How to Write a Book in the Age of Abundance?

Mark Regan & Kerry Sharples

Writing a book may seem as simple as coming up with an idea and putting pen to paper. However, a quick internet search on the topic will reveal that the process of writing a book is much more complicated. Webpages, blogs, and forums fill the digital space, offering advice and rules regarding not only writing, but publishing and marketing, as well as the countless subcategories within, like world building and dialogue, self or traditional publication, or Twitter or Instagram. As Weller (2011) points out, we are living in a time of change, a time of abundant content production and distribution. With this abundance of content comes new possibilities for learning, both academic and hobby, though it also has never been more challenging to navigate and process what seems like a never ending information, which in turn makes endeavors, such as writing a book, all the more daunting.

The clear abundance of resources at your fingertips when learning or teaching not only is found in written and online literature but also in media content as well. Within the technological modern-age we live in, copious other resources such as YouTube and other media platforms can be a source of learning materials too. When searching YouTube on How to Write a Book? A plethora of video clips is given to the searcher numbering in the thousands. Each video explaining some aspect or wealth of wisdom and/or knowledge to impart on the viewer. Jenkins (2018) states “speed is not the point; quality is the point” (0:25) when it comes to writing a book. However, Project Life Mastery (2015) states on their YouTube channel that although it is a “big task to write a book…one must break it down into more achievable pieces” (2:12) in order to complete the task. Whatever the advice or knowledge may be, the idea of abundance continues to be in the face of learners and educators. Weller (2011) however, makes a good point about abundance when he suggests that the abundance of resources is not just a learning centric issue. He points out that “the opposite may be true, for example an individual’s attention is not abundant, and is time-limited” (Weller, 2011, pg. 10). Abundance appears to be a multifaceted issue and begs the question how does education approach the abundance in general? Weller (2011) looks at this very question and suggests the answer is two fold: firstly, he points to the fact that educators need to be more prepared in their pedagogy and thus resilient to the possible negative effects of abundance and educators need to “equip their learners with the skills they need in an age of digital abundance” (pg. 10).

Researching how to write a book revealed that the task has many different routes, each approach personal and varied. Anyone who has, or is trying to write a book, has opinions and points that they believe is essential to the process. A quick Twitter survey came back with many viewpoints about the brainstorming process, with suggestions of brain mapping, point form plotting, and cloud mapping to name a few. This wealth of varying replies further demonstrates the abundance of information spoken about by Weller (2011) and seemed only to add to the intensity of the task. This vastness of content seems to harken to the idea of Heutagogy, spoken about by Anderson (2016). The idea of self driven learning seems even more relevant in a digital age of free and accessible information. Self driven learning, like abundant content, is two-fold, providing freedom to learn and research an endless array of topics, though accompanied with the need to learn how to utilize these infinite resources effectively and appropriately. This seems to suggest a responsibility of the learner, as well as the content developer, to provide useful and digestible information as to be relevant in Weller’s (2011) age of change.

Weller (2011) concludes that society as a whole is “witnessing a fundamental change in the production of knowledge and our relationship to content” (pg. 10). The immense volume of digital content, whether written literature or media formatted, is a clear sustained issue to both learners and educators alike. When attempting to ask the question, how does one write a book? The abundance of data is too much to handle if learners are not equipped to handle the amount of data and/or the types of data for that matter. Clearly one cannot simply watch ten thousand videos in their spare time; no one has that much time. Learners need to know how to identify resources that are beneficial to them directly for their end goal and know how to use the resources as well. It seems society is only going to present a greater abundance in resources, now it appears up to the learner to get equipped with the skills to use the abundance in the best way possible, maybe even to ask the question, how do I write a book?

Reference

Anderson, T. (2016). Chapter 3: Theories for Learning with Emerging Technologies. In Veletsianos, G. (Ed). Emergence and Innovation in Digital Learning: Foundations and Applications. Edmonton, AB: Athabasca University Press.

James, S. [Project Life Mastery]. (2015, September 15). How to write a book for beginners [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fCRCQdg1HaE

Jenkins, J.B. (2018, October 01). How to write a book: 13 steps from a bestselling author [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHKKtxliYaY

Weller, M. (2011). A pedagogical abundance. Spanish Journal of Pedagogy, 249, 223-236. Retrieved from http://oro.open.ac.uk/28774/2/BB62B2.pdf