Degrees of Freedom Update 5: "The When" and Final Proofs!

Phase Zero: From Idea to Contract

It was July 2022, and I was at CogSci’22, my first academic conference after being awarded tenure at my institution. The assurance of tenure had removed a weight from my shoulders, but it also created a new motivation to ask: what’s next? Since I had received tenure a year early, I had a one-year gap until my first sabbatical, which gave me one year to plan something large and impactful that would shape the next phase of my lab’s research. I had a variety of ideas, most of which revolved around writing a book. At the conference, I cornered a senior colleague and asked what sabbatical projects had been most impactful for him. His immediate response: “Write a book.” While I didn’t really want to write the type of textbook that my colleague was talking about, this push helped give me the confidence to start thinking about a writing project more seriously.

Just a few hours later, I was in the conference’s expo hall, and on a whim stopped by the MIT Press table to ask the book-seller what the process looked like to write a book with an academic press. “Well, what do you want to write about?” he asked. After I gave him my pitch for the types of issues I was interested in writing about, he said “I’m an acquisitions editor: send me a book proposal!” I told him I would, but that it might be a few weeks. In true Tom Williams fashion, I then proceeded to go back to my hotel room, write up a book outline, and send it to him that very night. Two weeks later, I’d sent him a more formal proposal. Three weeks after that, I had reviews on the proposal. Three weeks after that, in late September 2022, I had a signed book contract. It was a whirlwind experience.

Phase Two: From Contract to First Draft

Over the next few months, I started working on the book — indirectly. I’d told myself that I would start working on the book in January 2023, and in the meantime, I focused on writing two papers on issues of race, policing, and social justice in robotics. At the time, I wasn’t yet thinking of those chapters as part of the book project, which in its original conception had less emphasis on social justice (boy, did that change!). Those papers would, however, go on to heavily inform several key chapters of Degrees of Freedom.

From January 2023 to July 2023, I slowly but surely wrote the bulk of Degrees of Freedom, writing about 366 words per day, as shown in the graph below. The more I wrote, the more the book came to focus more and more on social justice issues. 

In July 2023, as I was prepared to head to Bristol on Sabbatical, I decided the book needed a restructure, and that the guiding framework should be the Matrix of Domination, a theory from Black Feminist Thought that seemed to perfectly organize my evolving ideas about robotics, race, gender, and power. I reframed, sprinted, and had a rough draft done mid-August.

Phase Three: From First Draft to Manuscript
Between mid-August and mid-December, I gave twenty talks on the book across Europe. These talks were instrumental in gathering feedback that I used to incrementally revise and refine the book, slowly polishing and editing until I had a completed manuscript. During this process, it was interesting to see how different audiences received the book. While law, policy, design, and HCI audiences were enthusiastic about the project, senior (predominantly White male) roboticists were less receptive, especially in certain countries, like the Netherlands. While some of these senior researchers’ feedback was unhelpful (e.g., a researcher who said that the work was “too American” because “racism isn’t a problem in the Netherlands” (👀!!), these critiques were overall incredibly helpful, as they led me to refine my argument, and to identify blindspots and compelling examples.

Huge thanks to the folks who hosted me for talks, at…

1-4 | Bristol (Talks at Bristol Robotics Lab, Centre for Sociodigital Futures, Uni Bristol Psychology Department, and Sabine Hauert’s Class)

5 | TU Eindhoven

6 | University of Ghent

7 | TU Delft

8 | Leiden University

9 | Utrecht University

10 | University of Twente

11 | Vrij University Amsterdam

12 | Instituto Superio-Tecnico Lisboa / INESC-ID

13-14 | Imperial College London, King’s College London

15 | Glasgow University

16-17 | Heriot-Watt University and University of Edinburgh

18-19 | Oxford University and Cambridge University

20 | University of Birmingham

After giving these talks and revising, revising, revising, I finally turned in the manuscript of Degrees of Freedom to MIT Press on December 27th, 2023.

Phase Four: From Manuscript to Final Draft

Over the course of 2024 and 2025, the book has gone from that initial Manuscript to Final Draft.

• January 2024: Manuscript sent out for review.

• April 2024: Manuscript reviews returned to me.

• April-July 2024: I revise, revise, revise.

• July 2024: I turn in a new version with lots of edits, new content, fundamental restructuring, and a new chapter structure.

• September 2024: Title finalized.

• February 2025: Copyedited files sent to me for review.

• March 2025: I approve the copyedits.

• April 2025: Initial proofs are sent to me. I check them and send them back, and send the new page proofs to the indexer.

• May 2025: Index is created and sent to publisher.

• July 2025: Final proofs are sent to me, and (stay tuned!) first discussions are held about book cover.

So where are we now? We’ve got five months until launch… and still a lot to do between then and now! From finalizing the cover, to seeing the book’s blurbs, to covering the launch itself, there’ll be many more updates to come over the following months.

Stay tuned!