No writing is ever wasted
My writing filing cabinet, by Terry Freedman
A long-held belief of mine is that no writing is wasted. I hear of people who have spent time writing something, decided it's rubbish, and then deleted it.
But no writing is wasted really. If you think about it, the process of evaluation that someone goes through to arrive at the conclusion that the thing they've just slaved over is rubbish is valuable in itself.
Moreover, I have come across bits and pieces I wrote ages ago and then used them or reworked them.
I've been thinking of this because, in the process of clearing out thirty plus years'-worth of papers, I came across sample book chapters I wrote in 1983.
At that time, I wanted to write a popular book on economics. I drafted a proposal or pitch, wrote two sample chapters, and sent it off to a publisher I'd concluded, after much research, would be the right one for me.
That was my first mistake. They were useless. After hearing nothing I wriote to them asking what was happening. The MD wrote to me to say he was very sorry but he'd just discovered that the person in charge of new proposals had done nothing about it.
Thus my second mistake was waiting several months for a response. These days I don't wait more than a couple of weeks, unless the company's website says it can take months to hear back. I which case I don't bother in the first place.
Anyway, I didn't have time to follow up with another publisher. From 1984 to 1986 I was doing an MA at what is now University College London, in the evenings while working full time. I spoent 1986 looking for another job. In 1987 I landed a great job, and because the mortgage rate went sky hiigh I had to work evenings too. By the time I might have been able to think about resurrecting the book proposal, my interests had changed and so had some of the things I'd intended to write about.
However, I thought I could still use those chapters now as examples of popular academic writing.
The first chapter is 12 economists, 13 opinions, and it attempts to explain how economists think. It was written for a l;ay audience in what I hope is a non-patronising style. Let me know what you think. The chapter is in the form of a pdf and is, of course, copyright.
This article first appeared in Write!.