Table of Contents

* Acknowledgments 1. The Clockwork Muse 2. The Writing Schedule * Setting Priorities * The Writing Session * A Time to Write * Ideals and Constraints * Quiet Times * Keeping Your Momentum * A-Time and B-Time 3. A Mountain with Stairs * Divide and Conquer * The Outline * Drafts and Revisions 4. The Project Timetable * Estimating Length * Pacing Yourself * Deadlines 5. The Mechanics of Progress * Getting Started * Moving Along * Closing * Storage and Retrieval * Road Maps and Benchmarks * Discipline and Flexibility * Notes * Index

About the Author

Eviatar Zerubavel is Board of Governors and Distinguished Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University, where for many years he served as the Director of the Graduate Program in Sociology. He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship and the author of many books.

Reviews

Eviatar Zerubavel takes issue with books on research and writing that imply that checklists and synopses of resources and literary texts are all the equipment a writer requires to start a research project. In The Clockwork Muse, he assumes that writer’s block is natural, pervasive, and tends to prevail regardless of an individual’s ability, ideas, and resources. He argues, therefore, that any writer’s first task is to insure himself against this paralyzing condition by commanding the ‘procedural’, not the ‘material’, aspects of producing a manuscript. The basis of his philosophy is ‘temporal organization’: self-disciplined planning—‘methodicalness and routinisation’—result in manuscripts written well and on time.
*Times Higher Education Supplement*

Zerubavel understands that the writing mind is inherently perfectionist and that writing is a strangely and dangerously self-engrossing process. His advice ranges from simple time-management schemes—so simple yet so hard to observe—to important tips about how to exploit the computer. The computer, however comfy for those wild writings beloved by the Camerons among us, is essentially an editing tool: a tool of self-criticism. Zerubavel emphasizes that the writing life is actually a life of self-editing, of revision. That is why it is hard; that is why it is exciting. Not just for academics, The Clockwork Muse belongs on every real writer’s desk.
*Providence Sunday Journal*