Chapter 6 is Complete!

I don’t really want to think about the last chapter. Coming in at a shade over 23,000 words it feels more like a brick of information than a chapter of a book, but then it’s my fault. I could have split the book up into 20…30 chapters and then be able to make a little squeak of delight every week as another little chapter goes into the “complete” pile. But that would be really confusing, and pointless, because each chapter as it stands (or will stand) has a distinct purpose. Chapter 6 is about undermining the Veil of Ignorance, which I must remember to credit to John Rawls as the first mention of the term I ever read, and because it’s such a vital thing it takes a long time to cover in detail.

Though I wouldn’t get too excited by the detail because, although there is a huge amount of practical help throughout the chapter, it’s important to keep stressing throughout the book that it is just a taster of the huge variety of undermining actions available to us. All I can do is lay out what I think are the key kinds of things that will undermine the various aspects of the system we need to be rid of, give a few examples of how this is done, and then give just enough motivation that readers go away and get on with things. What more can I do?

So onto Chapter 7, which I fully expect to be a more than a little scary. I’ll try to ease the reader into things gently…

Sixty Thousand Words

It’s been a while since the last post. And it’s been tough here in writing-land. Chapter 6 rolls on and until I just did a quick count-up I was wondering why I wasn’t making very good progress. The chapter is full-on undermining: practical, challenging and potentially risky, so it’s no bad thing that I’m picking my way carefully through the subject. Especially as the chapter focuses on the hardest challenge of all – undermining the Veil of Ignorance.

Then I did the count-up and found, to my surprise, that I had already written 15,000 words out of the 60,000 words written in total – in just this one chapter, eclipsing the “monster” Chapter 2 and with only a glimmer of the end in sight. Part of me is not enjoying this at all; I wrote to a friend a couple of weeks ago asking for help, simply because the book was becoming too large for the words I was able to write. By writing that message I clarified in my mind what I needed to do – just focus on what matters and not worry about the process of getting there. Easier said than done, but each time I open this expanding document I go a little closer to the end. There is an end, isn’t there?

A Few Sheets of Paper

I have before me a pile of paper. The print is off-white, small and spread across both sides of the 27 sheets of A4 – if I’m going to print out a draft of Part One then I suppose I should make it as “environmentally friendly” as possible, whatever that means in these days of saturation-point greenwash. Strange things happen to my brain when I’m doing the day-to-day things that comprise the lot of the civilization-edge family man: is baking bread from shop-bought flour any more sustainable than buying the bread itself; should I cut my own wood for fire or get a delivery of local hardwood; should I grow my own vegetables or use a local organic box? The thing all the former options have in common is that they involve doing more things myself rather than getting (and usually paying) someone else to do them for me. The question of something being “environmentally friendly” is a moot point – a smokescreen created by the system to differentiate between different versions of the same destructive thing.

It doesn’t really matter how many sides of paper I’m using or how small I’m printing the text out, I’m still using technology that requires a planet-hungry culture to create. I do it, like we all do it, just because it feels better. But in this case I’m also doing it because I’m taking a bus journey tomorrow and want to read the first half I’ve written of the book I really need to hurry up finishing. So far it seems ok, but then my chief critic (Mrs Farnish) hasn’t read it yet!

Gosh! That was quick.

Chapter 4 is complete, all but the guest essay which I have received a positive response to – it’s a good one. One thing about writing this chapter, which without the guest essay tops out at 7,300 words, is how the writing itself matches much of the subject matter. I spent some time pressing home the importance of planning in any undermining action, even if that action appears to be spontaneous. Something is always burning at the back of your mind, or should be if there is to be any chance of success – if you are jailed but the undermining action was successful then there must have been some planning involved. If you are jailed and no undermining resulted then the chances are you didn’t plan properly.

Writing is like that, usually. This isn’t a novel so the ideas cannot emerge unbidden from some imaginatory orifice; what I write in this book will affect how people think and how they behave. Not some big-headed claim, as I know people have taken seriously what I wrote in Time’s Up! and which is a major reason this book is being written at all. I may have a fair idea of what undermining looks like and how to do it, but who else does? Maybe in another guise, but having given birth to the concept of Undermining the Tools of Disconnection it is my responsibility to at least get it on its feet and help it to survive in the big wide world.

The fact that this is my baby is a big reason why some bits can be written quickly and others take much more time. The latest chapter has been developing for a while in various forms, partly on the Unsuitablog, partly in my head, and when I open the tap to that source of information it comes pouring out. Which is nice, if it turns out all right.

Anonymous Essay

The text of Underminers is interspersed with essays by various people that I think have important things to say about the subjects in hand, so what happens when you want an essay written by a loose collective of people who are having an impact on the world far beyond their numbers and in a way that is changing the way activism works entirely.

You ask nicely.

Which is what I have done in the realms of Anonymous, and ended up with something that reads like a normal essay – albeit about an extraordinary thing – yet was actually written by about ten different people, none of whom I know anything about nor wish to do so. Anyone who thinks that Anonymous is just a bunch of haxtors and script-kiddies will get a shock when they see how good the text is: these are people who take things seriously, yet with a hefty splash of lulz thrown in.

The hive mind has spoken, and it has spoken well.

Into Chapter 4

It’s all going a bit too well. Chapter 3 took a couple of weeks, which while not up to the stupid writing speeds of Time’s Up! (I was hitting a chapter a week for a couple of months) is pretty good progress for this book. As it whizzed passed there were bits of Chapter 3 that I really enjoyed writing, particularly the plot arcs which for some reason seem to pop up all over the place without much effort – another arc occured at the beginning of Chapter 4, but more of that chapter when I’ve finished.

I’m quite excited about the guest essays that I’m at least trying to get lined up; one of them may be a wish too far, but the more people with influence and a reputation for doing the right thing I can get involved, the more likely people will take what is being said in the book seriously. This has never been about money, and I have to keep saying this when I mention something that may also increase readership. Hell! I’m very unlikely to even get a publisher given what this is turning into, but oddly one thing that makes me carry on is knowing that I don’t have to sell the book, I can just give it away. That’s why I’ll never have an agent.

That’s also why I don’t feel like a hypocrite.

Swearing

There are already four very rude words in my book. They all have to be there.

My children want to read my book. I have told them about the rude words: they say, “It’s ok, Dad, we won’t be damaged by them.”

So that’s ok.