Tom
e73455d2ca
theory/ EVIDENCE.md + THEORY.md, shared by everything a-days-walk/ Book One: CHAPTERS, CRAFT, FIELD_BRIEF, OUTLINE, drafts/ seasonal-intelligence/ Book Two: OUTLINE essays/ the six pieces archive/ superseded originals, unmaintained by design PORTFOLIO.md the split and the sequence Adds a README to each directory. Cross-references updated to the new layout; archive/ references left broken deliberately, as those are historical documents. Also revises chapter 6 of Book One: the notification scene is now four items rather than four hundred, since the narrator is a light user. The low volume is stronger evidence than a flood would have been - it is the case the attention-economy account cannot explain. Tracked as A26 in the argument ledger, planted in the prologue and chapter 1.
64 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
64 lines
2.9 KiB
Markdown
# Essays
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Six pieces, publishable before either book exists. They do four jobs: find out whether the voice is there, test which ideas land before a year is spent on them, build the platform any publisher will ask about, and each one becomes a chapter draft.
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Written roughly in ascending order of difficulty. Claims are governed by `../theory/EVIDENCE.md`; for register, `../a-days-walk/CRAFT.md` applies to anything that will end up in Book One.
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---
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### 1. Stress Hunger
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*Personal essay · ~2,000 words · needs nothing you don't already have*
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Ravenous after a day at a desk. Barely hungry after four days walking with a pack. The observation, the cortisol literature, and an honest admission that the specific mechanism is a guess.
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**Write this first.** Shortest distance to a finished piece, pure voice, lowest stakes. It requires no trail, no research trip and no permission. If writing it is a pleasure, the book is worth two years. If it's a grind, that's worth knowing now.
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→ Book One ch. 12
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### 2. Why 5,000 Steps in a Forest Beat 10,000 in a Corridor
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*~1,500 words*
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The salience-environment argument on Bratman 2015 — ninety minutes in grassland versus ninety minutes on a road, same duration, different brains coming back. Best evidence-to-length ratio in the whole project and the most shareable thing in it.
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→ Book One ch. 12
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### 3. The Dopamine Detox Is the Wrong Fix
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*~2,500 words · contrarian*
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The reward-hacking story is real but shallow; the mechanism is misfiled relevance. The detox literature is behind you — abstinence has the weakest record, and changing *how* people use platforms beats quitting.
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→ Book One ch. 6 and 10
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### 4. Within a Day's Walk
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*~4,000 words · the flagship*
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The three-distance model itself. This is the piece a book proposal gets built on. Write it fourth, once the first three have taught you the register.
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Pitch high: *Aeon*, *Noema*, *The New Atlantis*. In Czech, *Vesmír*, *Respekt* or *Deník N* would each take a different version of it.
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→ Book One Part II
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### 5. The Middle of the Night
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*~2,500 words*
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Biphasic sleep, with the Ekirch/Yetish dispute as the story rather than a footnote. The contested evidence makes it better: a thing we assumed was human nature turns out to be a Western European habit.
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→ Book Two ch. 4
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### 6. January Is the Worst Time to Change Your Life
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*~1,500 words · seasonal hook*
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Publish in late December. Tests Book Two's market for almost nothing, and the argument survives even though the neuroscience doesn't — because it's made from cultural design, not brain states.
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→ Book Two ch. 6
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---
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## Sequence
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1. Essays 1–3 — three months. Find the voice; confirm you want this.
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2. Essay 4, pitched high — the credibility piece.
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3. Book One proposal plus three sample chapters.
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The only irreversible mistake available right now is spending another twelve months on structure. Essay 1 is roughly a weekend.
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