By Sam Goodykoontz

Look, philosophy’s tough, we all know it. But have you ever wondered what it’s like to write your own book on philosophy?

I’m not talking about an essay, I’m talking about a full-length book. If you’re curious about it, ask Dr. Riesbeck and Dr. Evans, both of whom have recently written books. Dr. Riesbeck relates that, “I have enjoyed writing for almost as long as I can remember knowing how to write. Since at least my freshman year of high school I had envisioned some sort of writing or other as central to my future.”

However, he didn’t start out writing books.

“My first ‘real’ writing was internet tech support manuals in the mid- to late-1990s, when the internet was still new to most people,” he said. “I later co-wrote a regular newspaper column about the live music scene in Athens, Ohio.”

His love of writing, combined with his studies, led to more opportunities.

“Once I discovered classical Greek literature and philosophy in college, though, I just wanted to write about that, so I went to graduate school to earn a Ph.D. in Classics,” Dr. Riesbeck said.

He wrote his book about “the nature and value of the political community as Aristotle understands it,” Dr. Riesbeck said. “The book that resulted ended up being titled Aristotle on Political Community.”

Dr. Evans’ book is about “the relationship of 18th century art, science, and moral/philosophical thinking to different conceptions of reality (which they called ‘nature’): material, metaphysical, imaginary, etc,” he said. He describes his writing process like it was “a vacation, getting to read great books and write about them.”

It took Dr. Riesbeck “almost seven years from the time I began working on the dissertation to the publication of the book,” he said. However, if writing is truly what you want to do, the wait is worth it. Besides, Dr. Riesbeck said that “in those seven years I moved from Austin, Texas to Hanover, New Hampshire and then to Houston. I taught a variety of classes, and I wrote and published articles that were related to the book but quite different as well, so I was not exactly working full time on the book for seven years.”

He also had to find a way to stay encouraged. “I frequently doubted that what I was writing was really any good, and a few times I came to feel as though I would not finish it,” Dr. Riesbeck said. “My way of coping with the self-doubt was just to tell myself that it didn’t have to be good, it just had to be done.”

While it didn’t take Dr. Evans as long, he had similar feelings. “At first I was stressing about how good it would be,” he said. “Then I decided just to do it and not worry about the quality. That was an important step. The book got done, and the quality took care of itself. Perfectionism is toxic.”

He also learned a surprising lesson: “I know now that you can write a whole book about something and still not understand it.”