Writing first programming book

In the initial stages I think you have to free yourself from the notion that you are meant to be producing anything that will resemble your finished book.

As you are writing a non-fiction volume you will, of necessity, exist in an eco system of non-fiction works which surround the topic of your work. At this stage it is not inappropriate to re-read and examine some of the books that contain the ideas which make up the basis of your own work. You should annotate your reading, provide references to the other work and then make notes about what your volume will eventually say upon that topic. (This is also a great time to note the structure of the book that you are reading for any tips, make more notes e.g. "I like the structure of Volume X but the range of topics in Volume Y is closer to what I will be covering".)

If you do this work thoroughly you will probably end up with between 20k and 50k of foundational notes. Organise these into a rough structure that you would imagine your volume following.

Now you have a structure and a basis. Examine the notes and expand upon them until they cover what it is you want to cover in your book. This should get you to about the 75-140k mark depending how much you expand.

If you have written too much now is the time to edit. In fact once you have this ungainly mess of note taking and explanatory text editing is essential. Be careful, look for ways to cut down the verbiage. An original reference may turn into a footnote, it may become a quotation integral to the text. Or you might remove the specific reference and just leave the notes.

Anyway, that's a lot further than how you start. So I'll leave off there.

AT HEART: Remember your work cannot and will not exist in a vacuum. The first step of the journey is always to work out where it is you are starting from. So before you write, organise your thoughts, read, take notes, prepare.

posted about 13 years ago

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One Monkey‭

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Close the intro. Promise yourself that you will write it last.

Start a blank Scrivener page.

Start writing down everything that comes into your head about the topic. Follow your thoughts wherever they lead, but make each thought a new line. Don't organize; just write.

When you run out of steam, go back to the top of the list, look at each thought, and see if it generates more stuff.

Keep doing that until you can't think of more stuff to add to the list.

Now that you have a list of stuff, start grouping it. Since I know squat-all about programming, I'll use gardening for my example.

• Group A: planting
• Group B: weeding
• Group C: harvest
• Group D: insecticides
• Group E: types of plants
• Group F: organic
• Group G: color
• Group H: season

and so on. Just put the letter (A) in front of any statement to do with planting.

Make new pages for each of the Groups. Copy everything with an A to the A:Planting page. Copy everything with a B to the B:Weeding page.

The lovely thing about Scrivener is that you don't have to put stuff in order yet. So once you have all your F:Organic statements together, just start writing. Do an info dump of everything you know about Organic Gardnening. When you run out of stuff, go to whatever topic strikes your fancy next.

After a while, you will have enough information to see how your book should be structured, or you can find an editor who can help you organize everything. You can drag your pages around any way you like.

The important thing is to get it all typed out. You can rearrange once you've gotten it on the page.

posted about 13 years ago

CC BY-SA 4.0

Lauren Ipsum‭

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