I’m happy to announce that my book, The Origins of Efficiency, is now (officially) available for preorder, and will be released on September 23rd. You can preorder on Amazon, Stripe, Barnes and Noble, or Bookshop.com.
What a lovely, concise explanation of the process of developing a serious novel argument. I have pre-ordered the book. Thanks so much for the excellent newsletters.
“Writing the newsletter is essentially a linear process: I read everything I can on a topic, take note of the especially interesting or relevant facts and information, and then come up with a structure for an essay that can incorporate it all. Once this structure is in hand, it's simply a matter of expanding the basic structure into a draft, and a draft into the final version. For the book, I eventually figured out that I needed to turn this linear process into a cyclical one. Instead of going from reading to structure to draft to final version, I would read, come up with some tentative ideas for a structure, then use those ideas to guide further reading, repeating the process until I felt like things had “clicked” and my structure was robust. Only then could I start fleshing out the basic ideas into a draft. After several months of this, I was able to condense down the mass of information I had collected into a relatively simple framework: a small number of specific things you can do to make a process more efficient.”
I got to read an early copy for review and really enjoyed it! I'm looking forward to it reaching more readers.
As another essayist/author, I really enjoyed you walking through how you shifted your process for a longer work. For me, writing a book follows a pattern more reminiscent of oil-spot counterinsurgency. I group ideas into chapter folders in Scrivener, then pick out a particular idea to make prose without too much worry about how it will fit together. I only know how to join things up once I have a number of subcomponents written up in 400-800 word chunks.
Never preordered a book so fast. I discovered Construction Physics earlier this year when researching semiconductor production, and have been a loyal reader since. I'm really looking forward to the book!
Retired custom homebuilder here. Not named Bubba and probably fairly inefficient by your standards. Here in North Carolina the modular home industry has a decent share of the new home market. Multiple companies have been successful in this niche. Is this something you discuss in your book?
Our company built a fairly high end western red cedar kit home for a client in the 1980's. The inefficiency of sending studs, insulation etc. etc. all the way across the country to be unloaded on our job site all at one time was mind boggling. Except for the high quality cedar we could have driven five miles to our local lumberyard and bought the same materials as we needed them!
This model only makes sense for a vacation home in a very remote area, or (as in our case) selling the home to a "prospective dealer" for your product! I don't think our client, who was a realtor, ever sold one of these kit homes.
Would you go so far as to claim that if the paths to efficiency improvement you analyse in chapter 10 are unblocked (say by some successor to Katerra), it could do what Katerra and Lustron and Toyota and everyone else who's ever tried couldn't?
Preordered! 🙌
What a lovely, concise explanation of the process of developing a serious novel argument. I have pre-ordered the book. Thanks so much for the excellent newsletters.
“Writing the newsletter is essentially a linear process: I read everything I can on a topic, take note of the especially interesting or relevant facts and information, and then come up with a structure for an essay that can incorporate it all. Once this structure is in hand, it's simply a matter of expanding the basic structure into a draft, and a draft into the final version. For the book, I eventually figured out that I needed to turn this linear process into a cyclical one. Instead of going from reading to structure to draft to final version, I would read, come up with some tentative ideas for a structure, then use those ideas to guide further reading, repeating the process until I felt like things had “clicked” and my structure was robust. Only then could I start fleshing out the basic ideas into a draft. After several months of this, I was able to condense down the mass of information I had collected into a relatively simple framework: a small number of specific things you can do to make a process more efficient.”
I got to read an early copy for review and really enjoyed it! I'm looking forward to it reaching more readers.
As another essayist/author, I really enjoyed you walking through how you shifted your process for a longer work. For me, writing a book follows a pattern more reminiscent of oil-spot counterinsurgency. I group ideas into chapter folders in Scrivener, then pick out a particular idea to make prose without too much worry about how it will fit together. I only know how to join things up once I have a number of subcomponents written up in 400-800 word chunks.
Never preordered a book so fast. I discovered Construction Physics earlier this year when researching semiconductor production, and have been a loyal reader since. I'm really looking forward to the book!
Retired custom homebuilder here. Not named Bubba and probably fairly inefficient by your standards. Here in North Carolina the modular home industry has a decent share of the new home market. Multiple companies have been successful in this niche. Is this something you discuss in your book?
Our company built a fairly high end western red cedar kit home for a client in the 1980's. The inefficiency of sending studs, insulation etc. etc. all the way across the country to be unloaded on our job site all at one time was mind boggling. Except for the high quality cedar we could have driven five miles to our local lumberyard and bought the same materials as we needed them!
This model only makes sense for a vacation home in a very remote area, or (as in our case) selling the home to a "prospective dealer" for your product! I don't think our client, who was a realtor, ever sold one of these kit homes.
Preordered! Congratulations and thank you for keeping up with the thoughtful articles while wrangling with the book writing process!
congratulations. Will most likely buy as it comes out.
always enjoying your articles
Huge congratulations!! What are the dimensions of the book, and how many pages? I would like to calculate the price per square foot. :]
Pre-ordered!
Can't wait for this. BTW - one of the best Substacks on the internet!
Wohoo! Construction Physics, but a focused read where I don't get enticed by the next article...
...just the next page :)
Any chance of it coming out as an audio book?
Pre-ordered, and so looking forward to reading it!
Congrats for making it available also on Kobo and not just on Amazon. Pre-ordered!
Long-time fan of CP, congrats on the book!
Would you go so far as to claim that if the paths to efficiency improvement you analyse in chapter 10 are unblocked (say by some successor to Katerra), it could do what Katerra and Lustron and Toyota and everyone else who's ever tried couldn't?
Congras, will be worth the read