In recent years I have found myself more and more drawn to
the act and craft or writing. It allows
me to find some clarity in my thoughts, and create stronger ways for myself to
view the world. In 2019 I have set forth
with the intention of writing a book. It
will likely be a shorter book, my first book doesn’t need to be a masterpiece
or comprehensive in any way. I chose to
write about lifting weights. Lifting
weights is the subject I know most about in this world, and I thought it would
require little research. I have
completed the first draft of the book. I
am sure this process has made me a better writer, I also think it is making me
a better product manager.
In the end a book is a product. This book is not an artistic endeavor, it is
a manual on lifting weights. Everything
that goes into the book must make people either stronger, or healthier. With 20 years of personal experience lifting
weights and researching, I have a lot of ideas, and a lot of thoughts. Managing these ideas, and weaving a narrative
has been an interesting experience. I
have little experience in writing something more than a few pages for a college
course. I don’t know how to “write good.”
I on this project have had to rely on my subject knowledge and product manager
experience to carry me through the project.
I like to think I am starting to learn and think more correctly about
this writing process.
The first lesson I have learned is that blogposts are a
great start, but only a start. Before
starting this project I had written probably 20 blogposts on various topics
relating to fitness and lifting weights.
My first thought with the book was that I could take these blogposts,
and use them as the start to the book. I
could just make a chapter around each one.
I thought I could then put an intro and conclusion onto the posts and
then just fill in a few gaps and have a book.
This was a nice theory, and it might work for other people but it did
not work for me.
I think it mostly did not work for me because their was not much
connecting the blogposts beyond the fact they were on the subject of
fitness. Fitness is just way too large
of a topic to cover in a book. I ended
up with something that would have had to have been titled “Nehemiah’s Thoughts
on Random Fitness Topics.” Plenty of
books take this approach, and if you have a strong following I think you can
publish this kind of book and sell some copies.
I am not some well followed expert in any subject though, so I felt as
though I needed a more coherent narrative. At this point in things, the real writing of
the book started to take place. I formed
a bit more of a thesis and had to niche down on what I was really trying to
write. I kept the original blogposts,
and most of their content is still in the book draft in some way. I however had to take a few steps forward and
create a real product out of this book.
To create a book product with some measure of credibility
behind it I had to evaluate where I could niche down. What has resulted is a book that has become a
mixture of “Big Brother Advice”, how to organize your training, and some
fitness hacks. I feel like anyone that
reads this book will know how to get strong, and continue to get strong for
years to come. I have crafted a
framework from these blogposts and random thoughts that give people a roadmap
for continued strength for years to come.
The whole “throw some blogposts together and get a book” it
was a good first step. I did however
think it would get me 90% of the way to where I wanted to get. In reality it got me closer to 5% of the way
to an actual book. This method gave me a
lot of baggage to deal with as well.
Each blogpost in the context of a book needed reworked. It is debatable if a fresh start would have
gotten me to my first draft faster, but the ideas from the blogposts did
provide ideas. In the end I have learned
my writing is not prolific enough to just take some other pieces and smash them
together into something cool. Other
authors have done it with success, for me though it was just a start. I think sometimes this results in a book full
of “random disjointed things” and that is beneath the standards I hold myself
to. In the future I would be rather
hesitant to use the “just smash blogposts together and get a book” method.
On a more tactical level one method I did use that let me
get started fast was to commit to learning no new tools for this book
project. I decided to use Microsoft Word
for writing this and avoid book writing tools.
I wanted to spend zero time on tools and worry just about writing. In my past I have written a lot of code for
websites. One of the greatest
frustrations of writing code was working with software development tools. There were days when I spent all day working
with the tools, and not writing any code whatsoever. I wanted to avoid this with this book. I can write in English. I can do this in a Word document. I decided to for this project at least, do
things the simplest way possible and that was with a simple Word document. I was able to from day one, just write the
book, not spend time learning a bunch of tools before I started writing.
Each section or chapter of the book has been given its own
Word document. Then I combine the
documents to get a book. This has cost
me time, because putting the book together as a whole involves me opening
document after document and copy and pasting the contents of each section into
a single document. There is little as
far as version management. If I make a
major change, I just create a new document and save the old version for a
backup. In the future I think I will
look at writing tools for projects.
I am happy I have done this book project without those tools
though. I think it got me to a real
draft of the book faster rather than spending tons of time learning writer’s
tools. This seemed to be an important
thing at this point for me. Getting
discouraged with tools and losing momentum seemed like a bad idea to me. I think having done things this way will give
me perspective to better choose tools in the future. I think it is a lot like learning math
without a calculator. It is a good thing
to do for perspective, and when you add in tools later on like a calculator and
spreadsheet, you can go really fast with things and do awesome things. If you never learn how to do math, these
tools will not be as powerful to you when you use them.
The most powerful tool in getting this book draft finished
did in fact end up being an Excell sheet.
Progress was slow on this book for me.
It took approximately a year to accumulate the first 48 pages (with lots
of stops and starts, and changes.) I
wrote the next 34 pages and reworked a lot of those 48 ages in 2 weeks. The big change I made was I started logging
the words I wrote each day, and just tried to keep beating my records for most
words written in a day. Keeping track of
these word counts kept me from spinning my wheels and “working on the book” but
not getting anything done. I needed that
accountability. I think I will keep
doing this kind of word tracking and challenging in the future, it’s a good
push. I set super modest goals with this
method and I think that helped. I could
get to my daily words really easily, but it kept he progress going. This is not a big insight, but it was the
push I needed to finish the first draft of this book.
The last major thing I have learned by writing this book is
that its not THAT hard to write something useful for people. I have written a book that will be useful to
readers. Is it a great literary
work? Nope. I am not some great writer. I have ideas and these ideas can help some
people. I think that is all I need. I have the first draft written and have much
work to do to get this book publishable.
It is just a matter of time before that is done though. All I have to do is put in the time and
work. This book demystified the writing
process. I feel like now I can write
lots of useful things in the future, and probably will.
Viewing this book as a product and not some literary work
has framed the project in a good way for me.
I know how to tackle projects and this is no different. I still have much to learn about the writing
process and in time I am sure I will.
While I may not create a great awesome literary work, I have created
something that is useful to people. This
book will help some people get more fit, more strong, and have more fun in the
gym. That seems like a good start for
draft one.