When I wrote my rap textbook, I had a general structure in mind. I saw somewhere that an average textbook is 120,000 words. I came up with twelve chapter headings, figuring 10,000 words per chapter. I divided each chapter into four subheadings, each 2,500 words. This was mainly in response to a criticism I had of the other rap textbook on the market: that it felt very unbalanced: some ideas got a paragraph; others, ten pages.
I’ve been trying to map this book out that way, and it’s not working. It doesn’t quite seem to know what it wants to be just yet. I read (in the same place, I think) that the typical scholarly monograph is 80-100,000 words. Eight chapters at 10,000 words each? That’s like eight journal articles, which doesn’t seem too bad.
But maybe it wants to be different, like one of those books with lots of little chapters. That idea led me to work through things on this blog. I’m not even sure what the chapters are going to be, much less the subheadings: I just have piles and piles of stuff—reasonably tiny piles at this point—and maybe by looking at the bits and pieces, the bigger picture will emerge. The rap book was definitely top-down; I think this one wants to be bottom-up.