volume comes from other people

For graduate students who find it hard to finish even one piece of work (I did too at that stage) here’s a statistic of the sort I’ve given before.

Currently, quite aside from pieces that are already finished but still forthcoming, I can see on my list of duties that I have already promised to write an additional 11 articles over the next 7 months, and give an additional 11 lectures over a slightly longer period than that.

All 22 of these commitments, without exception, were the result of invitations, of which I received literally none before about 2004, but now receive them on almost a weekly basis, this week included.

When people invite you to do things, as long as you have some energy and tend to say yes to things, you’ll go from having zero publications to having dozens within a few years, because (a) you don’t want to let people down, and (b) requests from others always carry with them certain constraints, in the sense that the requesters will usually give you the general topic and the expected length. Once someone gives you those parameters, “writer’s block” tends to vanish, because the specter of infinity is no longer haunting you. It’s now a finite project, and someone has helped you out by making the first couple of decisions for you.

I’m also contractually committed to two additional books already. But those were my idea, not someone else’s. From which it can be deduced (truly) that I prefer to write books. Books are medium-length adventures that help define epochs of life, and you generally come out the end transformed more than is the case with smaller assignments.