the structure of my book

I have been feeling better all week. The sertraline has kicked in. Also, all week I have actually been working on my academic book. Which I hadn't done since December. Every time I opened the manuscript, a great chasm of existential horror opened up and I couldn't go on. But this week I have been going through and revising structure.

This is how I did it. I've been getting lost in the woods for so long that I've lost all sense of the overall arc of this book. So I took Jane Smiley's advice and the experience of rewriting the wraith fic and decided to go through the structure and figure out what the book I have written is about (not what the book I think I ought to be writing should be about).

I did this chapter by chapter. I labeled each paragraph, so e.g. 1 to 125. Then I made a list 1-125 and jotted down what each paragraph is about in a phrase. Then I took a different-colour pen and wrote 1-3 keywords next to each paragraph, using only the list, not the manuscript. Then I made a grid with each keyword listed at the side and wrote in the numbers of the paragraphs. Then I analysed my diagram and looked at which keywords went with which other keywords, and which keywords appeared most often.

Then I wrote one paragraph, saying what the chapter is about. I grouped the main points in a logical order, suggested by my grid. I also re-title the chapter if my findings don't correlate with what I originally thought this chapter should be about.

I've got one more chapter to go and then, I hope, I will have some idea of what my book is actually about and how its structure progresses logically!

I've never done this before. It's quite enjoyable.