Whole words, whole sight

I mentioned in an earlier post on this blog that a couple of years ago, I worked as a book doctor and writing coach with Robert Plotkin, a Boston-based patent attorney. At the time he contacted me, Robert had been working for several years on an idea for a book about a new breed of software applications, which he dubbed “genies.”

Prototype genies were already in use at NASA and in the consumer products industry; the wishes they’d made come true included everything from other computer programs to radically enhanced satellite antennas and toothbrushes. Based on interviews with the computer scientists who’d come up with the genie concept, Robert estimated the eventual impact on society would be staggering. Genies can come up with designs a human being working alone could never even conceive of, and can work far faster as well. It may sound like, well, a fairy tale – but one of Robert’s predictions is that someday you and I will have access to consumer versions of genies. In which case, we’ll be able to find out for ourselves.

But as in fairy tales, peril is also present. Our patent system is already so creaky it can barely handle conventional software patents; what happens when genies really start cranking? It will be like something out of the scene from the Disney movie Fantasia, wherein Mickey Mouse, re-enacting the poem by Goethe about the Sorcerer’s Apprentice, is overwhelmed by an army of enchanted brooms fetching way too many buckets of waters.

I don’t know if Robert ever saw “Fantasia,” but he has thought quite a bit about the havoc that enchanted software might wreak if it got similarly out of control. And so in addition to describing genie technology and how inventors and businesses can prepare for it, he offers recommendations on how the government can adjust patent law to keep pace.

After getting my help on the book proposal and the early manuscript, Robert landed a publishing deal with Stanford University Press; there he worked with an editor on further drafts, sifting in late-breaking research. Now we have a publication date for The Genie in the Machine – May 1, not that far off. I’m looking forward to what I expect will be a fun and informative read. If the subject grabs you, you can also check out Robert’s blog, Automating Invention: Computers, Invention, and the Law.

As a bonus, here’s an interview with Robert that should be enjoyable and useful for anyone contemplating a nonfiction book project of their own.

So this is your first book, but hardly your first dip into the pool as a writer, yes?

In my work as a lawyer, I write all the time, but that’s for clients and for patent examiners – very formal, very technical. Aside from that I’d written quite a few academic law journal articles, on the same topics I cover in the book. And then back before college, I used to write short stories and short plays. So I’ve always enjoyed writing, especially creative writing, but prior to the book I’d never written in a popular voice for publication.

Even so, all those law journal articles add up. What did you find was different about writing a book?

One thing I learned when you and I did the book proposal together, was that is if you just take the outline of a journal article you’ve written, and then plop it onto a book and try to make each section into a chapter, it’s not going to work. With a book you have to put more stuff up front, because people are going to have to read more before they get to something else. You need to hold their interest in a way that you don’t when you’re writing something that’s only 10 pages long in total.

As I remember, you arranged to get a tremendous amount of feedback on your drafts. Not just from me, but from colleagues, your sources, quite a few people.

That’s critical for first-time authors. Don’t try and write a whole book before showing it to people – get drafts out for feedback in whatever way you can. With me it went back 4 or 5 years even before I wrote the book proposal, with those 4 or 5 law journal articles, very detailed, on all my key topics. I sent these to other lawyers, to clients of mine in the computer field. My core idea for the book never changed, but I was able to significantly improve the perspective from which I approached it.

And then the same thing with you later on. You gave me a lot of great feedback on how to frame the entire subject – how to translate it from an academic, very philosophical topic, to something that was more concrete, anchored in current events, and appealing to the specific audiences that we identified.

And that’s another thing a lot of first-time authors probably don’t think of. They’re thinking of their topic, and how to write about the topic, but not about who the audience is.

In working with expert authors like yourself, I’ve found that early drafts often feel cramped, tight – like the writer is trying too hard. And then at a certain point the drafts suddenly loosen up and become not just better, but fun to read. It’s as if the writer has discovered their real voice. Was this your experience?

Definitely. As I think is true for many professionals, my training as a lawyer had taught me to write in a very rigid style. In a legal brief or a patent application, it’s important to avoid saying anything that could come back and bite you. You never trust your reader, because you’re assuming the reader is a lawyer on the other side waiting to attack every word you write and use it against you.

With the book I had to unlearn all that and go back to the way I wrote before I was a lawyer. To say anything new and important and interesting, you’ve got to take risks, not use as many qualifying statements, trust your reader more. It’s a very different writing mindset. So you’re right, at some point I did find I’d developed the ability to switch mindsets as I needed.

Another thing that writers need to learn, I find, is the idea of genre – that books are made up of functional parts, each with a job to do on behalf of readers. ‘An introduction needs this, its purpose is this’ – that sort of thing.

That’s right. Someone like me, I’m a voracious reader. But it’s one thing to read a book and say I enjoyed it, and another thing to figure out what you need to do to write a book like that. You helped make that process explicit.

Even before that, I learned from you that the job of the proposal isn’t to describe the book, it’s to pitch the book. I remember thinking, “Well, a book proposal is going to be, here’s a summary of the book, and here’s who I am.” When in fact it’s really more like, “Here’s why you as a publisher would want to publish it, and here’s why it will sell, and here’s who will buy it.”

Which I think brings up another important decision for a first-time author: are you trying to sell books, or are you trying to use the book for something else? In my case, I don’t want to say I don’t care how many books I sell, but I’m more concerned with how much of an impact the publication of the book makes on the people I’m trying to reach.

You want to be a thought leader.

And just the fact that people know I’ve published the book is enough, to a certain extent, to establish me as a thought leader in their minds, even if they’ve never bought my book or read it.

Of course, I hope they all read it! And I’m hoping to get a general audience too – not just business people or computer scientists, but people who read popular science books. I think they’ll be very interested.