Culture Shock Diaries Vol 2
Book writing is not glamourous. My first attempt at writing a major portion of a book. Things can only get better after this.
29 September 2002
Oh heavens. Looks like MSPress have actually decided to call our bluff and agreed to let us write a book for them. Damn - this means we’ll actually have to write it now. I feel faint. Their author kit is two meg and consists mostly of a (very large) template for the chapters - do you really need fifty zillion paragraph styles to write a book - and a guide on how to take screenshots. It feels like the dark ages. So then, web services - that’s when you get the XML thingy and play yo-yo with...
3 November 2002
Finally settled down to some serious writing. As usual, am aware that I don’t know \ can’t remember half the information I actually thought I did. Looks like the first version of the first draft will be somewhat gappy to be redone in between some useful research. Writing the first draft of a chapter is very similar to taking a mock exam before the real thing. It puts into context a lot of the things you knew and how to express them, but makes you aware of wha you need to revise. I always liked mocks -...
9 January 2003
How quickly time flies. Christmas and new year have passed peacefully. Am now filled with resolution to actually work eight hours a day, finish book and get on with life. To which purpose, the final draft of chapter 1 is now complete and the handler chapter is in mid-flow. It would probably be finished by now if it wasn’t for the fact that I keep managing to find a new way to teach the material in this chapter and rewriting bits accordingly. Still this mini draft - about number 7 - is a lot better than number...
9 March 2003
Another long break between writing. The end is in sight but once again the goalposts have changed. Whether they’re for the better or worse is unclear. We now have a fourth writer but two more chapters. Whoever pays their sixty dollars will certainly get their money’s worth that’s for sure. Aside from the epilogue at the end, there isn’t a single chapter under 50pages long and it looks like that trend will continue to the rest of the book.
In the meantime, I’ve been learning to write bits of Glaswegian for chapter 6, by reading Trainspotting and...