[April 2012]
In March 2012, I learnt the wonderful news
that I’d been awarded a British Academy Mid-Career Fellowship of £101,000, in order
to give me a year’s research leave in which to finish writing Elusive Church
This means that I now have an
eighteenth-month stretch of writing time stretching out ahead of me – a great
privilege in a busy academic job, a source of real excitement, a big
responsibility, and also a rather daunting prospect. Writing a complete
monograph on an extended period of leave is the intellectual equivalent of a
marathon. One of the big challenges is keeping your mind clear and your spirits
up, so that you can write well and at the necessary pace. I’m trying to learn
from some of the big mistakes I made when writing my first book, so I’ve
written myself 7 rules for book-writing, and put them prominently on a shelf
next to my desk.
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