* Acknowledgments 1. The Clockwork Muse 2. The Writing Schedule * Setting Priorities * The Writing Session * A Time to Write * Ideals and Constraints * Quiet Times * Keeping Your Momentum * A-Time and B-Time 3. A Mountain with Stairs * Divide and Conquer * The Outline * Drafts and Revisions 4. The Project Timetable * Estimating Length * Pacing Yourself * Deadlines 5. The Mechanics of Progress * Getting Started * Moving Along * Closing * Storage and Retrieval * Road Maps and Benchmarks * Discipline and Flexibility * Notes * Index
Eviatar Zerubavel is Board of Governors and Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University, where for many years he served as the Director of the Graduate Program in Sociology. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the author of many books.
Eviatar Zerubavel takes issue with books on research and writing
that imply that checklists and synopses of resources and literary
texts are all the equipment a writer requires to start a research
project. In The Clockwork Muse, he assumes that writer’s block is
natural, pervasive, and tends to prevail regardless of an
individual’s ability, ideas, and resources. He argues, therefore,
that any writer’s first task is to insure himself against this
paralyzing condition by commanding the ‘procedural’, not the
‘material’, aspects of producing a manuscript. The basis of his
philosophy is ‘temporal organization’: self-disciplined
planning—‘methodicalness and routinisation’—result in manuscripts
written well and on time.
*Times Higher Education Supplement*
Zerubavel understands that the writing mind is inherently
perfectionist and that writing is a strangely and dangerously
self-engrossing process. His advice ranges from simple
time-management schemes—so simple yet so hard to observe—to
important tips about how to exploit the computer. The computer,
however comfy for those wild writings beloved by the Camerons among
us, is essentially an editing tool: a tool of self-criticism.
Zerubavel emphasizes that the writing life is actually a life of
self-editing, of revision. That is why it is hard; that is why it
is exciting. Not just for academics, The Clockwork Muse belongs on
every real writer’s desk.
*Providence Sunday Journal*
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