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.

The fortunate thing about being 42% too long is that I get to be brief where it really counts. Chapter 10 was on frames, and to be honest, I don't know why I wrote a whole chapter on that one topic. It could have been a few pages appended to another chapter.

Anyways, I was able to get away with 20 manuscript pages and 4,449 words. Yes, even when I need to be brief I can still spit out 20 pages.

I. Can't. Be. Brief. Must. Control. Typing. Fingers. Of. Death.

I haven't submitted Chapter 10 yet, but I am already working on Chapter 11 (DOM). That chapter could have been one of the longest of the book if I allowed it to be. I'm going to try and keep it under 30 pages. And I'm going to try to have it done for new years day.

Scott

Chapter 9 was on browser events, and is 4,331 words in length. I polished that chapter off only 4 days after Chapter 8, so if I really sit down an apply myself, great things can get done.

Incidentally, I heard from my acquisitions editor that I am 60 pages OVER my expected page count at this point. I had estimated at the beginning of the process that I would have written 141 pages up to Chapter 8. But, my total is actually at 203 pages. That's a 42% over-shoot. Damn, I suck.

Not only am I a bit behind on the schedule, I'm writing too much. For my next book, I am really (really) going to watch the page count a bit closer. I would rather be told I had to write an extra 10 or 20 pages than be told I wrote 60 bloody pages too many.

Scott

Chapter 8 ended up being a staggering 7,000 words. I guess when talking about Web Forms, there really is no short way to say anything. One of JavaScript's main purposes in life is to manipulate web forms, so I had to say what had to be said.

I submitted Chapter 8 on Dec 12th. It took me, sadly, almost three weeks to write that one chapter. As I said in the last blog installment, I really did allow myself to get sidetracked with football, CSI, Amazing Race, Survivor -- basically, TV is my arch-nemesis.

By the way, what is the difference between a nemesis and an arch-nemesis? I really don't know, except I guess anything "arch" has an evil connotation attached to it. Television is evil.

Scott

Chapter 7 was submitted a couple of weeks ago at 3,000 words. At 15 manuscript pages, it was one of the shortest in the book.

Chapter 8 is currently 3,000 words as well, but I have a relatively long way to go. I've written 13 pages of a planned 24, and I might need to go "over". That should be OK, because I might need to trim a page or two from future chapters so its good to be slightly ahead from the projected count.

My main problem has been time. I am starting to fall seriously behind in my writing. I take full blame for that. I am allowing other things to slip into my weekly schedule. For instance, there are a couple of nights a week where I find it very hard to write. Monday nights are tough, because of the lure of Monday Night Football. Wednesdays are impossible because of Star Trek, Amazing Race and CSI. So the number of nights a week that I can write has shrunk, and I need to take better control of that.

Scott