Archives For writing

This entry is part 1 of 6 in the series What It Means To Be A Writer

A little while back, I had a series of emails with a reader named Scott, who was considering an opportunity to write his first book. Scott did want to try writing a book, but didn’t want to jump into the project blindly, and so asked me what it meant, in day-to-day terms, to write a book. We had a few long emails back and forth, that I thought I’d edit/expand upon (my parts) and share here for others to benefit. In my responses, I did try to stress the negative aspects of being a writer, so as to present some of the worst case scenarios. What originally started as a couple of long emails became a long post, and now a series of posts. If you’d rather not read it all, the short advice is this:

If you want to write a book because it’s something you always wanted to do, give it a go, but if you want to write a book to get rich, become famous, or the like, you’re barking up the wrong tree!

Note that my perspective and advice specifically focuses on writing technical books and articles, which is what I do and know best, although much of the advice applies to other types of writing, too. Continue Reading…

I’ve just recently become aware of Scott Berkun, thanks to catching an excerpt from his “Confessions of a Public Speaker” book. I’ve since read that book, and it was wonderful (more on that in a separate post). I’m now following Berkun on Twitter, where he frequently Tweets older posts. One of those that I found to be particularly on the nose was “How to Write a Book- the Short, Honest Truth“. I get asked about publishing a lot (and recently had a long email conversation about this, which I’ll also share separately), and thought Berkun’s posting is quite valuable on the subject.

In the post, Berkun distinguishes between three aspects of writing a book:

  • Anyone can write a book (i.e., you can write one right now, without needing anything else)
  • Getting published (which is a separate issue from writing a book)
  • Becoming famous and wealthy

I know there are some people that would like to write a book as an experience, or as a way of sharing what they’ve learned. And some others like the imagined prestige and riches that come with writing a book. I’ve done quite well over the past decade, having written 22 books and sold over 350,000 copies, but I can verify that the prestige and riches aren’t all that you might imagine (I recently discussed the economics in a newsletter). That being said, I’m quite happy that I’m making a decent living doing something that I always dreamed of doing. I’ve been working for myself for 13 years now, which is something.

In any case, if you’re interested in the topic, check out Berkun’s post. It’s short, and well written. At the bottom, you’ll find links to more good articles on writing, if you’re not too discouraged by that point! His “Why You Fail at Writing” is pretty good for helping you accomplish that goal of writing a book.

If you have any questions you’d like to ask me about what it means to be a writer, just let me know!

In this edition…

Continue Reading…

I’ve never been much of a New Year’s Resolution person: if something is important enough to do, start today, not on some arbitrary date that happens to be the first day of the year. (Or, you know, January 2nd, because the first is a holiday and all.) But this year I happen to have quite a long non-resolutions list. The timing is entirely coincidental: I just happen to be almost done with my Modern JavaScript: Develop and Design book, and I always have a long list of things to do between books. I only have two more chapters to write on this book, and the end is in site!

In a recent newsletter, I answered a question about how I spend my time between projects. For me, the biggest projects I have, in terms of stress and time consumption, are the books I write. The client projects–Web development and such, no matter how big or complicated, never seem to be that much of a burden. Mostly this is because I find programming to be much easier than writing about programming, and because it’s fun to make things happen, to implement new concepts. Over the course of a year, I’ll work on any number of projects, ranging from consulting a couple of hours here or there (i.e., helping to steer the actual developers) to doing all of the development myself. When these bigger projects are done, I’m pleased to have them off of my list, but there’s never the huge sigh of relief that I have when I’ve finished a book. And that sigh says: now I can do these other 20 things that have been waiting for me!

With the completion of the JavaScript book on the horizon, I’ve been making my January to-do list, and salivating over all the things I’ll be getting done. Certainly, what I will actually do won’t be nearly as long as this list, but one can dream, no? My next deadline isn’t until this summer, which is when I have to turn in the third edition of my PHP 5 Advanced: Visual QuickPro Guide book. Although I’d like to, for a change, get that book done well in advance! Still, I have a bit of time to really put a dent in my “someday” to-do list.

First on my list is to exercise more often. I feel like I’ve gained five pounds for every book I’ve written (all that sitting), and while I’ve exercised more than never over the past few months, I’d like to do much, much better. We could all probably use more exercise!

After exercise, which is a daily and on-going goal, I’ve grouped my dream tasks into four categories:

  • Things to work on
  • Books to read
  • Work things I really should get done
  • Personal things I really should get done

The last category is of little interest to you, I imagine, or wouldn’t mean much regardless (mostly construction projects around the house). The work things I really should get done are those things that don’t get done during my books and big projects. For January, this primarily means creating an HTML5 version of this site’s design, plus a corresponding version for my forum. Before I redid this site in October of 2010, the site had become woefully outdated and I want to insure that doesn’t happen again. If time allows, I’ll do a mobile version, too, and make sure everything is performing as well as can be.

The books to read are both personal and work related. I want to read one or two parenting books, a novel, and some work-related books. I’m specifically looking to read The Pragmatic Programmer by Hunt and Thomas first. I’ve heard good things about it. Then, coincidentally, I have a couple of ebooks from The Pragmatic Bookshelf on my computer awaiting a few moments of time. As I read these, I’ll no doubt be posting my thoughts about them here.

Finally, there’s my “things to work on” category, which is a broad category of topics without definitive targets or concrete tasks. Normally these items are a matter of improving my skills in specific areas. Right now I’m thinking honing my abilities and knowledge with respect to Launchbar and TextMate, two Mac apps I use all the time. I know for a fact that I’m underutilizing both. The time I spend improving my skills with them now will pay dividends over the rest of the year. As time allows, I also plan on continuing to write my Yii book, although I’ll probably do that as blog posts, too.

So there are my January 2012 non-resolutions. Which will likely also be my February 2012 non-resolutions. Sadly, at least a quarter of them will end up on my September 2012 resolutions, too!

UPDATE: I just literally finished all the work on the Modern JavaScript: Develop and Design book yesterday, so thus far, I’ve done pretty much none of the things on my list, including exercise more. Ugh. But how about that February list…

In this edition…

Continue Reading…