
Writing a book in public - basilesamel
https://200wordsaday.com/words/i-am-writing-a-book-in-public-5585c109c5735a98
======
franze
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](https://www.fullstackoptimization.com/b/understanding-seo) ISBN:
978-3-200-05426-4

~~~
jonathanpoulter
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](https://github.com/poulter7/ipynb-
tex)

~~~
maj0rhn
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](http://www.physical-lincoln.com)

------
Xophmeister
This 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.

[1] [https://nanowrimo.org/](https://nanowrimo.org/)

~~~
basilesamel
This is intriguing. It reminds me of 750words.com as well. I think what I
really want to show with the 200 words objective is that it is reachable by
anyone. 1600 words per day is way too much for a regular worker who just
started writing.

~~~
ghaff
>1600 words per day is way too much for a regular worker who just started
writing.

I write a lot for work that's interspersed with a fair number of other
activities as well. However, even on days when I'm more or less full-time
writing with maybe a bit of add-on research and color for a topic I'm already
familiar with, 1600 words is a _lot_. And I say that as someone who has
written books. Personally, I'm more in the 800 words or so per full
"production" day average. I can probably hit 1600 but that's assuming I
already know what I'm writing about and even have some existing material I can
adapt and fold in--and I've really cleared the decks.

200 words/day should be pretty achievable for many although that's not enough
for a typical post and you may find breaking things up like that (rather than,
say, spending one day per week writing 1000 words) isn't very efficient. It
partially depends how much control you have over carving up your time and
whether you need to really get in the flow of writing vs. banging off a few
paragraphs here and there.

~~~
basilesamel
200 is still so hard for many people. I talked to users who tried the website
and couldn't do more than a 1-day streak, they all say the same: I can't get
into the habit / too much work / didn't plan it blablabla And I think this is
the case for 80% people on earth. And I'm talking about english native
speakers, non-native are even less likely to reach 200 words per day.

Anywasy, thanks for sharing your experience! I appreciate it.

~~~
ghaff
Oh. I don't disagree and the habit thing is definitely part of it. When I'm
traveling I find it very easy to get out of the habit of getting
something/anything down on paper quickly even with the expectation that I
would need to knock it into publishable shape when I have more time.

Personally, I'm also guilty with a number of things of the mindset that it's
not worth chipping away at, it's too much to contemplate, etc. Writing can
definitely be similar.

------
distant_hat
You'd have to take editing into account. By any reasonable account, I saw a
page that discussed it once, to have 100 readable words, you'd need to write
500-1000 words. Which means the time required goes to 5-10x. On the other
hand, 200 words per day is pretty low, you could easily get up to 500-1000
words per day once you really get going.

~~~
Rainymood
I think the idea behind the 200 words is that it is achieveable, once you hit
the 200 you're already in the zone, the ball is rolling, you can easily
continue. But getting there is the hard part.

~~~
basilesamel
Thank you! Exactly what I'm describing in the article: 200 words give you
momentum. I end up with double this word count in average.

------
Tade0
_This 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.

~~~
basilesamel
Yeah. Do they publish comment books though?

~~~
Tade0
To me this looks way more like a series of blog posts than a book.

~~~
basilesamel
You are 100% right. The website is 3 weeks old and the "book editing" feature
is not released yet.

------
Tharna
Almost two years ago I started writing my short posts on a similar premise on
my blog [https://arcticloon.fi](https://arcticloon.fi). In fact, as of today,
I'm four days short of writing every day for two whole years.

And all this time I have been writing alone, mostly for myself. I do have a
few loyal followers and I see some random readers every now and then.

I think a community of other writers would be a great next step for me, so
maybe I'll join in. But I'm not sure if I'd like to switch my writing and
publishing platform just yet. Hope it's ok for me to keep writing on my own
site and copy the texts over. Who knows, maybe in time I'll switch over. Or
even better start writing on both places every day, doubling my output.

~~~
basilesamel
This is not a problem at all! Your writings belong to you. Always.

------
nickjj
I'm currently 203,027 words into planning out my next technical video course.
I like to write things out before I say them because it helps organize my
thoughts.

It's similar to writing a book suppose.

But if you're interested in writing any type of book, just remember your goals
will be different depending on what you're writing. Writing a fiction novel is
a lot different than a book on some technical topic. You're on a strict time
deadline with technical books because the content can get outdated.

On days where I don't have freelance work or other activities planned, getting
down 3,000 "production ready" words is very possible in about 6-8 hours. That
includes writing, rewriting, iterating, proof reading it multiple times, maybe
doing research if needed, etc..

------
cableshaft
I like this idea and plan to give it a go, although I think you could be doing
more to entice people to read each person's contributions besides just saying
'they wrote x words today, and it's called this, and it has these tags".

At the very least I think a super short blurb could be included, like a line
or two (can be as short as a tweet or even shorter, you can take it from the
beginning probably, just let the writer's own words attract people). Like it's
either just the first sentence, or even the first half of a sentence, just
something that has an opportunity to attract the end user.

I'd even consider a different emphasis. The title and the words are more
important and should be more prominent than the author. The "@piotr wrote
Strzelnica" makes it sound like they wrote a full piece, even though I think
you should consider it to be more like a serial (i.e. 200 words in an ongoing
work), and includes a redundant word "wrote" for each entry that's the assumed
activity on your site.

I'd probably do something more like "Strzelnica 10" (10 being the number in
the series), in larger and in bold, then the next few lines "Lorem ipsum...."
the brief excerpt of text. Then at the bottom of that text, real small, the
author's name, number of likes/feedbacks (one or the other), maybe a single
tag, maybe the word count. But keep most of the other information on the entry
itself. Maybe not even include the profile image.

If you really want the other information I recommend hiding it, because right
now it all blends together and I don't get anything too interesting when I
scan down the list of entries.

Anyway, my main concern is it looks too much like an engineer decided to
include as much information as possible on these things, stuff that they would
find interesting but most readers aren't really going to care about when
scrolling through this and scanning for something to catch their eye, and I
think more than anything the author's own words should catch the eye, not the
'info'.

But I'll still give it a try and hopefully it does well.

~~~
basilesamel
Thank you for taking the time to write this! I need more time to consider your
points. One thing I am sure of though, is that this is a writing community,
not a list of publications like the ones you can find on Medium. Empowering
the writers matters more to me. The content is important obviously, but what I
really want is for them to just write. Anything. And be seen/heard.

------
zabana
Wow ! I absolutely love the concept and the website is straightforward to use,
no fuss or unnecessary feature, just write and save. Brilliant. It's funny
because I'm struggling with my writing skills and I wanted a way to practice,
this is the perfect solution for me. Hope you continue working on it.

Unrelated question: what technologies is it built with ? I'm just curious to
know !

~~~
basilesamel
This is becoming my life work :D I work full-time on it!

I'm using Symfony 4 (PHP) and some basic JQuery. Nothing fancy but it allows
me to ship faster as I'm starting to know it well. Here is an article I wrote
detailing my stack: [https://medium.com/@basilesamel/how-i-am-building-my-
minimum...](https://medium.com/@basilesamel/how-i-am-building-my-minimum-
viable-products-46e5bd103758)

------
rayalez
I have built an app that helps people to write every day and track their
progress:

[https://writingstreak.io/](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!

~~~
basilesamel
I already have my home made app and it's called
[https://200wordsaday.com](https://200wordsaday.com) :P

------
GunjanKarun
This is a very interesting idea. I started with something more humble "Just 50
Words" a day and the objective was to write articles instead of a book.

I also created a simple writing tool
[https://just50words.com](https://just50words.com) to help me focus and write.

~~~
basilesamel
This is nice Gunjan. Post your words in our community, we love to read those!
Originally 200wordsaday is still about writing short articles daily. Writing a
book is a personal goal of mine. The members have many different goals: just
get better at writing, releasing their ideas for the world to read etc.

------
bartcobain
Just wrote my first 200 words. I really like two major things about this site:

1\. It's really simple UI/UX so you go straight to the point. 2\. The Github
like counter for your post.

I will definitely use the site more and more.

~~~
basilesamel
Thank you! Don't hesitate to reach out to me if you have any suggestion or
improvement point to share. I would love to hear them!

------
superasn
Nice idea. Is there a way to see the list of books currently being written?

~~~
basilesamel
Some people PMed me about it. I think we are going to tag our posts with
#publicbook and those will be drafts that will probably be integrated into our
books.

------
jzig
Nice job on the app! I'm reminded of
[https://750words.com/](https://750words.com/) that I discovered years ago.

~~~
swlkr
750words is amazing

------
paulpauper
The hardest part is organization. it means that the stuff written on day 40
has to some how be connected with or relevant to the stuff on day 7.

~~~
basilesamel
Yes you are right. But isn't it nice as well to digress a bit sometimes :)?
Still, a goal feature would be nice.

------
swlkr
I also came up with something like this:
[https://streaking.app](https://streaking.app)

------
greenpizza13
Am I the only one turned off by the very poor grammar on a post about _writing
a book_? Are you writing the book in English?

~~~
munificent
In the post, the author notes English is not their first language.

------
r_c_a_d
Writing the book is the easy part. Getting more than a handful of people to
read it is hard. Good luck!

~~~
basilesamel
I'm 24 and this would be my first book. Let me learn my lessons. Thanks for
the warning though!

------
0xferruccio
Love the platform, how long have you been working on this?

~~~
basilesamel
3 weeks today lol MVP in two days, MLP in one week

------
sh4rk
I like the website, its simple and fast. Also love the idea.

~~~
basilesamel
Thank you! I'm trying to improve it daily so if you have any suggestion I
would love to hear it.

~~~
clemParis
Thanks for the work, I enjoyed trying it and loved the fact that indeed, 200
words is really achievable. I even did it twice ;) Do you have any plan for
the possibility to publish "privately"? I'd like to write, but I don't
want/feel the need to be read. I guess we could consider the drafts are
private, but they seem like second-class citizens regarding streaks and so on.

~~~
basilesamel
Yes the private posts will be a thing very soon:
[https://trello.com/c/s0Hho8LS/30-later-an-user-should-be-
abl...](https://trello.com/c/s0Hho8LS/30-later-an-user-should-be-able-to-
decide-if-he-she-wants-his-writing-to-remain-private-or-not)

