Tag Archives: writing

Writer’s Block Sucks

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For the first time in my life, I suffer from a serious case of writer’s block.

Prolific. That’s the word that has often been applied to me. And so it should. After all, I’ve produced more than 55 books in 12 years. In one very busy year alone, I did 10 revisions.

But things just aren’t the same these days. Writing the books that pay the bills — computer how-to books about software like Quicken, Microsoft Word, and Mac OS X — has become real work for me. The kind of work I try to avoid doing because I simply don’t want to.

Writing Blog entries has become tough, too. I think of topics while I’m driving or showering — my two best times for thinking — and when I get in front of a computer, the words just won’t come. So I waste time surfing the ‘Net (a form of procrastination) or, worse yet, watching television.

But what’s really bothering me is my complete inability to write fiction. I’m working on a number of projects. Some of them have been in progress for years and I don’t expect to ever finish them. But one of them is something I want to finish, something I want to try to have published. I’m about four chapters into it and I’m at a complete standstill.

I’m not happy about that.

I try to force myself to write, to make personal deadlines for pages or words or chapters. But when the word processing screen is before me and the insertion point is blinking away at the start of a fresh line, I just can’t make the words come.

So I write blog entries (as I’m doing now) as a kind of consolation prize. I’m writing, aren’t I? That’s better than surfing or watching television.

I feel lost and frustrated. I have a number of other book ideas that I want to work on. They’re not fiction and I’m pretty sure I can sell them. They’ll have longer shelf lives than the computer books I usually write. But I can’t seem to get started on them.

And then there’s the 10 Quick Step Guides that I promised David Lawrence. He’s all ready to publish them. He has a willing audience. But I can’t seem to write them.

Writer’s block. That’s what it is. Like insomnia: you want to sleep but you can’t. You need to sleep but you can’t. I want to write. I need to write. But I can’t.

Let’s hope I get over this soon. I don’t know how long I can handle this lack of productivity.

Writing Under Pressure

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How I hit the keyboard and produce at an alarming rate.

When I got my summer job at Papillon Grand Canyon Helicopters, my editors were quite upset. Especially Megg at Osborne/McGraw-Hill. You see, every summer for the past six years, I’ve devoted about two months to writing or revising Quicken: The Official Guide for Quicken Press, which is an Osborne imprint. The book sold like crazy in its first edition (for Quicken 99) — in fact, it was the second best selling book of all time at Osborne. Although sales have fallen off a bit, it continues to sell well and remains the top-selling book about Quicken every year.

Osborne makes money producing and selling this book. I make some money, too, although not as much as I’d like. It’s a Windows book and I really don’t like writing about Windows software. After 55+ titles (I’ve lost count again), I’ve gotten cranky and picky and would rather spend time flying than sitting in front of a computer writing about accounting software.

Can you blame me?

Anyway, my schedule at Papillon requires that I live up at the Grand Canyon every other week. Up there, I live in a trailer (which is discussed extensively in another blog ). I have my laptop, an Apple PowerBook. But I don’t have any of the other equipment I need to write computer books. And frankly, I like it that way.

On my off weeks, I assured Megg, I would work on the book. I’d reviewed information about the software’s new features and told her the book would be about a 20% revision. I’d knock it off during my off weeks in the month of June.

Well, the month didn’t start very well. My uncle passed away June 4 and I felt compelled to fly back to New Jersey to visit him one last time. That killed four days that I could have been working. That equates to at least four chapters of the 18-chapter book. To make matters worse, when I returned to Wickenburg after my trip, I got about 4-1/2 hours of sleep before I had to fly up to the Grand Canyon for my week at Papillon. Although I’d managed to finish the first chapter, I later discovered that my e-mail software had failed to deliver it to Megg & Co. When I returned to my office on June 14 — halfway through the month! — Megg still didn’t have any chapters.

After handling e-mail, voicemail, and chart orders (I run a discount mail order business for aviation charts and pilot supplies — PilotCharts.com ), I finally put my nose to the grindstone (or my fingers to the keyboard) and got to work. I revised Chapters 2 and 3 on Monday and Chapters 4 and 5 on Tuesday. It’s Wednesday and, unfortunately, I have a doctor’s appointment and a haircut appointment, so I think I’ll only get one chapter done today. But if I keep up my rate of production, I should be able to get through Chapter 10 by Friday afternoon. And I’ll probably do two more on Saturday.

The revision work isn’t difficult, especially when revising material that hasn’t changed. I read over every word and make minor changes to clarify information. I’m also adding sidebars, although I’m not convinced that they’ll really add anything of value to the book. Then I make brand new screenshots. That’s where things slow down, because I have to make the software’s screens look a certain way before I take the picture. That often requires manipulating data by creating transactions — sometimes dozens of them — to show what I need to show.

I complained a bit to Mike about the work yesterday. It’s terribly tedious and very boring. He reminded me about the “paychecks” that accompany projects like this one. That shut me up.

I’ll have the book done by the end of the month as promised. I have to. There are three more titles for Peachpit Press lined up behind it.

Finished “Mac OS X 10.3 Panther: Visual QuickStart Guide”

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Thoughts and insights on a tough revision and the computer book publishing industry.

Mac OS X 10.3 Panther: Visual QuickStart GuideMy last entry was pretty depressing. I was under a lot of stress to get the book done. Now that it’s done and the stress is gone, I’m feeling much better. The book is nothing short of a masterpiece, if I do say so myself, and I’m extremely pleased with it. We (Peachpit Press and I) got a lot of feedback from readers about previous editions. It seemed that my VQS wasn’t considered “good value for the money” because it didn’t have as many pages as other competing books. What most people didn’t consider was that VQSes are traditionally short (around 300 pages). Mine was actually long at about 400 pages. And it was considerably cheaper than the other books. But I guess if you calculated price per page, I probably fell a bit short of the competition. And I can’t deny that buying two books (a VQS and a VQP) does cost readers more money. In defense of Peachpit, the idea behind that strategy is that not all readers need all that information and we could provide affordable books tailored to two markets. But that’s not how reviewers saw the situation.

That said, we decided to combine the two books into one title. The resulting “Mac OS X 10.3 Panther: Visual QuickStart Guide” is about 670 pages long and features 20 chapters and over 2,000 screen shots. Topic range from the most basic basics (like how to point and click) to Unix commands. The price tag is an extremely competitive $29.95 US, making it a very good value. If this book doesn’t please readers, I don’t think any book will.

Writing the book was a bit of a challenge. First, there was the merging of the content from two books. What do we include? What do we exclude? Not much. The biggest casualty was the AppleScript chapter written by Ethan Wilde, which was replaced by an AppleScript basics section in the Applications chapter. (Those interested in AppleScript really ought to buy Ethan’s book!) Almost everything else that was in my Mac OS X 10.2 VQS and VQP remained in this edition.

Of course, everything has been updated for Mac OS X 10.3 Panther. That was the second challenge. Not just the update, but merging information about new features into existing chapters. Where do we discuss each new feature? Chapter 4, which is available as an excerpt from my Web site , got quite a few new pages. So did the i-Applications chapter, which was expanded to cover iCal and iSync (neither of which was available when I wrote the Mac OS X 10.2 VQS last year). The only chapter that got trimmed down a bit was the installation chapter. I cut out the info about installing Mac OS 9.2, since that information appears in the Classic Environment chapter.

There was a lot of pressure to finish the book on a timely basis. Timing is everything in the computer book publishing world and when a hot new product hits the market, publishers want their books out first. Trouble is, authors have to work with beta software, which often changes on a weekly (if not daily) basis to get the book done timely. Mac OS X 10.3’s beta software was available for about two months before the software was finally released. But the beta software changed. Any author who wrote about early versions of the beta wrote some stuff that isn’t right.

Want some examples? The first beta or two included a Print command under the Finder’s File menu. That command disappeared before I could try it out. Those first betas excluded a Favorites folder in the Sidebar. Sometime in the middle of the beta process, the Favorites folder reappeared. Then, near the end, it disappeared again. It was almost as if Apple wanted to kill favorites, thought they would get a lot of negative feedback, and then decided “to hell with the bad feedback” and killed it. (But favorites aren’t really gone, as you’ll discover when you read my book.) Icons changed, too. Internet Connect’s new icon didn’t appear until halfway through the beta process. Any screenshot of that icon taken before the beginning of October will be wrong.

So here’s the situation: publishers want the book written quickly. Once the book is written, it has to be laid out, proofed, edited, and printed. For most publishers, this is where time is lost. From the moment the author hands over the last manuscript chapter and TIFF files to the time the book appears in print, two or more months may have gone by. So do the calendar math: if the author waits until Gold Master of the software — on or around October 15 in this case — to finalize the draft manuscript, the book can’t possibly appear in stores until December 15. So what do authors do? Under pressure from publishers, they finalize before Gold Master. As a result, their books contain inaccuracies.

Peachpit and I don’t work this way. We have a remarkable arrangement. I do layout as I write, so I submit fully laid out pages as I work. My editors mark up this draft manuscript and I update pages as the software is changed and I get edits. As a result, when the software went Gold Master, we already had fully laid out pages for about 3/4 of the book. I wrote and laid out the rest the following week. This made it possible to send our completely accurate 650+ page book to the printer only three days after the software’s release date. I expect to hold a copy of the finished book in my hands by November 14 — just three weeks after the software’s release.

Any book that makes it to stores before mine can’t possibly be based on final Mac OS X 10.3 software. It’s just impossible. And that’s not an author’s fault. It’s the fault of publishers who don’t trust their authors to do layout. Peachpit trusts me and I don’t let them down.

Next on the agenda, Excel 2003 for Windows: Visual QuickStart Guide. Another revision — but this one should be a piece of cake.