Month: September 2023

I have worked pretty hard on my book idea since I decided to pull the trigger and start writing. There is enough prose on paper now where others can get a sense for my writing voice. One of the greatest benefits of my Ph.D. program was the I really do not know if I have the writing skills or that writing voice is suited at all for the kind of book I am proposing to write. I have spent the last forty-five years writing in engineeringese and acquiring bad writing habits even doing that. That understanding was impressed on me when I wrote my dissertation.

The first time I submitted a draft of a technical journal article for review by my doctoral committee, I was pretty offended by the vigor of their corrections. I was wise enough to swallow my pride enough to make all the recommended changes. By about the third round of reviews I was beginning to understand that it was me that had the writing problem and they were absolutely correct in all their corrections. On the other hand, I have been writing in this blog for quite a while. This blog, while not exactly the voice I hope will be in the book, is somewhat closer to the feel I envision. My writing needs to improve in a lot of ways, but I am not without hope that I can produce something that is interesting for a certain set of people to read.

I created a working title and an outline for the book both of which will change as I work. Then I wrote a Preface, Introduction, and a couple of partial chapters in a LaTeX document that allows me to edit easily and committed it to a source control repository (best practices for writing software). I sent the current output to all of my siblings, my Ph.D. adviser, and my cousin, Trisha. I expect there to be others I will have review the book. Trisha is a thoroughly professional, very up-to-date reader of the current pedagogical literature, and experienced elementary school teacher who was a huge help in reviewing my dissertation. All of these people have different worldviews than my own–some more than others. My hope is that they can give me a sense were I really should undertake this enterprise. I told them to be brutally honest and do not consider my feelings. I really only have enough time and energy, God willing, for two more Ph.D. level projects in my life, so I do not want to waste my time on something for which there is little chance for success.

After reflecting for not very long on my August 30, 2023 blog post, I have decided to opt for an attempt at authoring a book. I actually found a LaTeX template, made some modifications, made a rough outline, and started writing. One thing that became immediately evident is my lack of formal writing skills. I learned a lot going through the correction process when I prepared technical articles and my dissertation during my Ph.D., but that is a very different kind of writing from what I hope to produce.

The idea for the book is to tell our homeschool story. Whether anyone would be interested in reading the story was the first question that came to mind, but it also dawned on me that writing down what would be interesting to me and worth doing whether anyone else was interested or not. The story could serve as family history if nothing else. There are also some things I do not want the book to be. The worst outcome possible would be to turn it into a self-indulgent hagiography or a homeschool apologetic. The idea would be to tell the story, identifying where we thought we failed and succeeded, describing the questions we asked ourselves that would be common to anyone making decisions about their children’s educations, but also what we chose to do based on our own unique circumstances.

I have completed first drafts of the preface, introduction (chapter one), and the educational setting in our household before any kind of school was on our radar (chapter two). From what I have written so far, I think it is going to take me a year or so to just get a first rough draft complete and, even then, I will have to work at it pretty hard. Part of the reason I am writing about this now is to embarrass myself if I do not keep going and finish the thing. To that end, I plan to post about the book’s progress as I write it. Maybe in the next post, I will put up the (very early) first draft of the Table of Contents. If this does not work out, maybe I will return to the idea of getting a law degree.

Month 0 WEIGHT: 235.1 lbs. BMI: 36.6