Tag Archives: books

So You Want to Be a Helicopter Pilot, Part 6: Study Hard

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Flying a helicopter is more than just knowing how to move the controls and perform maneuvers in flight.

As with any other skill you might acquire in life, learning to fly helicopters is made up of many components. The most obvious is getting the motor skills — including reflex reactions — to handle the actual mechanics of flying: working the controls, etc. But behind all that is the knowledge you need to acquire so you fully understand what to do, why you need to do it, and how it works.

Ground School

Ground school — time spend on the ground with a flight instructor learning the what, why, and how parts of flying — is an important part of flight training. Unfortunately, it’s not usually the fun part and, because of that, most pilots try to minimize it. Instead of learning as much as they can about ground school topics such as aerodynamics, aircraft systems, weather, and physical (or medical) issues, some pilots learn only as much as they need to know to pass the written and oral tests that come later.

This is not a good idea if you intend to build a career as a helicopter pilot. At some point in your career, the gaps in your knowledge will be noticed — perhaps by the chief flight instructor you hope will give you your first job or by the chief pilot who can put you in the seat of a turbine helicopter. Or maybe by the mechanic who asks you to perform and document power checks in flight and you clearly don’t understand what he’s talking about. Or maybe by the new pilot you’re asked to show around — the pilot who did study hard and realizes how clueless you are.

Ground school is where you can learn what you need to know, with an experienced flight instructor who’s there to answer your questions. Dig in and learn. Make sure you understand everything — if you’re hazy on something, ask questions. Discuss topics with other student pilots and flight instructors. When you fly, try to understand how ground school topics apply to flight. Take notes, review them, jot down things in the margins when you connect the dots between topics later in your studies or during flights.

Hitting the Books

There are many books and study materials that can help you understand and learn the topics you need to know.

I’ve already pushed the excellent FAA publication, Rotorcraft Flying Handbook, several times on this blog, but I can’t recommend it often enough. Where else are you going to find a free, generously illustrated guide that explains much of what you need to know about flying helicopters in terms anyone can understand? It’s an excellent starting point for your studies.

FAR on iPadAnother pair of must-have publications is the Federal Aviation Regulations (FARs) and Auronautics Information Manual (AIM) which are often published in the same volume. The FAR is updated throughout the year and most publishers publish new editions annually. You should get the most recent edition when you begin your training and try to update it at least every two years. Or do what I do: buy it in app format for an iPad (shown here) or iPhone. You can find them both on Tekkinnovations.com; once you buy them, updates are free (at least they have been so far for me).

Another handy book to have in your possession is a copy of the Pilot Operating Handbook (POH) for the aircraft you’ll be flying during most of your flight training. Yes, I know there’s one in the helicopter — it’s required to be there — but unless you plan to sit in a helicopter to do you studying, it’s nice to have your own copy to jot down notes, etc. I learned to fly in an R22 and bought a copy of the POH the first time I attended the Robinson Factory Safety Course; I added all kinds of notes in the margins during that course.

Cyclic & CollectiveThere are other books about flying helicopters. Many of them have been written by experienced helicopter pilots. One of my favorites is Cyclic & Collective by Shawn Coyle. This is a huge book jam-packed with information that goes beyond the basics offered by the FAA.

It’s likely that your flight school will also recommend or require certain books to help you study. The Jeppesen books are a big hit — especially to your wallet. But, to be fair, they do have excellent illustrations to make important points clear.

But remember, buying a book isn’t enough. You have to crack it open and read it.

Going the Video Route

There are also training videos that you might find helpful to reinforce what you learn in ground school and on your own. I used the King School videos. Although the series is designed for airplane pilots, there was an extra video in the set that covered helicopter operations. In general, I found the videos painfully boring at times, but I admit they were informative. By the end, however, I wanted to grab John and Martha King and crack their heads together. This, of course, was more than 10 years ago; hopefully, the videos have been revised by then. There’s also a good chance you can some of this material on their website.

I think Sporty’s has a set of videos that compete with the King’s — so you might want to check that out as an alternative.

If you decide to buy the videos, I bet you can find them used on eBay or Craig’s List for less than regular price. You can always sell them when you’re done.

Make It Count

Your flight training will cost as much as — if not more than — a college education. You need to take it just as seriously.

If you fail to learn the concepts by studying hard and asking your flight instructor to explain things you’re struggling with, you’re not only throwing away the money you’re spending on your education, but you’re setting yourself up for failure in your career.

Make it count by putting real effort into it and studying hard.

Next up, I’ll explain why you shouldn’t hit the books with a bag of chips within reach.

The Book from Hell

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I know how I like to work — and this wasn’t it.

Over the past eight or so months, I was a passenger on board a roller coaster that slugged its way through my life. The ride started quite suddenly in the summer when I realized that when I was finished working on the book I was revising (the software manual for QuickBooks Mac 2011, published in ebook format only), I had no other projects lined up. The publisher I like working with most had cut back on many titles that simply weren’t selling well enough to make them worthwhile and most of mine were affected. In fact, it became quite clear that I would not be revising my Excel book for the Office 2011 version of Excel. My Word titles were already dead and buried and much of the other software I’d written about in the past was either gone or not of any interest to anyone. As I wrapped up that QuickBooks project and finished off my summer as a cherry drying pilot, I began to worry about getting enough writing work to take me through the winter months.

A New Relationship with a New Publisher

A friend of mine mentioned in an e-mail to a bunch of writers that a publisher was looking for someone to do a book about Outlook 2011 for Mac. This was the replacement of Entourage, the Mac e-mail, calendar, and contact management component of Microsoft Office. I’d used Entourage in the past and liked certain aspects of it, including its ability to apply rules to outgoing e-mail messages and manage projects consisting of documents created with any program. I’d been thinking about switching back to Entourage to help me with my project management needs and this seemed like a good time to do it. I contacted the editor — who happened to be one of my very first editors with another publisher back in the early 1990s — and got more information. I drew up an outline and submitted it. He loved it. In fact, he loved it so much that he had me draw up another outline for another book, too.

I was very happy. It looked as if I’d be able to build a new relationship with a new (to me) publisher.

Things Begin to Sour

I got to work on the project in October with every intention of knocking it out before Christmas. At first, my editor seemed behind me on this strategy. But as I began submitting chapters into what appeared to be a void, I began to lose interest in the project. Looking back on it, I realize there were a few reasons for this:

  • The void. I’d submit a chapter and not hear anything about it. I’d have to ask whether it was received to make sure it hadn’t actually gone into a real void. It didn’t seem as if anyone on the other end cared much about what I was doing. It wasn’t until weeks later that chapters started being tech reviewed and sent back to me.
  • Lack of urgency. The original publication date had been set for sometime in the spring. I knew I could beat that and pushed hard to get the date moved up. This is the way I usually work. You see, a computer book has a limited shelf life. Every day it’s not on the shelf is a day sales are lost. This is the way I’ve come to think about all my books. Apparently, I was the only one who had any sense of urgency for the project and without the support of my publisher, I couldn’t maintain it.
  • Book style. At first glance, the book was in a format I was used to: numbered step-by-step instructions. But rather than create sets of instructions for short tasks using generic material, the book would come with example files that readers could use to follow my steps to the letter using the same files I had. Not a big deal, but it did mean that I had to write exact instructions that would work for that specific example. What made the format difficult for me, however, was that before each long set of instructions, I had to write explanatory text that described all related features in full. The exercises had to illustrate these features in action. In my mind, I was writing the same thing twice. I struggled quite a bit with this because I couldn’t figure out where to put the screen shots without repeating them. This book (like most others) had a page count restraint. Screen shots take up a ton of space. I didn’t know if I was doing it “right” because I wasn’t getting any feedback from the publisher.
  • Typical Book Page

    This is a screenshot of a typical page from the book during the editing process. I don’t know about you, but looking at stuff like this makes my eyes glaze over.

    Manuscript template. This book was written and edited in Microsoft Word. I like Word — really. I’ve been using it since 1990 and it is a vital component of my writing toolbox. I’ve tried other word processors — Apple’s Pages and numerous other applications that might not even exist anymore. Word’s my choice. So that’s not a problem. What was a problem was the template, which included dozens of predefined styles for book text and figures and sidebars and headings. The template came with two extremely long style guides that attempted to explain how to use the template. These documents overlapped and had some conflicting information. And despite the fact that there were two guides, some information was missing. So I struggled to understand how to format the manuscript properly. In the end, I think I got it mostly right, but every day I was faced with pages that looked like a mess of text and images. This only got worse during the editing process when various editors used the revision tracking feature and comments to mark up the manuscript so that it was barely readable. Although this is common at most publishers, I prefer laying out my books as I write them and being able to see finished pages as I work.

  • Disappointment with the software. I hate to say it, but I liked Entourage a lot better than Outlook. I understand that Microsoft’s goal was to provide Mac users with the “enterprise tools” that their Windows co-workers already have, but in rewriting Entourage to make it Outlook, Microsoft removed some features that I really liked. Project management was one of them. In addition, Microsoft apparently thinks that all Outlook users will be connecting to a Microsoft Exchange server so it put many features that depend on that technology right in user’s faces. For example, if a contact is not on your Exchange server, several tabs of his contact record will display error messages. I still don’t believe most Outlook Mac users are using Exchange and can’t imagine why they designed the software to rely so heavily on Exchange features.

My loss of interest really bugged me. I’d never felt like this about a book and I didn’t think it was a good sign. Not only was I failing to show a satisfactory level of professionalism with a new publisher — thus making them think twice about wanting to work with me again — but the related guilt was making me miserable.

This wasn’t me; why was I being like this?

I wanted to be done with the project very badly, but, at the same time, I simply didn’t want to work on it.

Frustration Kicks In

Things took a turn for the worse when frustration began kicking in. That was caused by a combination of the above and a few more things:

  • Microsoft Exchange. I don’t have it and, frankly, I don’t want it. I didn’t think I needed it. When I realized that I would need to show Exchange-related setup and features, I was unable to get an Exchange account through my publisher or Microsoft. I had to buy one from a third-party hosting service. Then I had to buy a second one to work with it so I had two accounts that could interact. Of course, neither of these accounts were full-featured, so I couldn’t show everything I needed to. This really bugged me; the way I saw it, I was not able to do my job right and the publisher didn’t seem to care. So I stopped worrying about it — until a new tech editor started pointing out all the Exchange-related content that was missing. I thought I’d signed up to write an Outlook book for Mac users. Apparently, the tech editor thought I was writing an Exchange book for Outlook users.
  • Conflicting instructions. About halfway through the project, I was told to hold off because a service pack update would be released “soon.” A month later, I was asked why I wasn’t submitting chapters. I was waiting for an update that never came. An update that would likely change many of the screenshots — and this book had tons of them — in several chapters I’d already written. I did not look forward to making all the necessary changes.
  • Editorial comments near the end of the project. I’d submitted more than 10 of 14 chapters by January or February and that’s when they decided to have someone other than a tech editor read them. And that’s when the errors I’d repeated throughout the book began to emerge. The worst was related to “fictitious names.” I was supposed to draw all example names in the book from a fictitious names list that I didn’t use. Example e-mail messages had to be drawn from a list of fictitious domain names. (I couldn’t even use hotmail.com, which is owned by Microsoft.) Example phone numbers had to be in the range 555-0100 through 555-0900 (or something like that). Example mailing addresses had to be on common street names, like Main Street, Elm Street, First Street, etc. This affected text examples and screenshots. I spent hours redoing screenshots and editing text. This annoyed the crap out of me; if they’d reviewed it months ago when I submitted it, I would have fixed the problem from the start and not have had so much work to do.

I should mention here that I don’t blame the publisher. I’m sure this is they way they always work. Evidently, other writers don’t have a problem with it. That might be because their experience with the publishing process — and what it could be — is different from mine. Or maybe they don’t care about the quality of their work or maximizing book sales or working efficiently. Maybe they just don’t think about it as much as I do.

My feelings of guilt turned to feelings of anger. I cannot begin to tell you how many times I nearly backed out of the book. As far as I was concerned, I’d already blown any chance of doing more work for this publisher. And even if they wanted to work with me again, I couldn’t bear the thought of working with them again. It pains me to say this, but it’s the truth.

Halfway through the project, I e-mailed my editor to tell him that if he was interested in that other book, he should find another author for it. If they wanted to use my outline, fine, but I would appreciate some credit in the acknowledgements. That e-mail took a huge weight off my mind.

Probably his, too.

Not the First Time

This isn’t the first time a project has completely turned me off. For years, I wrote and revised a book about a certain Windows application that I didn’t use. I was uniquely qualified to work on it because of my experience in finance and I had no trouble coming up with solid content. The finished book was something I was proud to put my name on — and that means a lot to me.

I had two problems with the book, though: (1) I didn’t like (and still don’t like) using or writing about Windows and (2) the publisher seemed to have a knack of hiring at least one person in the editing/production process each year who seemed determined to punish me for taking on the project. For the first few years, I fought editors tooth-and-nail to prevent them from changing my voice and changing the meaning of what I’d written. An editor one year would change a sentence to her way and the editor the next year would change it back to the way I’d originally written it. They were justifying their existence. And production people would cut illustrations that were referred to in the text without cutting the references or place illustrations in idiotic place. And, in later years, a handful of tech editors who were more concerned with me leaving out obscure tips and shortcut keys than providing helpful feedback about content.

Making matters worse was the book’s insane deadline — the whole book was written based on beta software every year and the final manuscript was due before the software was finalized. For about two months every summer I’d suffer through the process of getting this book done.

In the beginning, it was worth every headache. The first edition turned out to be the second bestselling book of all time (up to that point) for the publisher’s imprint. For the first few years, it sold well and I made good money. But who really needs annual updates to software and the book about it? Some years, there was very little new material to write about because the software simply wasn’t that different. Book sales started to droop and I began seeing less and less reward for my effort. One year, I turned the book down, but they got me to do it again by offering me a better advance. That lasted a few years. Then they cut the advance — after all, it wasn’t even selling enough copies to cover the advance anymore — and I backed out after a total of 11 or 12 editions. Someone else does it now and frankly, I’m glad.

Past Experiences have Ruined Me

And that brings me back to the point of this post. Not only did I want to get these experiences off my chest, but I want to explore why they were such bad experiences in the first place.

I think the main part of the problem is my past experiences. I’ve written or revised more than 70 books since 1992. The vast majority of these books are in Peachpit’s Visual QuickStart Guide (VQS) series. In fact, I’m willing to bet that I’ve authored more VQSes than any other author.

Although Peachpit (as a company) has changed dramatically since I began writing for them in 1995, they still seem to understand that a book is written by an author. Because of that, each book project centers around what the author does — at least in my experience. They don’t pull in a huge editorial staff with members that each have their own agenda to hack apart a manuscript and make sure the author knows she’s just a cog in a big corporate wheel. Hell, they hardly edit my work at all.

Another Book Page

I created this the other day. Not only is this a lot easier on the eyes, but I’m rewarded with a sense of accomplishment every time I finish a page. That’s a real motivator for me.

Another thing I’ve grown accustomed to is laying out my own books. I do “packaging” for Peachpit — that means that I submit my manuscript as finished, laid out pages that I create in InDesign. I can visualize each page and how the information on it is presented because I create each page as I go. The result is a book that I feel good about because I’ve built every single page from the ground up. This is a feeling I simply can’t get when I work with Word template manuscripts covered with weird formatting, editing markup, and comments.

Also important is that sense of urgency: of needing the book done as soon as possible — or even sooner. Even my annual Windows book project had that feeling. My editor was always in the loop, encouraging submissions, providing feedback, answering questions, reminding me of the fast-approaching deadline. Sure, they’d hand me schedules for completion that I’d just ignore, but I always got it done on time because I was always encouraged to do so. I work best under stress — despite how damaging the health gurus say that is. It’s like I’m climbing up out of a gorge as floodwaters approach and I’m thrilled when I get to the rim safely with a new book in hand.

The point is, I’m used to working a certain way. When I’m forced to work a dramatically different way — one that is centered more around the publishing machine than the author or the book — I’m simply not happy. And yes, I do realize that we all do work we’re not happy doing. But I work better when I’m happy; I produce a better product and feel better about my career choices and life.

Bring on the Challenge, Bring on the Urgency

Fast forward to today. I’m working on a revision to one of my Visual QuickStart Guides. I don’t think I’m allowed to say what it is, but you can probably figure it out.

It’s a huge revision. I reworked the entire table of contents and shuffled content considerably while adding all kinds of new material.

On top of that, this book needs to be laid out in a brand new format I’d never even seen before. That means each page has to be reconstructed from scratch using a new template that I have to learn as I work. (Thankfully, the template came with one very thorough and easy to understand formatting guide.)

The software I’m writing about has also been completely reworked and I need to learn it as I write.

The book is over 600 pages long and I have less than two months to write it.

I’ve been putting in 8- to 12-hour days, 6 to 7 days a week. In the middle of each day, I’m convinced I’m not going to finish what I’ve set as a goal for the day. But at day’s end, when I’m done, I have a feeling of exhilaration that can’t be beat. I feel good about my work. I feel happy. I like this project.

This is how I like to work.

Learning from Mistakes

I’m sorry I took on the book from hell. I know better than to do that again. If my past experiences have ruined me for those kinds of projects, so be it. I’m too old and too set in my ways to compete with new authors who will deal with any nonsense handed out to them and consider themselves lucky to get it. I know better.

Print publishing — especially of computer books — is dying. I know that. It’s getting harder and harder to make a living writing content that readers think they can get for free on the Internet. There needs to be a new publishing market strategy and it’s sad to think that I might not be able to work with a publisher who understands that.

But part of the revolution in publishing is the rise of small presses and self-publishing. The way I see it, if I can’t get the projects I want with the publishers I want to work with, I’ll just have to come up with my own publishing projects. The next time I’m facing an empty project calendar, I’ll fill it with my own projects rather than take my chances with an unknown.

Lesson learned.

The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas

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Remarkable reading for the holidays!

The Atheist's Guide to ChristmasA month or more ago, someone on Twitter tweeted a link to the Kindle version of The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas for just $1. Like a lot of people, I consider a buck “why not?” money for anything that interests me. I followed the link and downloaded the book. It sat on my iPad for a while, half forgotten.

Sometime later, while I was eating alone in a restaurant in Phoenix, I cracked the cover (so to speak) and began reading it. It wasn’t at all as I expected. It was so much better.

You see, I expected some sort of anti-religious rant against Christmas and everything concerned with it. Not sure why I expected this — perhaps it’s got something to do with the conservative media’s perceived “war against Christmas” that crops up every year here in the U.S. If you believe the conservatives on FoxNews, etc., anyone who is not Christian hates Christmas and wants to destroy it. Following that line of reason, the folks who should hate it most are atheists, since they don’t believe in any religious doctrines at all.

But that’s not what this book was all about.

The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas is a collection of 42 stories and essays from a variety of atheist scientists, comedians, philosophers, and writers. They include reminiscences (eg., Phil Plait’s “Starry, Starry Night”), celebration suggestions (eg., Josie Long’s “Things to Make and Do at Christmas”), scientific information (eg., Brian Cox’s The Large Hadron Collider: A scientific Creation Story”), historical information (eg., Claire Rayner’s “How to Have a Peaceful Pagan Christmas”), and tall tales (eg., Nick Doody’s “How to Understand Christmas: A Scientific Overview”).

Sure, there was the takeoff on Jeeves and Wooster by Richard Dawkins in which Woofter and Jarvis engage in a conversation about the existence of God, Jesus’s part in the Holy Trinity, and bible inconsistencies. But that was just one small chapter in a very large book. Most of the book is very positive and uplifting, encouraging non-believers to enjoy the Christmas season the way most believers do: with decorations, big meals, gift giving, and gatherings of friends and family members.

The book makes it clear that you don’t need to believe in God or religious doctrines to enjoy a holiday that just happens to coincide with the winter solstice. (Not exactly a coincidence, but try to explain that to a believer.) It also offers plenty of helpful tips and advice for getting along with believers during a holiday that may have some serious religious significance to them.

I’m about halfway through the book — although I do admit that I began reading by using the interactive table of contents to pick and choose among the essays I wanted to read first. While some chapters are better than others as far as their relevance to my personal thoughts about Christmas, I’m certain that any atheist would find something of value in its pages. Likewise, I don’t think any believers would be offended by its contents. As the book’s introduction states, The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas is an “atheist book it’s safe to leave around your granny.” Indeed, I’m certain that even believers would find a lot of content in this book to help make their Christmas celebrations more enjoyable — without threatening their beliefs.

The Atheist’s Guide to Christmas was edited by Ariane Sherine and published by Friday Books. All book royalties are donated to charity — how’s that for the spirit of Christmas giving?

The Trouble with Tech Editors

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Not usually the problem.

From about August 10 until just the other day, I was working on a book revision. It’s my third pass at this software manual that’s now distributed in ebook form. I’m not sure if I’m allowed to mention what it’s for, so I won’t. It doesn’t really matter, does it?

This book was unusual in that for the first time, it was the technical editors that gave me headaches. (Usually, it’s heavy-handed copyeditors.) My publisher waited until the last minute to contract me and everyone else who worked on the book and, because of that, they had trouble getting a good technical editor. They wound up with two people who apparently have nothing better to do than hang out in the support forums for the software and quite possibly hang on every word posted there. The first one worked on Chapters 2-14 before going on vacation. The other one worked on the rest of the 23-chapter book.

The problem I had centered around their apparent misunderstanding of what their job was. The first one kept commenting to tell me to add every known technique for performing each task. I’d decided early on to stick to menu commands and shortcut keys whenever possible, but she kept telling me to add this toolbar button or that hidden dialog option. It got on my nerves until we told her to stop. The other thing she did was introduce obscure problems that people in the forums have, apparently expecting the book to cover them all.

The other tech editor also drew upon his forum experience, this time expecting me to include marketing material that would clarify information about the features so forum participants would have less to complain about. The book’s a straight how-to — technically, it’s the software manual — so addressing the issues of a handful of forum whiners (the worse kind) isn’t part of the program. But what really got me mad was that this second editor was apparently unable to follow the instructions as written and kept telling me that things didn’t work. I’d have to go back and follow the instructions to see where I’d screwed up. But every single time, the instructions worked exactly as I’d written them. This was a huge time suck.

To be fair, they each did have a few comments that were actually worth acting on. I made a handful of changes that improved the book. That’s what their job was — to help me improve the book. But they didn’t seem to understand what would make the book better. All they seemed to know was what would make the book longer.

What neither understood is that I had about 15 days to revise a 600-page book. That’s not enough time to rewrite the book. All I had to do was add or change material for new or changed features. There weren’t many changes. The book, which was originally written by the software developer’s staff, had very few tech edit comments in the two previous editions I worked on. So I couldn’t figure out why these two editors kept coming up with comments that no one else had.

It’s the damn forums, I guess.

Is Writing a Book Like Riding a Bicycle?

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Is it possible to forget how?

Despite all my blogging about Flying and helicopters, I still earn the bulk of my income as a writer. I’ve been writing computer how-to books since 1991 (depending on which book you consider my first) and have authored or co-authored more than 70 titles since then.

You’d think that by now I could write a book in my sleep. In a way, I can. Or at least I thought I could.

This past week, I began discussions with a publisher I’d never worked with before about two new titles. I you might expect — I certainly did — I was asked to submit an outline for each proposed book. I sat down with Microsoft Word’s outline feature on one laptop and the software I was going to be writing about running on a laptop beside it. And, for longer than I’d like to admit, I felt overwhelmed.

Writing a Book ≠ Revising a Book

Creating Spreadsheets and ChartsYou see, although I’ve got 70+ books under my belt, the vast majority of those titles are revisions. Two of them have been revised at least 10 times. In fact, on consulting my list of books, I realized that the last time I wrote a book from scratch was in 2004 (Creating Spreadsheet and Charts with Microsoft Excel: Visual QuickProject Guide for Peachpit Press), although I did co-author one (with Miraz Jordan) from scratch in 2006 (WordPress 2: Visual QuickStart Guide for Peachpit Press).

And revising a book is not like writing one from scratch.

When I revise a book, I start with the book and its text. There’s no need for a new outline. If the book will need major changes, I might take the existing book’s table of contents, bring it into Word’s outline feature, and modify it to fit the changes into appropriate places. But if the changes are minor — and believe me, quite a few revisions were like that — I didn’t even bother printing the table of contents. Either way, I go through each chapter and read the text, making changes as necessary. I re-shoot all the screen shots — even in books that have hundreds of them. I add sections and remove sections. Occasionally, I’ll move sections around or expand on sections to make them clearer. More and more often these days, I’m asked to remove sections simply to reduce page count. Then I’m done.

But when I write a book from scratch, I’m starting with nothing more than the subject — usually a software program or online service — and a blank outline page. I need to build the outline from scratch, knowing just a few things:

  • The audience. This is usually beginner to intermediate users; I don’t write for advanced users or programmers very often. Knowing the audience is important; it enables me to make assumptions about their experience and goals. My audience has changed in the 20 or so years I’ve been doing this. In the old days, I often had to begin with basics like how to point and click and close windows. Now I can assume my readers know all that and get on with topic-specific content.
  • The series. Most of my books are part of a book series. In the past, I’ve authored the first book in a series, but that’s not common. I like writing series books. They give me an idea of the style and format my editors want. I can visualize the final pages as I write. Heck, for some books — Peachpit’s Visual QuickStart Guide series, for example — I actually lay out the pages as I write.
  • The software or service. That’s my subject matter. I need to know the software or service very well to know what I’m going to write about. Often, I’m working with beta software that’s not quite ready for prime time or, worse yet, changes as I write. I have to explore menus and palettes and dialogs. I have to try things to see what happens. I have to learn so I can teach.
Don’t Torture Yourself
I always write with the software or service I’m writing about running on a second computer. Anyone who tries to write a book without being able to reference the subject matter while writing is putting himself through a lot of unnecessary torture.

The trick is to build an outline from the ground up, knowing where to start and where to end and how to get from one point to the next. Each chapter should have a logical flow, starting with the basics and moving on to more complex topics. I can’t explain how to perform one task until I’ve already explained how to perform the subtasks that are part of it. For example, I can’t write about formatting text until I’ve explained how to select the text to format and why selecting that text is important.

Have I Lost My Touch?

It’s this logical flow of things that had me stalled this week as I struggled with the two outlines. I seemed to have lost my touch. I couldn’t focus on the software and approach it as a new user might.

What made matters worse was that the editor I was working with gave me outlines to start with. I wasn’t sure whether he wanted me to follow those outlines or build my own. The outline for one of the books was very good. I wouldn’t have had any problem using it as a basis for my book. But I felt weird about using someone else’s outline — even if I had permission to do so. It was almost as if I were copying someone else’s work. I didn’t like that idea at all.

That meant I had to come up with an entirely different approach.

And that’s what stalled me. My mind went blank and I simply couldn’t think of another way to do it.

I’ve Still Got It

Putting the other outline aside and concentrating on the software is what saved me. I was eventually able to focus on the software. I started writing Part names, Chapter names, and A-Head names, following the style used in the series. I shuffled heads around. One thing led to another, just like it always had.

When I was halfway finished and clearly comfortable with my own approach, I consulted that other outline to make sure I covered all the applicable topics that it did. Since the other book was about the Windows version of the software (for the same publisher), only about 80% of the topics applied my Mac version book. My outline presented them in a completely different order, building skills along a different path.

Looking back on it, I realize that my outline is more like one of my outlines and wonder what I’d liked about the other outline in the first place.

Back on the Bicycle

I find it more difficult to write an outline than a book. That might sound strange, but it’s true. Getting the organization settled is the hardest part for me. Once I have that blueprint, I can start building pages.

With the initial period of uncertainty mostly behind me — at least on one of the two projects — I’m looking forward to writing a new book and working with new people. I’m hoping I get some good feedback from my editor on the outline and that we can work together to fine-tune it to meet the publisher’s needs. The contract comes next and then the writing. It’s all part of a workflow I’m quite familiar with.

Now if only I could knock out that second outline…