Comment by franze | Hacker News Reader

Comment by franze | Hacker News Reader

I 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

Another part of this that plays well with both your advice and the 200 words a day advice is "start smaller."

Unless you're already a badass, sitting down in front of 400 blank pages is too hard.

A lot of people would like to write a novel. Novels are hard. Short stories (that might later became chapters) might be a better starting point.

Nonfiction is a little easier, with less of a step change between short and long form. But, smaller chunks can still be a preferable starting point.

Thanks for your advice, I'm currently starting down the path of writing (what I hope will become) a book. I'm at your piece of advice I). I'm working on a framework which links LaTeX and Python notebooks in a dynamic compilation setup [1], so reading your first point of advice makes me think I might have started on the wrong path.

Did your setup ultimately prove useful in writing your book? Or did you give up part way through and that helped you get to the task of actually writing?

[1] https://github.com/poulter7/ipynb-tex

whenever i hid a rough patch during writing i started enhancing, debugging my setup. it was beautiful. it was a beautiful distraction. a beautiful, interresting timesink. my linux skills improved - a lot, but otherwise no, it did not prove usefull. i could have written a book about pandoc in the end, but that was not the goal.

in the end it was sublime (the software) and focus (not a software).

after the manuscript phase it went to google docs (one doc for each chapter) for structure and work together with the editor. then indesign for the triumvirate of me, the designer and the editor.

update: just looked at your https://github.com/poulter7/ipynb-tex, damn that looks familiar... I stand with my I) recommendation

I have written three scholarly history books [0] where custom Python code was used to generate TeX files (not LaTeX) that were then typeset into PDF.

Python's main purpose was to enable thousands of cross-references across the books, and to transform a large, every-changing text database into a pleasing output, where different parts of the database had different output formats.

Perhaps a TeX wizard could have done it all in pure TeX, but I never could have. Besides, who wants to learn all the intricacies of TeX/LaTeX when the task in Python is so straightforward? To this day, I can't imagine a different approach.

Joining the Python and TeX pieces together into simple scripts was trivial. The Python code evolved as I got into the books, so I would recommend a rapid-iteration model of code development, rather than building a perfect edifice before starting.

[0] http://www.physical-lincoln.com

Great advice. And it's true for a lot of other things apart from writing too, i.e. coding, website design, your MVP.

This is awesome! Love those advices. I will consider them carefully while I'm doing this. Thank you so much!

also i always recommend my idol jerry weinberg https://www.amazon.com/Weinberg-Writing-Fieldstone-Gerald-M/... it's not his best book, but yes, he was one of us (nerds, geeks, technical people, hacker, ...) and he had writting figured out.

This description fascinates me because of the iterative development analogy. Way up in my reading list, thanks again!

Just wanted to say that I really appreciated point II: I've been struggling with this ever since I left college (in which my final semester included a class on Later Wittgenstein).

Do you have any other tips and suggestions on how to "stop Wittgensteining"?

that's a hard one: acceptance - accepting that human communication is and always will be imprecise - there is always the context and inner state of the sender and the context and inner state of the reciever. those will never 100% line up, the further away (culturally, on experience, ...) they are from each other, the more they diverge.

obsessing over every word, over every meaning of every word might make the communication 0,5% more accurate, but weakens (to seriously hurts to kills) the overall message. accept that you will be misunderstood, but try not to.

When you write, imagine a charitable, intelligent reader who is interested in what you say and not looking to nit-pick every word.

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