Love the platform, how long have you been working on this?
3 weeks today lol MVP in two days, MLP in one week
Writing a book in public
11–20 of 68 posts
Re: Writing a book in public
#12I wrote a book[1] - well - i wrote the same book 4 times again and again, writing, learning, throwing away, writing, iterrating, editing, rearranging, throwing away, starting new, iterrating, ... . Some learnings:
I) just write
first attemp i made a super fancy setup - google chrome book with custom linux installed that automatically transformed markdown via pandoc into a custom styled PDF everytime i saved. was fun to create this setup, but i wasted time not writting the actual book.
II) don't wittgenstein
i wanted to be absolutely correct, so i started with defining word, what do i mean with website, domain, webproperty, webpage, page, link, external duplicate content, internal duplicate content, ... or any other technical term. wittgensteining is yak shaving for authors. don't do it. just write.
III) a manuscript is not a book
after you are finished, the real work start. a manuscript does not have the same feeling, read-feeling, read flow as a real book. get a professional editor, work with him/her. fire him/her if not the right match, find the right match, start again. the right editor is as much a factor for the success of the book as the author.
IV) live with the law of strawberry jam
the further you spread knowledge/jam the thinner it gets. yes, in a 1:1 talk, in a 1:12 people workshop you can communicate more knowledge than you can with a book. talk, interaction, any form of communication with exchange, has direct feedback - something unbelievable important for information communication. a book is a one way street with - if at all - delayed feedback. you can always continue writting, pack in more knowledge, more details, more clarificaiton, more scenarios, but then the book will never finish. at one point you have to stop.
V) cut away
go through your book again, and question every word, every sentence, every paragraph, every chapter. if the word, the sentence doesn't ad substential value, get rid of it. your book will be better. it's not about quantitiy of words, it's about what you want to say.
VI) let go
& publish, just do it.
[1] "Understanding SEO - A Systematic Approach to Search Engine Optimization" https://www.fullstackoptimization.com/b/understanding-seo ISBN: 978-3-200-05426-4
Re: Writing a book in public
#13I like the website, its simple and fast. Also love the idea.
Re: Writing a book in public
#14I have built an app that helps people to write every day and track their progress:
I think you might find it useful (it's still in active development, I'm currently working on completing v1).
I really hope your project takes off, there's never enough writing tools and communities!
Re: Writing a book in public
#15I have built an app that helps people to write every day and track their progress: https://writingstreak.io/ I think you might find it useful (it's still in active development, I'm currently working on completing v1). I really hope your project takes off, there's never enough writing tools and communities!
I already have my home made app and it's called https://200wordsaday.com :P
Re: Writing a book in public
#16I wrote a book[1] - well - i wrote the same book 4 times again and again, writing, learning, throwing away, writing, iterrating, editing, rearranging, throwing away, starting new, iterrating, ... . Some learnings: I) just write first attemp i made a super fancy setup - google chrome book with custom linux installed that automatically transformed markdown via pandoc into a custom styled PDF everytime i saved. was fun…
This is awesome! Love those advices. I will consider them carefully while I'm doing this. Thank you so much!
Re: Writing a book in public
#17This is very similar to NaNoWriMo[1], which originally stood for "National Novel Writing Month" (I say "originally" because the "National" bit no longer applies), whereby you sign up to try to write 50,000 words of a novel in November. It has similar word tracking features and a community of other users whom you can interact with (IIRC; the last time I signed up was 2012). The only real difference is that the words/day is more explicit here (200 vs. an implied average of over 8x that) and that you're not constrained by time. While it is pretty hard to maintain the level required to achieve the goal set by NaNoWriMo -- 200 words/day is trivial, in comparison -- the time constraint certainly helped focus.
Re: Writing a book in public
#18This is a full-time job, but it did not prevent me from writing at least 200 words daily for over a month now. The author would be surprised to note that many people do that already via forum comments. I practice my english this way and made it a part of my daily routine years ago.
Yeah. Do they publish comment books though?
To me this looks way more like a series of blog posts than a book.
Re: Writing a book in public
#19I like the website, its simple and fast. Also love the idea.
Thank you! I'm trying to improve it daily so if you have any suggestion I would love to hear it.