Hi there. My name is Scott Duffy, and welcome to my book writing log. I have documented the process of writing my last two books on this site, and have started my third. This book will be called Visual Studio Team System In Action, and should be available in 2005.

I'm up to 3400 words on the second chapter. I took yesterday off from writing, but am back at it today.

It's tough keeping a "day job" and trying to write a book at night. I have a very small window in which to write (realistically, from about 8pm to midnight). If my creative juices aren't flowing (like they weren't last ngiht for me), there's nothing you can do.

Luckily, when I have some time during the day, I can fire up MS Word and just type. And today I took a notepad with me onto the subway, and spent the 45 minutes coming in to work thinking about what I need to say in the next few sections of the book. That helped a lot today. If it works again tonight going home, I am going to HAVE to take this notepad with me on the subway every day.

Speaking of which, I tried bringing a laptop with me on the subway a little while back. I type faster than I write, so I figured a laptop would be a great solution. My problem is my laptop weighs 10 pounds - literally, it weighs 10 pounds. The thing is painful to carry, even with a shoulder strap. So maybe if I had one of those beautiful 2 pound laptops, it might work. But not with the one I got.

Anyways, haven't heard back from the publisher on the first chapter I submitted a couple of days ago. I have a feeling things will continue like this for some time with this publisher - long periods of silence pierced with brief frenzied emails.

Take care,
Scott