Today the book is out[1].
You can purchase it here: – https://www.istructe.org/resources/guidance/the-regenerative-structural-engineer/
If you are part of the University of Bristol it will be available through the library electronically at some point soon.
How did we get here?
The plan was originally to publish a book in a year. We (Oli and I) started in January 2021. At that point we had a tiny seed of an idea, but nothing concrete. In February 2021 we pulled together a book proposal[2]. In May of the same year the proposal was accepted. June-September we wrote the book and submitted it for review. High five’s all round. And we were done.
Except the reviewers came back with some big questions. Some really helpful feedback. That was 2021.
In a week in January 2022 we created version 2. It was twenty thousand words shorter and the structure had been revised massively. We had moved from a book about exploring the topic of regenerative design to a book where we positioned ourselves as the experts on regenerative design (something I’m not very comfortable with). At this point we thought we might still be able to publish by May 2023 and hit our publishing a book in a year target – as we had only got the green light for publishing a year before.
Instead we got more feed back from our publisher. A colleague recently asked me if the book was peer reviewed. And I can say without doubt it was. It was a different process to the double blind of academic journal review, as we knew the reviewers, they knew us, and we spoke to them to try and understand their concerns and work out what we needed to do to make the book better. However, we also had 10 reviewers. That’s a lot of different perspectives to take on board!
So, we went away and thought very, very hard. The question we tried to answer was around the misalignment of what we were trying to say, and how the reviewers understood it. Initially this was frustrating. But as we explored it, pushed and pulled at the content, it was very helpful. We made the book tighter. More focussed. We re-structured it for a second time. And we created many more case studies. And we submitted version 3 for review in June 2023.
And finally we got the green light. Or maybe the amber light. Overall the book was now much happier. The questions the reviewers were asking aligned with the sort of questions we thought they would be asking. We still had work to do, but we were finally all on the same page. Hopefully this process of writing and re-writing has created a clear narrative of what is a complex subject.
And so Oli and I went again. Submitting version 4 at the end of September. At this point we were hopeful of publishing the book in two years. In October the first three chapters came back from the editor. We were making good progress. Then nothing. Not a sausage. Until mid December. At this stage it was clear this would not be a book in one year. It would not be a book in two years. But it would be a book in just over two years 🙂
The last two weeks of December were fairly frantic. Firing back edited chapters as quickly as possible so they could be type set. Then last Thursday (4th Jan 2024) the typeset book arrived. Over the course of two days we both re-read the entire book. All 300 pages. I made a list of corrections – 113 in total – but not deal breakers. But I also had a feeling of wonder and also another feeling. I wouldn’t call it panic, or fear or dread. But that oh my, we are about to birth something, and once it is out we can never go back. It is both a negative and positive feeling at once. The unknown. A mixture of excitement and panic. A string of what if questions in my head. Of course the book may come out and disappear without a trace. But we hope not.
This book is different to the four I’ve written before. They all dealt with stuff I had done, lots of times. They were all how to’s based on years of experience. They are all books where I can say look, you do it this way, and people go, ahh, OK, that is helpful.
This book isn’t that. It’s something else. My publisher are calling it thought leadership. That’s not a bad description. It’s a call to something very different to the current way of thinking. It is more a book of provocative questions. A book aimed to help engineers or anyone else involved in design to ask different questions to the questions we normally ask. Questions that, we hope, open up new possibilities in design.
It is, we hope, a book that gives people hope.
A path through the climate anxiety that I feel and I know many others do as well.
A place to start.
Part of the idea of this book is not just to do things yourself but to enable others to do it as well, which is why I have blogged about the process along the way. And I hope to not stop here. There are a couple more topics I’d like to discuss. But until then, thank you for reading. And I hope, when the time comes for you to write your own book, that this may act as some small assistance.
[1] It’s actually only out in PDF format, the physical copies will follow shortly.
[2] https://bilt.online/publishing-a-book-in-a-year-february/
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