Writing a Book

by Robert MacauleyI could write a book about that …But do I really want to? That ’s the question I asked myself a few years ago, when I was invited by Oxford University Press to submit a formal proposal for a comprehensive book on the ethics of palliative care. So I reached out to mentors for advice, and they all said the same thing: Enlist twenty of your friends to each write a chapter, and you can be the editor.Sage advice, which I didn ’t take. Partly because I like challenges. Partly because I don’t really like the unevenness of multi-author texts. And partly because I drastically underestimated how much time and energy it would take to write such a book single-handedly.Rita Mae Brown once said that “good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.” I’m not sure if my decision constitutes bad judgment, but it gave me a lot of experience that might be helpful to others who are thinking about writing a book.Can you really write a book about that?In formulating my outline, I divided the content into thirds:  - One-third I could write without much preparation (for the pediatrics section, it helped to be a pediatrician)  - One-third I knew a bit about and needed to deepen my knowledge (like palliative sedation)  - One-third I needed to start from the ground up (for the dementia section, it didn ’t help to be a pediatrician)In the process of writing, I realized that I had a long way to go in areas where I...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - Category: Palliative Care Tags: ethics macauley The profession writing Source Type: blogs