How to write a monograph? With Joy!
How do you write a monograph?
Many of my 1-1 coaching clients are Academic Coach are in fact writing monographs, so this topic is ever present in my mind. The first answer to how to write a monograph is: joyfully. Embrace the freedom it brings. You will never be as free in your chosen subject matter, you style of prose and your ability to really say what you stand for as you are in the monograph format.
Writing a monograph is free from the obligations, restrictions, and conventions imposed on you by journal editors and reviewer 2 who act as constricting forces on your expression - and let’s face it - sometimes massacre your original idea in service to their ego about how they would have written it, or questions about why is their work not cited and so on. Of course book proposals are reviewed, and must conform to rigorous research and writing standards: books are reviewed, but there is an accepted freedom in the monograph that you will be exploring what you want to talk about in depth and the way you want o treat that subject matter is entirely up to you. You are as free as you will ever be within academia to write what you think.
Monographs are joyous, freeing things and should be embraced.
Why isn’t everyone doing one?
There are all sorts of reasons why you might not want to do a monograph. You don’t get credit for it in the REF where one book equals one paper; 100,000 words is given the same gravity as 6000. Not in the formal rules perhaps but cretainly in the informal departmental rules, so why should you write a book? I hope many of you are not subjected to this rather arbitrary measuring stick.
Maybe your discipline is not really a book discipline (science) and there is no promotional reason to do it: papers rule the world, multi authored, and you only ever write 1 section (at best) of the 23 papers you ‘author’ each year.
Maybe your discipline is a book discipline but you are afraid to write one. Maybe you cannot even begin to imagine how you could possibly write that amount when you struggle to push out one paper per year. If you are in the latter category, I want to talk about book writing and why this should be in your publication pipeline.
Books make a contribution
Books require the most writing you have done since your PhD. If you can write a book, it is official, you are a real writer. Books can convey things a paper or even a series of papers cannot, and at a certain point in your career, you should have enough to say to fill a book, probably several. Books are still the go to place if some in-depth knowledge on something complicated, detailed, wide ranging and academically challenging. Rigorous, difficult research needs a book sized contribution to let the ideas breathe and connect, to connect disciplines and knowledge bases, and to really give a deep analytical, thoughtful account of something. Books not only teach others about the subject matter, it teaches you a lot about writing and communicating your ideas over a long word count. A book is a place to grow as an academic, and as a writer.
But really though how?
Obviously I am going to tell you to plan it. Get a publication pipeline where you can plan out where and when you will tackle the book project - on sabbatical perhaps besides multiple other things - and in term time also beside other sequential writing projects (ie not more than two on the go at any one time, including the book).
You need to break down the whole into paper sized parts (the chapters), plan your arc, and then set about writing one bit at a time. Give yourself milestones and put deadlines and rewards against them to keep you motivated and on track. Spend time on the thinking about your take home message, your contribution and the best way to tell this story over multiple chapters; this is the quickest way to execute your book. Many people just start writing and work this out as they go, but this takes longer. Much longer.
I think everyone should write a book or two. Having just returned to book writing myself, I feel a special kind of joy that is just not there writing papers. I want you to experience that too.
If you want a planning outline that will get you started, you can find one here.