How Long Does It Take to Write a Book?

How long does it take to write a book? I remember back to my senior seminar class in my undergrade program--Seminar in History. This class required the production of a 20- to 25-page paper, theoretically based upon primary research. I worked all semester for a paper that was, if truth be told, quite mediocre. I knew how to remember random facts at the time, but I did not really understand how to connect the dots to create a historical narrative that was backed up by primary research. Setting research questions and a solid thesis were not really in my repertoire at that point. 

I liked the idea of going to graduate school, but the thought of writing a master's thesis approximating 100 pages, not to mention a doctoral dissertation seemed a daunting task. In my DA program in history, I wrote a dissertation that was in the area of 140 pages. My recent book Big Pandemic on The Prairie is listed at 191 pages. I'm currently in the process of writing my next book, which I anticipate will come in around the 100,000-120,000 range. It's a biography of a senator from West Virginia, Jennings Randolph. I've been working at it on and off for the past six years, and I'm currently just north of 150 pages, or about 50,000 words. 

I no longer have the view that my younger self did that a book was nigh impossible. I knew that it was not impossible. After all, many people had written books, some series of books that encompassed several volumes. Popular nonfiction authors come out with books every few years (or even more frequently). I thought that this was beyond my ability. However, I should have been thinking about the idea of eating an elephant. 

The way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. The way to write a book is one word at a time. My initial draft of my book on the Spanish flu took nearly three years to write. There was a delay tied to a cross-country move and setting up classes at a new institution, which took up quite a bit of my time. Otherwise, it would have been completed a bit earlier. The initial draft came in around 50,000 words or 150 pages. The final draft was 197 pages in Microsoft Word, which came to about 63,000 words. From concept to publication, The book took about 4.5 years. 

I've written about 70-80 pages since the beginning of summer on my latest project. It's been a little bit here, a little bit there. However, I was just doing some math yesterday. If I wanted to write a 300-page book over the course of a year, It would take a little more than 250 words per day. Writing an average of 250 words per day for 365 days in a year would produce around 90,000 words over the course of a year. That's a good length for a nonfiction book. Of course, there's research, which I could only undertake a day or two at a time for several years because of my distance from the archive. That takes quite a bit of time, but once you have an idea of the direction the research is going to go and the sources that will answer your research questions, the actual writing of a book of a decent length should not be as daunting as it might seem.  

Big Pandemic on the Prairie: My New Book on Spanish Flu Published

Back during the COVID-19 lockdowns in the spring of 2020, I started thinking about possible parallels between that pandemic and the nation's experience with a previous deadly outbreak. I had only a passing interest in the history of medicine at that point, but I knew that claims that lockdowns and masks were unprecedented were completely erroneous. 

I started with a new lecture on the Spanish flu, which looked at that pandemic on a nationwide level. It only scratched the surface and looked at the broad contours of what happened in 1918 and 1919. I then wondered how states in which I'd lived dealt with the Spanish flu. Lo and behold, the Library of Congress has a database that has a database of digitized historic newspapers, Chronicling America. I found that the three major dailies in North Dakota were available for the time frame I needed to investigate. 

This led to the idea that I could compose a scholarly research article on how newspapers in North Dakota reported on the flu, including the restrictions the state and local governments promulgated. That article came out in North Dakota History in 2021. After finishing up that piece, I still had questions, and I pitched a book on the Spanish flu in North Dakota to Bill Caraher, who was a former professor of mine at the University of North Dakota. Dr. Caraher runs the Digital Press at The University of North Dakota, and this small press sometimes publishes books on local history. He expressed serious interest in such a work, and after I sent a proposal of what I intended to do, he said to send a manuscript when I was done. 

On Tuesday of this week (Oct. 15), the fruit of my labor officially hit the market. Here's a link to the Digital Press's post on the topic, along with options for accessing the book (including in a FREE, open-access digital format), titled Big Pandemic on the Prairie: The Spanish Flu in North Dakota. It looks at a general overview of American medicine, provides a narrative of how the flu progressed through North Dakota, and analyzes how the flu impacted religious bodies, Native Americans, and the North Dakota election in 1918. I'm happy with how the book has turned out, and I hope any readers might find it interesting, educational, and accessible.   

Reading and Thinking about Imagined Communities

When I was in a historiography class in grad school, I remember getting introduced to the idea of the imagined community, a term coined by Benedict Anderson in 1983 in his attempt to explain the rise of nationalism. The title of his book was, perhaps not surprisingly, Imagined Communities. 

Apparently, this concept has influenced scholars well outside the historical profession. This summer, I started working toward a graduate certificate in human geography to extend my ability to teach undergrad classes in another field. My first class was Political Geography, and the concept of the imagined community came up during a week that focused on nationalism. I'd at least gutted the book in my doctoral program and had a decent understanding of the main point, but I decided to read it again, and it got me to thinking about certain how this concept intersects, or more accurately conflicts, with historically Christian views of ultimate reality. 

Anderson noted the universalizing nature of Latin as it was used in medieval Europe. This started to unravel as modern print culture came into being with the use of the printing press, which contributed to the use of the vernacular in print. It also led to the concept of print capitalism as these printing presses needed to sell books and papers in the vernacular to make money. 

Anderson writes about the importance of the novel to the concept of empty time and how it created the imagined community of the nation. The novel has multiple characters carrying out different actions simultaneously. Time is not always depicted in a linear manner headed toward a singular end in this construction. Now people could imagine multiple people as historical actors carrying out their lives at the same time in the same community. 

Newspapers were important factors as well, because they reported on news from the various parts of a given nation or empire. This allowed people to imagine themselves a part of a broader community that expanded outside their immediate neighborhood. They spoke the same language and sometimes had similar ethnic and/or religious backgrounds. To make a long story short, this provided an important starting point for the idea of the nation as the primary unit of political organization. Prior to the rise of print capitalism, political organization tended to focus on kingdoms (i.e., patron/client relationships) or multi-national empires (keep in mind that the nation in a geographic sense is defined as pretty much synonymous with an ethnic group--it's slightly more complicated, but not by much). 

Effectively, Anderson makes the argument that all of this tended to create a world in which people in disparate geographic locations could imagine themselves as members of a nation. These people don't know each other. They experienced life in different lived communities, but they imagined themselves as a part of the nation. 

There is a fairly robust literature (including Coakley, 2004) that looks at the ways officials have created national origin myths to contribute to social cohesion within a nation. At times, these are rooted in some historic fact, but sometimes, they are entirely fabricated. While even Anderson would argue that nationalism is ubiquitous, it seems in many ways to be a house built on shifting sand. 

There is currently a debate over Christian nationalism, and a few authors, most notably Stephen Wolfe with his The Case for Christian Nationalism, seem to base the Christian nation more on the Christian NATION (in terms of ethnicity) as much, as if not more so, than on the idea of a CHRISTIAN nation (with the emphasis on the Christian part). Wolfe goes so far as to argue that it's good for a Christian nation to keep out Christian refugees who do not look are talk like them. This is only one argument Wolfe makes, but it's salient for this issue of the imagined community. 

This has caused me to reflect on the concept of the Christian community, historically speaking. Traditionally, Christians have referred to themselves in familial terms, even when looking back into the New Testament texts. In the first century, both Jews and Gentiles made up the Christian community, and the community had ties that transcended ethnicity or even natural families. Early Christians found their ultimate identity in Jesus Christ, and that was the primary tie that bound them together. If the Christian view of the world is correct, they were correct on ultimate, and even eternal, reality, whereas the current nationalists who focus on a given political entity are focused primarily on a transitory social structure. 

Revise and Resubmit

I remember the first paper I sent off to a peer-reviewed journal. This was way back in 2007 or so. I remember the dejected feeling a got when I received a "revise and resubmit" email. It seemed like a failure at the time. At least I treated it as such in my naivete. I'd just finished a master's degree (without a thesis) at Marshall University, and the paper was the biggest effort I'd made at primary research. 

I thought "revise and resubmit" meant that the editor had no interest in the project. I then sent it to a small newsletter tied to a state historical society, which published the paper. Here's a link: https://archive.wvculture.org/history/wvhs/wvhs2203.pdf. It's not close to my best work, but it was probably the best I had done at the point in my journey as an aspiring historian. 

In 2008, I received a study grant to go to the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archive to work on a very vaguely defined research project. It's shocking I got the grant, to be honest. I've since had much better proposals rejected. Anyway, I wrote up the paper, and again, I received a revise and resubmit request that said more research was necessary. I was teaching at a small private K-12 school in West Virginia, and the archive was located in Nashville. The travel would entail too much expense in my mind. I proceeded to sit on the paper for about two or three years. Again, this felt like a rejection. 

However, while engaged in doctoral studies at the University of North Dakota, I decided to revisit that manuscript and engage with some of the scholarship I'd wrestled with in the ensuing years, including that of Robert Bellah and Harry Stout which interacted with the concept of civil religion. I also utilized interlibrary loan (thanks to UND's Chester Fritz Library) to access some of the books written by the main historical character in my research. After making a major overhaul of the paper, I decided to take a chance and resubmit. 

After waiting for a few months (and basically forgetting I'd resubmitted the paper), I received an email indicating acceptance of the manuscript pending a few, very slight, edits. The result was this article: 

Price, Christopher. “Social Justice and American Exceptionalism in the Writings of Southern Baptist Statesmen H. Cornell Goerner,” Baptist History & Heritage 47 no. 3 (Fall 2012): 52-64.

When I received my copies of the issue that held my article, I felt like I had a chance at becoming a legit historian. 

Tonight, I sent back revisions requested in my most recent revise-and-resubmit email. I've learned since 2007 that revise and resubmit means that an editor finds that a piece might be appropriate for a journal. It just needs some additional work. Sometimes, that work can be pretty substantial. 

At present, I have three different articles submitted with three different peer-reviewed journals. Should they all get published, I'll be up to nine peer-reviewed articles in print. Only one of the six that have already been published got accepted without major revisions. It's a part of the process, and hopefully it makes the publications stronger. 

Revise and resubmit is not an outright rejection, but rather, a "maybe later." If an editor finds your work entirely unsuitable for a publication, he or she will let you know. Don't give up as easily as I first did. 

COVID Aftermath and Scholarly Research

Earlier this year, I received a couple of journal issues from historical societies of which I'm a member, the Conference on Faith and History and the Baptist History & Heritage Society. The former generally publishes two issues per year; the latter generally publishes three. 

I spent much of 2023 wondering when their journals would arrive. The lone 2023 issue for both arrived in early 2024. The Editor's note in Fides et Historia, the journal for the CFH noted that there was a lack of articles in its pipeline at present to publish the normal two issues in 2023. She pointed that Fides was not the only journal in this predicament. 

The lack of access to archives was one suggestion as to why there were fewer article submissions, and this makes sense. I had personally planned to spend Spring Break in 2020 visiting the West Virginia State Archive to undertake research on a topic that I've been working on for a few years (and will hopefully become a book). However, that research trip did not take place, and I spent the week at home in northwestern Kansas. The archive closed. 

I had also received a small grant to visit an Appalachian archive at West Virginia University just before the pandemic hit. I believe I was the first person allowed to access this archive when I finally made my visit in June 2021. Masks were still required. I had intended to visit a presidential library or two, as well, but these were still closed into 2022. 

The lack of access to archives limited the topics which researchers could access. However, online repositories were still available, and the Chronicling America database from the Library of Congress was a major source for my article on Spanish flu that appeared in North Dakota History. Much of that research will appear in my upcoming book on the same topic, and much of my perusal of the secondary literature took place via online repositories to which I have access through a library at an R1 institution.

I also spent a productive week at the North Dakota State Archive for this research. However, that research took place in the summer of 2022. I flew into Bismarck after the removal of mask requirements for flights (although some passengers continued wearing them), and there was no such requirement at the ND State Archive. 

Articles can take months (sometimes years) to write, depending upon the amount of background research needed before writing up the paper. Then, the review and revision process can take a year or more, depending upon a journal's publishing schedule. A big gap in research might lead to fewer articles in the near future, but one would assume this should reverse in relatively short order. 

What I'm Reading: American Gospel

 Today is New Year's Day, so Happy 2024. I spent a bit of the late morning/early afternoon finishing up a read of Jon Meacham's American Gospel. As this book came out in 2007 and considering the fact that I focused on American religious history in my doctoral program (and my later ThM program), I'm surprised that I had not read it yet. 

The book was very readable, although it felt a bit dated because of its origin in the era of George W. Bush, a somewhat less contentious time in American history. Of course, those who remember those days understand that many of the undercurrents that presently engulf social media and the political landscape existed at the time. But this was before the last eight or nine years and the increased emphasis in Christian nationalism by some on the right of the religious landscape, which has largely been accompanied by an increasing hostility to religion by some on the left (although this is not a necessary feature of the American left and some otherwise right-leaning Americans oppose religion as well; additionally, not all on the political right adhere to Christian nationalism). 

Meacham borrows the concept of a civil religion (what he generally refers to as public religion) that Robert N. Bellah articulated in his important essay on "Civil Religion in America". I first became aware of this concept when reading Harry Stout's Upon the Altar of the Nation, a book that the author framed as a moral history of the Civil War. Stout pointed to Bellah's influence on his won work. I probably read Stout's work around 2007 or 2008.  

Meacham correctly points out that the Founding Fathers attempted to navigate the space between reason and religion and came up with a public religion that focused upon God. While theistic, the "God of Nature" referred to by Jefferson was quite ambiguous. He (or it) was not God the Father of the Holy Trinity, as Meacham notes on more than one occasion. This God (or god) was active in human affairs; some Founders like Washington referred to Providence. However, such a higher being will not meet the theological understanding of very devout, and orthodox, Christians who hold to the deity of Christ and a belief in the Holy Trinity.  

The wisdom of the Jeffersons and Adamses of the early Republic lay in the fact that they understood the religious nature of their society and did not wish to overturn it. Indeed, they believed in the deity, albeit in a heterodox way. Yet, they also understood the problems that come with extreme sectarianism when wedded to the power of the state. The Constitution's First Amendment and state statutes like the one supported by Jefferson and Madison in Virginia were attempts to protect religious minorities from persecution which had all too often reared itself in the colonial era, including in Virginia. 

This compromise has largely held throughout American history, and even those presidents who would not currently be popular with those on the political (or religious) right felt the need to compose public prayers and bring religion into the public sphere. These included well-known liberals like FDR and LBJ. Meacham basically argues that the "center" of the American populace is happy to allow for religious expression in the public sphere, as long as there is not too much emphasis on specificity or a requirement of a specific view of Christianity (or any other religion). Of course, there have been examples of politicians who have attempted to add explicitly Christian verbiage to the Preamble to the Constitution or otherwise return the US to its Christian roots. The latter are more focused on, to borrow language from John Fea, nostalgia, rather than good history.

American Gospel also notes that the Civil Rights movement largely used religious arguments in making the case for the end of Jim Crow. Martin Luther King Jr. noted the "moral arc of the universe" in arguing for justice, for example. Meacham points to the religious motivations behind John Lewis and the others who endured a severe beating on the Pettus Bridge. Figures on the right and the left have long utilized religious and biblical imagery in making important points.   

Meacham effectively provides a narrative account of this "American Gospel". He emphasizes the significance of true religious liberty in American history, pointing to the ways in which Jewish and Catholic Americans have advocated for the concept from the nation's founding. However, it would be interesting to see how an updated edition might view the last fifteen years and the increased desire for dominionism or Christian nationalism that has increasingly become a part of the political and religious discourse. Regardless, it's worth a read.