Yesterday I attended a meeting about writing a book with about 20 other authors. If all goes well, the book will be published by a prestigious academic press in eighteen months time. We will not receive any money for the task but some kudos. But this is an intensely frustrating experience.
Each chapter is on a different aspect of the topic with people from a different discipline. We therefore have different world views, different approaches to a task and different terminology (or use the same worlds with different meanings). Part of the benefit of the book will be in presenting a common view of the topic (also it will be useful to us to be forced to come to some form of consensus).
There is someone with experience at producing books in charge of the project who is having to apply their diplomatic abilities to keep twenty egos happy. It will be an interesting, educational, but I suspect very frustrating process for all.
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