Why I Write: An Introduction for Publishers

Clarke again. As I say elsewhere on this site, I never intended to start a career in building. I became interested in housing a number of years ago for a very simple reason: I wanted one. I spent years researching “alternative”, “green”, and “natural” building techniques, then I quit my job working at a law library to became a construction worker. Eventually, I left the city and moved to a rural area to find a source of spring water and enough access to the sun to accommodate a sensible passive solar design. After a lot of heartache, trials, and tribulations, Lisa (or, as my mother-in-law likes call her, my wife) and I built our house. In fact I’m sitting in my home office typing right now.

This path put me on both sides of the building fence simultaneously. On the one hand, I knew the fear of being an idealistic dream-house-seeker nervously clutching my sweaty checkbook. On the other, I learned that one of the most expensive components of a building project is client indecision and confusion. Those schizophrenic years taught me something basic and profound: a good house is the result of clarity. Unfortunately, clarity is often the thing in shortest supply.

Everyone involved in a construction project has to be clear about what's going on, but the wellspring of clarity has to come from one job description: the owner or client. The little acknowledged fact of the matter is that a building starts out in the imagination. The clearer the owner imagines, the better the house will be. That’s their job. They have to be as clear about what they want and need as they can. Unfortunately, since most modern people know nothing about building, their ability to clarify their imagination is crippled and they end up frantically focusing on paint colors and trim profiles long after the blurry version of their vision has materialized as a house. These owners don’t understand that they are the ones who haven’t done their jobs, and that no amount of screaming at carpenters or complaining about contractors at cocktail parties is going to help them.

The problem here is simple: though owners come to their job with little or no experience, the builing project rests on their shoulders. In actual fact, then, the least qualified people have the hardest job and the most to loose. That just doesn't seem right, so I set out to do my part to help. The result is that I've spent much of the past five years writing. The first fruit of these labors is called “The Good House Book: A Common Sense Guide to Alternative Homebuilding”. Though it is an introduction to alternatives, more fundamentally it’s a primer on housing designed for the complete novice. It’s been a great personal success because I’ve gotten many responses that echo the goals I had in writing it: making the fundamentals of housing accessible and interesting to a wide variety of people in a way that gets them thinking.

Tim got on board for the next project in which we took the same clear approach to the fundamentals and used them to create an exquisitely crafted little eco-cottage. We painstakingly documented the process and then laid it out in a book. The result, “Building Green: A Complete How-to Guide to Alternative Building Methods” is over 600 pages long with close to 1500 full color photographs and 80 illustrations.

As a result of these projects, I’m starting to be asked to write articles for various magazines, and, consequently, I seem to be spending more and more time writing. That’s okay with me because it may be true that my style of no bull, humorous-yet-practical prose is the best contribution I can make to the world of building. As time allows, I intend to write articles on topics of personal interest. I’ll post excerpts on this site and then make the articles available for sale to periodicals. I’m also willing to take on assignments that follow my general interests, so feel free to contact me with proposals for articles.

© Clarke Snell, 2005