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 received the first chapter back from the technical reviewer today. I'm happy - the review was mostly positive. If the reviewer found any technical mistakes, I'd be upset with myself. The comments were mostly "Is this relevant?". He's right - I got a bit off track on a couple of the topics.

I am starting to realize the importance of having someone read over your work and provide some constructive criticism. Having those comments has provided me with a new energy - I wanted to sit down and rewrite the problem sections right away. Of course, I need to finish off chapter 2 tonight, so that will have to wait for tomorrow.

It also is good news in a way. I can cut out some of the unnecessary stuff from chapter 1, and put an excess section from chapter 2 in its place. Remember how a couple of days ago I was wondering how I was going to fit everything in to chapter 2? This is the answer - move it to chapter 1!!!

I love it when things just "work out" like that.

Scott

What do you do when you are two-thirds finished a chapter, but haven't even said half of the things you intended to say?

You have to either:
a) go back and cut out unnecessary fluff
b) go back and rewrite portions to be more concise
c) say "to heck with it" and submit a chapter that's longer than planned
d) drop a few advanced topics
e) all of the above

I think Sunday night will be major edit night. I'll just keep going, going way long if necessary. Then on Sunday I can cut out some of the things I was not really happy with. I might also be ok with submitting a chapter that is 5 pages too long, and if they want the book to be "on target" as far as page count, I can cut out some stuff later in the book...

My creative juices are certainly flowing strong. I'm up to 5,800 words (26 pages) already on the second chapter, and I am only half done! Chapter 2 is one of the longest in the book.

The next deadline is September 30th I think. That's when I have to submit this chapter. I plan to submit one chapter per week basically up until the very end of December. 16 Chapters in 16 weeks.

Of course, I have found in the past editors were fairly forgiving for a little lateness. In fact, if things start falling behind, the would rather you submit a new schedule to help get back on track. I hope I won't need to do that, but hey, life happens.

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

I'm still wondering how people can write 6 books a year, and I think I've figured it out.

Let's say the average computer book has 280 words per page. And that same book averages about 450 pages. Now, I just happen to have my "280 times tables" memorized, and I know that results in about 126,000 words in the average computer book.

So, at an average rate of 60 words per minute, how long would it take to write such a book (assuming you could type at a constant pace uninterupted)... Surprisingly, the answer is 2100 minutes. Or exactly 35 hours. Heck, a guy could write the entire book in a day and a half if he just typed away. More reasonably, three 12-hour days.

So, if I put my mind to it, I could pump out 100 books a year. Heck, imagine the royalties from that! That's around $1 million a year, just from publisher advances!

Chapter 1 has been submitted to the publisher (again). Chapter 2 is progressing much smoother than Chapter 1. (In fact, I almost want to rewrite Chapter 1 at this point.) I want to get 4 or 5 chapters under my belt in fairly short order. Newton was right. Momentum is a powerful thing -- so is inertia.

Best regards,
Scott

I finally getting back into some kind of writing groove again. I polished off the new Chapter 1, "Prepare to Program in JavaScript", today at 5,975 words, and I spent an hour or so pumping 800 words into Chapter 2, "Learn JavaScript Fundamentals". I have a party to go to tonight, but I (almost) would rather be home trying to get more done. Hopefully I will be able to spend most of the day tomorrow at this.

Thinking about authors who can bang out more than a couple of books a year has inspired me I guess. Do they award the Pulitzer Prize for computer books?

Best wishes,
Scott

I know of an author who, in the last ten years, has pumped out over 60 books. That averages six books a year!!! (Mind you, the general consensus is that his books aren't very good, and I can attest to that.) But still, he writes six books a year! I have one question -- how? How is it possible? I can't see how -- the math doesn't add up.

Six books a year is one new book every two months. For your average 600-page computer book, that's 10 pages a day of writing. And that doesn't include all of the other things involved in writing a book -- from research to writing the outline to making revisions and proofing.

The only thing I can imagine is that he has some help. Maybe his wife or teenage son does all the proofing and outlines/proposals. Maybe he is able to write 30 pages in a single day, and can spend the next two days doing the other things that need to be done (and rest his mind).

Anyways, I have to tip my hat to all of those prolific authors out there.
Scott

Well, such is the life of a book author.

Things have progressed quickly in the past week. I rewrote Chapter 1 to conform to the new format. I was able to keep some of the original text, but you'd be surprised how much has changed. There must be a metaphor out there about how once you change one sentence, you are forced to change the next and so on... but I can't think of it. Anyways, rewriting this first chapter was like a chain reaction. Not to mention that I had to surgically remove all of the "advanced level" stuff, and change my tone from mostly serious to a little less serious...

Well, it's been a couple of weeks since I posted. I had wanted to do this log every day.

As I mentioned in an earlier log, I got a new editor at Osborne. Well, this new editor would like my book to fit into a whole different series, aimed at a more beginner audience. So I went from writing a book "by developers for developers" to "... for dummies" in one half-hour phone call.

So I had to redo my outline, which isn't so bad. The publisher was kind enough to send up a couple of sample books for different topics in the same series. It's always easier when you have that. Basically, all the advanced content (some server-side JavaScript, Rhino, SpiderMonkey, etc.) got jettisoned. Too bad, that would have been fun for me.

So, in the next few days I will try to finish the entire outline and cut/paste a Chapter 1 together. I'll keep you updated.

Scott