Kyuss Apollo]

There are probably a few ers here who have written book-length theses and/or dissertations, and while it is non-fiction writing, academic writing for the purposes of satisfying a degree requirement is not exactly the same as writing an actual book.

Are you looking to shop it around to a publisher when you are finished or are you thinking about self-publishing?

[Ari]

In theory I was considering shopping it around to publishers (as hellish as I hear that is) and thus a few of my questions are, is there any specific style publishers are looking for? How they went about harassing publishers for best result? But also in research has a broad set of interviews or a more focuses few been for effective?

I've written a decent amount of non-fiction but not so ephemeral and personal as dreams or sleep, unfortunately there's no 'top 10 dreams of the 20th century' film I can watch.

As I've alluded to in the Dream thread, I have extreme dreams, and also an interest in neuroscience and am thinking of putting those two things together now that I've got a better handle on it.

[Janet]

I have a brother who worked in publishing. He gave me a lot of advice when I was trying to get my vampire book published. The one I remember most, because it got me the closest to success, was that if there is a book on your subject that you particularly admire, you should query the editor of that book.

[Vivisectus]

Did you ever publish it, janet?

[Janet]

No. I wrote it in part to get some of my vampire knowledge out of my head and onto paper so I could move on to something else. It worked in the sense that when the editor told me it needed to be about three times as long, I had no desire whatsoever to do that. I did pull it out again a few years ago to write a proposal to another publisher, but I never heard back.

It would take a lot of updating now, considering it was on women in vampire myths and written before Buffy or Twilight. I had an angle on that, though. I was going to explore the fact that men write women who fight vampires while women write women who desire them. I think there's something to explore in that, but I would probably have to actually read the whole Twilight saga and The Vampire Diaries and I just can't face that.

[JoeP]

Originally Posted by Janet

No but I would probably have to actually read the whole Twilight saga and The Vampire Diaries and I just can't face that.

A fate worse than undeath

[Ari]

Thanks! That's helpful!
There are a few writing styles I wouldn't mind trying to emulate, such as Mary Roach or Oliver Sacks and sadly Oliver Sacks would be a perfect interview for this, had he not died last year.

An issue to probably harass authors about is how much technical vs personal and how it should be balanced between informative and self-help. I also wonder if there are any off limit subjects for certain publishers, as it will almost certainly talk frankly about drugs.

I don't have any favorite books specifically on dreams, in part for the same reason as your vampire book although luckily things have gone much more in the scientific direction recently as I've been dreading the amount of Woo, energy, dream symbolism shenanigans I will need to trudge through.

[viscousmemories]

Resurrecting this thread because I have questions of my own. I want to start writing articles about culture, politics, sociology, etc. for submission to magazines (the one I'm looking at now is new--looking for 800-1200 word submissions--so I feel like I have a better chance of getting published as a newb) but because everything is so interconnected I always struggle to pick a narrow thesis to focus on. Every time I sit down and try to write I feel like I need to somehow rope in everything I've learned about everything all at once.

[fragment]

Originally Posted by viscousmemories

Resurrecting this thread because I have questions of my own. I want to start writing articles about culture, politics, sociology, etc. for submission to magazines (the one I'm looking at now is new--looking for 800-1200 word submissions--so I feel like I have a better chance of getting published as a newb) but because everything is so interconnected I always struggle to pick a narrow thesis to focus on. Every time I sit down and try to write I feel like I need to somehow rope in everything I've learned about everything all at once.

I've only written for fairly niche audiences, but I sure know the feeling of dealing with interconnectedness. That's also a problem for me trying to sequence thoughts linearly - every part seems to be asking to explode out in several directions but it's only possible to go with one and then figure out a way to loop back to the others.

Practice is always good for writing though. Maybe post some trial essays here for feedback, perhaps on lower-stakes topics so you don't use up your good ideas.

Looks like the library and blogs functionality of FF are still in place. Sheesh we could even make some kind of festival of it.

[viscousmemories]

I'm eyeballing this: Start Writing Online in 30 Days - Ship 30 for 30

I've already consumed all the free content, now I'm considering the paid program. I've spoken to a couple people who feel it has been really useful.

[Ari]

On one hand the hyped copy sounds like they’re trying to sell me some BS, and on the other that’s probably just the tone something like this should have.