Research

Two years ago in the early fall of 2024, Drew asked me when I would actually start writing my book. I replied “when I finish the research.” Although I’d first learned of my book’s subject on 18 March 2021, I only had been seriously researching the topic since the start of 2024.

Then, on 15 November 2024, I was talking to Drew about foot/end notes in my book after I’d read parts of a biography that were related to my subject. That author just listed a bibliography for the whole book. I didn’t know which sources he used in the chapters related to my subject except in the few cases where he included an asterisk to include a footnote.

I commented that his bibliography wasn’t useful. No other researchers would be able to follow in his footsteps. “Maybe I should see what David McCullough did,” I said. I’ve devoured at least 6 of McCullough’s books and have great admiration for his skill in weaving disparate sources together in a compelling and flowing story.

I found McCullough’s 2003 interview with the National Endowment for the Humanities titled “The Title Always Comes Last,” which included this quote. It’s unrelated to my questions about footnotes but was very meaningful to me at my stage of the book’s development:

There’s an awful temptation to just keep on researching; there comes a point where you just have to stop and start writing. When I began, I thought that the way one should work was to do all the research and then write the book. In time I began to understand that it’s when you start writing that you really find out what you don’t know and need to know. You can target your efforts much more clearly.

At that point, I didn’t know enough to even think about writing the book. I continued to diligently research my subject; in fact, that sentence remains true today!

 

Write

I wrote in my journal on 5 August 2025:

I enjoyed Mike Dooley’s first video in the Author’s Lair series this morning. He talked about finding your hook and creating the time and space for your writing.

As for defining a time to write, I added an entry on my calendar:
Start writing [book] 11:00am Tues. 11/4/25

I chose that date because we had scheduled a book research trip in New York City for the week of October 19-25. I thought a week back home would give me time to process all we’d learned, and I’d be ready to go! Ha! What a naive thought!

One year ago today, and true to my word, I started writing my book. Prior to that date, I had only written 408 words across 3 days, the first of which was the thrilling moment on 31 January 2025 when I wrote the opening sentence.

My first day dedicated to writing was less auspicious, as I noted in my journal:

I had marked today on the calendar as the point where I’d start writing the book in earnest. My first task was to start learning to use Scrivener. I thought about a class but decided to start with Joanna Penn’s videos and the company’s tutorials. I exported everything to Word as a backup as modeled by Penn. I did it a 2nd time to try to make my footnotes get printed at the end instead of each page. It still didn’t work. I learned my word count and how to monitor my progress. I added some chapter stubs, including one I thought of today. My word count has swelled to a few shy of 500.

 

A Year’s Stats

As I celebrate my first anniversary of writing the book, I’m excited to review a few statistics that tell their own story:

• wrote 83,130 (!) words

• structured book with a preface and 43 chapters
• documented 536 footnotes
• hired 2 researchers in distant states
• made 2 more exhilarating research trips to New York City and started planning a trip next year to another city
• paid for scans from at least 5 different archives
• created notes in Evernote:
  • 2038 notes containing research
  • 461 notes where I’ve transcribed my journal entries in which I wrote about my thoughts, process, and progress. That means my activity on the book only spans about 1 1/3 years. By the way, these entries will become the blog on the book’s website.
• stored 100s (1000s?) of documents in Dropbox

 

Publication?

Speaking of my journal entries, on 12 October 2026, I wrote:

I’ve become enamored with Robert Caro’s research approach while reading his book WORKING. So many of his sentences ring true for my experience and validate my work on my book in a way that nothing else has.

For instance, he wrote on p73:

I was bothered, too, by the length not only of the manuscript, but also of the time I had been working on it. That was the thing that made me doubt the most. When I had started, I had firmly believed that I would be done in a year, a naïve but perhaps not unnatural belief for someone whose longest previous deadline had been measured in weeks.

As year followed year, and I was still not nearly done, I became convinced that I had gone terribly astray. This feeling was fed by the people Ina and I did know. I was still in the first year of research when friends and acquaintances began to ask if I was “still doing that book.”

Later I would be asked, “How long have you been working on it now?” When I said three years, or four, or five, they would quickly disguise their look of incredulity, but not quickly enough to keep me from seeing it. I came to dread that question.

People haven’t posed that particular question to me. However, they have asked me when I plan to publish the book, which is more or less the same thing.

It’s not done. I don’t know when it will be done.

I have so much work still ahead of me:

• Several big holes exist in my narrative.
• I have tons of archival material that I haven’t read, much less figured out whether or how the pieces might fit in my book.
• I’m awaiting more scans from 2 archives!
• We’re researching in person in a certain city next year.

I’ve had it in mind that the full-cast audiobook might run 20 hours and made my word count goal accordingly. Looking at both my word count and the work still be done, I’m maybe halfway finished with the first draft.

Onward!

 

Videos

I’ve been so busy researching and writing the book on top of other work (like updating and maintaining NarratorsRoadmap.com) that I didn’t make time to release the videos we shot in New York. So, here they are!

 

May 2026

 

 

September 2026