The Writing Process

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For the past 14 months, I've been writing a chapter on the history of land enclosure in England for a monograph tentatively entitled, An Institutional History of Commons. It's been the most difficult of the chapters I've written, largely because the existing literature is so vast and conflicted that it has required a massive effort of synthesis to determine (as best I can) where the weight of evidence lies for much of the history. With each passing century, the volume of available primary and secondary information increases almost exponentially. 

I've been stuck in the seventeenth century for probably the last four or five months not so only because of developments relating directly to enclosure but also because of the emergence of new ideas of property more generally, some of which emerged in political response to political theories of absolute monarchy that emerged in the 1600s. Specifically, legal scholars and political theorists sought alternatives to rooting property rights in the king. At exactly the same time, England's Court of Chancery adopted the "Equity of Redemption" in Mortgage Law, which increased the value of land as collateral for loans to make capital improvements. 

The biggest problem with covering those and related changes to theories and doctrines of property is that a great deal of tangential material needs to be included, so that readers understand the historical context in which they evolved. As usual, I erred on the side of providing the complete context - more than is necessary and, I have just decided, more than is desirable. The greater the tangential context I provide, the longer and less focused the chapter becomes.

So, I am now in the process of deleting or consolidating most of the last 10,000 words I have written. Unwriting is very much part of the writing process.

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