How Does A Biblical Scholar Spend His Long Vacation? Book Writing in TTC Singapore - Part 7

The facade of the library from my apartment

This is my final week in Trinity Theological College, Singapore, working on my book. I must say I have grown to love this place. The library is a real pleasure to work in. With the semester break now on, the library is almost deserted and quiet.

The past 3 weeks or so have been productive for me. Not only I have done significant progress in my writing, I also have a clearer direction how the shape of the book will take. Should there be no more changes, there would be a total of 10 chapters of approximately 3,000-3,500 words for each chapter, a rather comfortable length for a chapter, giving a total book length of approximately 100-120 pages.

The stacks of the rather well-equipped library

I have done most of the groundwork for 8 of the 10 chapters, and hope to get another chapter done this week. The final chapter is to bring together all my argument in a coherent manner, and this would only be done at a later stage. For the next few months, I will be working on tidying up the flow of each of the chapters, and I anticipate this would take some months as my teaching load for the first semester of the 2009 academic year is really crazy and heavy.

Personally, I wish I have another month in Singapore to work on my book. But in any case, I am thankful that I have this 4-week short sabbatical, without which I would never be able to even set out working on the book.