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 find writing the first chapter is always the most difficult when starting a new book. In my opinion, it is important that the first chapter convey at least two things to the reader:
* A general overview of the scope of the book
* A little background information on the topic and other related topics

The real difficulty comes in confining your overview to purely an overview. When talking about such-and-such new feature, for instance, it is fairly easy to get caught up in the details of using the feature, when all you need to do is introduce the feature and let the user trust that the details will be discussed later in the book.

MS Word reports that my word count for the first chapter is only 4663. ;) I've taken a few nights off writing, and as discussed in the last entry, decided to basically rewrite a lot of what I had done. I feel a lot better about how this chapter is turning out.

Scott

I don't want to keep you in suspense for too long. I should probably tell you a little something about the book I'm currently writing.

The book is tentatively titled "JavaScript 2.0 From the Frontline", and it will be published by Osborne McGraw-Hill early next year. The book is aimed at developers who are already familiar with programming languages (like JavaScript 1.5) - so I don't have to cover the basics of programming. It is designed to get you up to speed on the new language quickly, with lots of relevant examples.

Two days ago, the publisher sent me authoring templates for MS Word. Many computer books belong to a "series" - that is, a family of similar books by the same publisher. The largest series, by far I bet, is the "... For Dummies" books, there are hundreds of different titles. Another example is the "Teach Yourself ... In 24 Hours" series.

Books that belong to a series have to be written in a certain style in MS Word for two reasons: it makes it easier for the layout staff to properly format the book using their software, and publishers would like to maintain some consistency across different titles in the same series.

The thing is, when I applied the MS Word Template the publisher sent over, it basically doubled the number of pages I had written to date, so I was extremely happy. Suddenly, the book was shorter - I was almost finished the first chapter (by pagecount, which is set beforehand), but I hadn't said half of what I wanted to say!

So, last night and tonight I basically rewrote huge chunks of the first chapter. I deleted a couple of pages worth of material that I wasn't entirely happy with, and the chapter is finally starting to look the way I would like it to. Yippee!

Scott

OK, I think I'm finally hitting some kind of reasonable stride. I'm up to 4100 words, and I have only worked on the chapter for 2 hours so far today.

If I were to boil the science of book writing down to one key ingredient, it would be "focus". It is far to easy to stare at the blank page, at a loss for what to say or where to begin, and decide to put the book aside for a few minutes. Go check email. Get a bite to eat from the fridge. Check out what's on TV. Surf over to your favorite web site. There are a ton of temptations, and believe me, the book isn't going to be much easier to write when you eventually come around to getting back to it.

Oh, don't get me wrong. There are times (like when I update this blog) when a distraction can be helpful. You're not going to be able to focus when you have a headache for instance, so that would be a good time to stop. Or if you're getting too tired. Or too hungry. Breaks are good for the mind, so take them. But when the number of breaks outnumber the number of pages you've written, you should figure out how to focus more on the task at hand.

I once read (sorry, I don't have a reference to the source), that humans function most effectively two hours at a time. Any more than two straight hours produces a serious drop in productivity. Worker A was asked to work from 10am-Noon, and 2pm-4pm. Worker B worked from 8am-Noon, and 1pm to 5pm. Guess who produced more work. Well, actually they produced the same amount of work. But our friend Worker A did it in half the time (4 hours instead of 8 hours).

Anyways, that's all for now. My writing break is over. ;)
Scott

The book writing has been coming along very slow this week. I'm up to 1800 words - only 280000 or so left to go.

My main problem has been time. My birthday was last Wednesday, and so I was not able to get a lot of writing done in the past three or four days. I only spent two hours at it today. Time is ticking!

The book publisher usually tries to get you to fill out a marketing survey at the start of this process. I have never before seen one this detailed however. They were asking what web sites I like to visit, which conferences I attend, which newsgroups I hang out it, etc. They're looking for a marketing angle, of course. I have to make some suggestions, and I have already come up with a few.

Luckily, the topic I am writing about has a large development community, so it should be fairly easy to find potential customers to market to.

Energy level is not at its highest, but I am making good progress today. Momementum has shifted again in my favor.

Scott

So you want to be an author, huh? I wish I could tell you how difficult the process is, and how it took me years and years of trying before I got a publisher interested in me. But it didn't.

This, roughly, is how I got my first paid writing gig. It worked for me, and maybe it can work for you too.
1) My very first paid gig was with Wrox. They have a link on their web site for "potential authors", and I sent them a brief email to let them know that I would like to do some writing.

2) I was contacted by an Acquisitions Editor (or, AE for short) and over a few emails, we exchanged ideas about what upcoming projects would be suitable for me.

3) In my case, they already had a book "in progress", with a previously defined outline. I volunteered to write a chapter of it. (In fact, my one chapter was later divided into two pieces, so I ended up writing two chapters). Wrox is famous for team authoring approach - many of their books are written by 10 or more people.

4) For my two chapters, I was promised a US$1000 advance, and a 1% royalty of the book sales.

5) After my chapters were written and submitted, during Christmas 2001, Wrox decided not to publish the book for business/economy reasons. They paid me the advance ($1000) for work performed, and that was the end of that.

I enjoyed working for Wrox - took me about two weeks of writing, and the people were quite pleasant. My only regret is that the book never got published. Wrox puts the pictures of the authors on their book covers, and I would have liked to seen my face on a book in the bookstore. Oh well.

As far as my current project goes, today I am taking the outline I submitted as part of the proposal and expanding it a level deeper. Writing has begun, and so far I am pretty excitied. Energy level is high.

More details of the process of getting published, with commentary on how its going, in future editions.

Best wishes,
Scott

In my entire life, I had never been unemployed. I have had a job pretty much every day since I was 16 years old. That all changed in September 2001. I was working for a mutual fund company (on contract), and my contract was set to expire September 15. I (and the rest of the world) watched in horror as the events in New York unfolded, but in the back of my mind I knew that what my contract renewal was in doubt. I was not surprised on the morning of the 15th when I found out my contract would not be renewed.

I have had some contacts in the book publishing industry for a couple of years, and shortly after my contract ended (and I wasn't able to find a new one), I contacted them about writing my first book. The deal was struck, and between October and February I wrote my first masterpiece. Unfortunately, my first publisher went out of business. My next publisher has decided to publish the book early next year, 2003.

Out of that fiasco, I landed myself an agent. And quickly landed my second book deal. I just signed it on Friday (July 12, 2002). This log will follow my progress. For those who are aspiring to become published writers, I hope this helps. For those who have no intention of becoming writers, but are curious how difficult it is to push out a big, thick computer book, I also hope you get something out of it. And finally, this log is also for me - I hope it turns into a diary of sorts, that I can look back on.

Best wishes,
Scott