Andy: Do you have a vision for your book?
Me: ...Yes? As in do I know what I want it to be?
A: Not what you want the content to be, but what you want it to accomplish.
M: Yes.
A: Have you written it down?
M: No.
A: You should write it down.
Andy got this piece of advice from a book he's reading on software start-ups and entrepreneurship. The point of writing a vision down is that the particulars may change as you develop your company, write your book, change your professional development plan etc., but if you have a consistent vision to refer back to, you will always be progressing in the same direction. The same is true, of course, with strategic planning within existing organisations. While you're slogging it out with the details, getting frustrated, getting sidetracked, you always have the vision to refer back to.
This will probably also help those of you that actually read my previous post figure out what the heck I was on about, and potentially provide me with a useful way to succinctly answer the question I keep getting: "Oh, you're writing a book? What's it about?" This has up until now been followed by a resigned sigh from me as I prepare to launch into a rambling explanation beginning with, "Well, it's a bit complicated to explain..." So I thought I should do this sooner rather than later.
At the most grandiose level, I suppose I want to live in a world where everyone capable of making decisions (especially through voting but also in general) is armed with the tools of critical analysis and information literacy in order to make informed and ethical decisions. I also want readers of my book to question the compartmentalisation of disciplines and not be afraid to make inquiries in unfamiliar territory, transferring the skills and knowledge they have to new contexts. In doing this, readers will challenge the idea that learning takes place only in academic spheres and instead feel empowered to explore and learn independently, and to ask good questions of experts such as teachers, journalists, writers and politicians.
At a more practical level, it should give readers of many different learning styles a primer for understanding how knowledge is constructed in many different disciplines and how it is used in many different formats, so that an artist can pick up a neuroscience article in a newspaper and can understand whether the conclusions are valid, and a mechanic can listen to a political speech and know whether there is an attempt at manipulation, just as two random examples.
The audience I have in mind is explicitly not an academic audience, though it could benefit people in academia. I haven't decided if I want to write it specifically for pre-teen students or keep adults in mind as well, but I think that's a challenge I can face later. The main thing is that I want it to be engaging, visually interesting (part text book, part infographics, part graphic novel), full of activities and humour as well as really challenging and surprising.
On a personal level, I just want to try to write a book that makes people as excited about learning and investigating as I am. I want to inspire the kind of wonder about learning and information literacy issues that books like the classic Dorling Kindersley books and other such books inspired in me when I was a kid. I'm looking forward to the challenge, and even if it never gets off the ground I'll have had a lot of fun researching it. But some day I want to hold this book in my hands, regardless of what it looks like, and know that I made it.
I hope this makes sense. I'm sure I'll write more on this soon as I appear to be a little bit in the groove of thinking about this stuff.
