From Idea to Print: How to Write a Technical Book or Article and Get It Published

Index

Foreword

by Kim Moutsos

If you ever have the pleasure of attending a conference, meeting, or other face-to-face gathering with Roger Sanders, you’ll notice something interesting about how people react in his presence: They’re drawn to him. People want to meet him. Sometimes, they approach to ask questions, but many times they simply want to shake his hand and say Thank you. Often, they’re slightly in awe.

What does this modest, soft-spoken gentleman do to provoke such a reaction? There’s really no secret; in fact, Roger teaches you how in this very book. But wait— you thought this volume was about becoming a writer, right? Don’t worry—you didn’t accidentally stumble into the winning-friends-and-influencing-people genre. This is, indeed, a book about writing and getting published. And, by doing those two things well, you will certainly end up influencing people and will very likely win new friends along the way.

How do I know this? I witnessed the effect of clear, concise writing—perfectly targeted to the intended audience—again and again during the years I served as editor of DB2 Magazine (later called IBM Database Magazine). Articles that feed the audience what they’re hankering for immediately stand out; they generate more clicks online and a flood of comments and messages to the inbox. And that makes an editor want to publish the writer again and again.

Roger’s method for winning over a magazine editor’s heart is clearly defined in this book. It worked so well on me that I eventually created a regular column just to feature his work. The same method will work for you. Know your subject, know why it’s important to the audience of the publication you’re submitting it to, and turn in clean, clear copy by the deadline specified. Chapter 2 goes into much more detail on exactly how to do this. Make sure to also read Chapter 8—a writer who approaches revisions as a necessary and helpful part of the publishing process earns a special place in an editor’s heart.

But I’ll let you in on a few secrets of Roger’s success. He never missed a deadline in all the years I edited him. In fact, he rarely handed in an article that wasn’t at least a week early. I’ve been an editor for 15 years, and Roger is the only writer I have ever worked with who has a track record that perfect. Another secret: Roger often wrote and submitted a complete series. Offering an editor quality content for three issues in one fell swoop? Genius. Anything you, as a writer, can do to make an editor’s life easier gets you that much closer to publication. Roger lives this principle. That’s surely one of the reasons he has more than 20 books and countless articles to his name.

If you want to become a successful, published writer—whether of technical books, articles, blogs, or some other yet-to-be-defined content type—read this book. And, when you’ve read the book, followed its advice, and published your first piece, don’t be surprised if you find yourself wanting to shake Roger’s hand.

Kim Moutsos

Senior Editor, Custom Content

UBM TechWeb (formerly CMP Media)

Foreword

by Jonathan Gennick

Writing is fundamental. One of the best ways to enhance your career is to write, to write well, and to write often. Writing gets you noticed, provides a platform from which to influence others, enhances credibility, and contributes to the common good. Perhaps, above all, writing forces you to learn about your profession to a depth you won’t believe is possible until you go there.

Even nicer is when you get paid to write. That’s where Roger Sanders is going in his excellent book, From Idea to Print: How to Write a Technical Article or Book and Get It Published. Roger demystifies the world of professional book and magazine publishing. If you have a passion for a topic and a desire to make a difference in your chosen profession, Roger can help you down the path to getting published.

What I like about Roger’s book is that he begins with the hard work. You see, writing is not some mystical activity one partakes of only when the muse appears. Professional writing is not about going to the coffee shop and sitting down with a latte next to your laptop. Writing is day-in and day-out work. It is a craft in which you work to produce a defined product.

One of the key messages from Roger’s book is that when you write professionally, for pay, you are working with a publisher to create a product for the marketplace. As with any product development effort, you define what the end result will be. Then, you work to create that result, as specified, within budget and on schedule. I cannot begin to tell you how often I wish authors whom I work with would realize that one, single point.

Also important in this book is Chapter 5, on writing your first draft. In just a few tens of pages, Roger gives excellent advice on writing that, if you follow it, and if you follow it along with the hard work advice from Chapter 1, will practically assure you a successful side-career as a writer. Editors such as myself are crying out for people with passion who can write clearly, who can write reliably. Persistence, reliability, attention to detail, clear text—not artsy text, just clear and serviceable text—those are the keys to getting published.

Did I say that writing enhances your career? Put career aside for a moment. Think of personal satisfaction. All those good career things really can happen. But I will tell you that, of all the things I have gained from writing, what matters most are the people whom I’ve met along the way. I’ve been privileged to meet smart, even brilliant people who have taken time to help me and give me a leg up when I’ve needed it. And I treasure the e-mails and other contacts from readers whom I’ve likewise been able to help, and to influence.

Writing is about people. Getting published really isn’t about the money. Think, instead, of getting published as a way to reach out to people, to make a human connection in a technology-crazed world. Lift up your readers. Educate them. Entertain them. Influence them. Help them to better their lives. If you can help someone do his or her job better and get home in time for dinner, then you’ll have succeeded in something wonderful.

Jonathan Gennick

Assistant Editorial Director

Apress

Foreword

by Susan Visser

Are the makings of a writer buried somewhere deep within you? Do you want to share your expertise on a particular subject with everyone around you? Not surprisingly, many people do want to write a book and, personally, I think everyone is capable of doing just that! I’ve written a couple of books myself and, to this day, feel very proud of this accomplishment despite the fact that the first book was published more than 12 years ago!

So, how do you get from Point A, the desire to write a book, to Point B, seeing your name on a hard copy cover? The task is, quite frankly speaking, not nearly as daunting as it initially appears. Still need a boost? Then you should read From Idea to Print: How to Write a Technical Article or Book and Get It Published, by Roger Sanders. Believe it or not, this is his twenty-third book! Now that’s a huge accomplishment and a lifetime commitment!

Roger takes his extensive experience in writing articles and books, extracts all the valuable lessons learned through these experiences, and journals it into a handy guide so his reader can learn all the tricks of the trade. The steps needed to be taken from the conception of an idea to sharing it with your peers in the industry are not difficult. By providing you with useful tips learned through experience, Roger makes this process smooth and easy. Benefit from his wisdom and stand out with the help of your writing skills!

As a Publishing Program Manager at IBM, my actual duties overlap with parts of the jobs done by acquisitions editors, book agents, and book publicists. As you can imagine, very few IBMers are involved in this type of work. I am very blessed to have such an amazing job!

What, do you ask, do I do exactly? I help people accomplish their goal of publishing a technical book about a software product. I encourage experts in the software business to write a book and share their knowledge with users of the product. I’m also approached by people with a burning passion to write a book. I help them create a proposal, interface with a publisher to arrange a contract, project manage the process, and, finally, actively promote the book through as many channels as possible to help boost sales. In short, much of what Roger has written in this book is part of what I provide to a potential author.

Based on my having read every page of this book while Roger was writing it, I truly recommend this book to all potential authors interested in succeeding in this area.

Pick up a copy of the book and learn everything you need to know to make your dream of becoming an author come true! I hope you’ll enjoy this book just as much as I did.

Susan Visser

Publishing Program Manager

Information Management

IBM Software Group

Preface

I didn’t plan on becoming a writer. In high school, I muddled through most of my English classes, preferring courses in science and history instead. And, any time I was asked to write a paper or essay, I would complain and procrastinate and more often than not end up putting just enough words to paper to receive a passing grade. In fact, I once carved a bust of William Shakespeare out of Vanilla Bean ice cream—hair, eyebrows, and mustache were provided courtesy of Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup—just to avoid having to write an essay on the man’s life and his work. (I received a B- for my efforts and my classmates got to enjoy William Shakespeare in a whole new way; they were treated to my sculpture shortly after it was graded.) By the time I finished high school, my dislike of English and writing in general was so strong that I made the one decision in my life that, if I could go back and change, I would. I chose to pursue a two-year, rather than a four-year degree in Chemistry because I didn’t want to waste two years of my life taking courses like English and Sociology that I was never going to use. If only I had known then what I know now!

In 1982, I graduated from Cape Fear Technical Institute with an Associate in Applied Science (AAS) degree and went to work for Carolina Power & Light Company (CP&L) as a Chemical Laboratory Technician at the Brunswick Steam Electric Plant. A year later, I was transferred to the Shearon Harris Nuclear Power Plant (which is approximately twenty miles from where I grew up and twelve miles from where I live today), and it was there that I learned how to create Lotus 1-23 spreadsheets, dBase II databases, and simple applications using BASIC and C programming languages. Initially, I was tasked with finding a way to store plant chemistry data on an IBM PC; later on, I designed and coded applications that did things like calculate the amount of chemicals to add to a system and generate graphs that, when used with measurements taken with a spectrophotometer, identified the amount of chloride and silica present in a water sample. Eventually, I became the computer expert for the chemistry department and consequently, I ended up spending the majority of my time working at a computer, instead of collecting and analyzing samples. So, in 1989, I made the decision to leave chemistry (and CP&L) altogether to pursue a career as a full-time computer software developer.

I spent the next two years working as a programmer/analyst for a small consulting firm, where I helped design and develop an application for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. And, when that application was delivered, I was laid off, along with several other individuals who were involved with the project. Luckily, I wasn’t out of work long; three months later, I was hired to design and oversee the development of an application that ran on OS/2 1.3 Extended Edition and interfaced with a relatively new relational database management system called Database Manager (which was later renamed DB2/2, followed by DB2 for Common Servers, DB2 Universal Database, and DB2 for Linux, UNIX, and Windows). At times, work on this application could be challenging because the documentation for Database Manager was somewhat limited. So, halfway into the project, I made a decision that would change my whole attitude about writing, and ultimately, my life—I decided to create a detailed reference that would make it easier for me and others to develop applications that interacted with Database Manager databases.

After experiencing a number of setbacks and delays, I began working in earnest on the manuscript for my reference in 1995. It took me just over a year to finish the writing and another year to complete the work that was needed to get the manuscript ready for publication, and when the book was finally published, I swore that I would never write anything of that magnitude again. (When published, my reference, The Developer’s Handbook to DB2 for Common Servers, contained 1146 pages!) But, after spending untold hours writing practically every day for a little over a year, the whole process of writing had become an important part of my daily routine. Consequently, several months after my first book was published, I started looking for another book-length project that would fulfill my craving to write. The resulting book, ODBC 3.5 Developer’s Guide, led to another, which in turn, led to another, and the rest, as they say, is history. Currently, twenty-three books have been published with my name on the cover as either the author or a co-author. And I have authored a significant number of magazine articles as well.

As a published author, I am frequently asked for advice on how to write an article or book for publication. And, over the years, I have offered suggestions, based on my own personal experience, to several colleagues and friends. So, in 2008, when a vice-president at EMC challenged everyone in his organization—the organization I was a member of at the time—to publish or perish, I volunteered to teach an educational seminar on how to write technical magazine articles and get them published. I also offered to write a paper on the subject for internal distribution.

As I created the PowerPoint presentation that I planned to use to teach my class, I worked closely with my editors at CMP Media and MC Press to ensure that the training material I was putting together was both accurate and complete. Both editors provided me with valuable feedback (which I incorporated into my material) and both thought the companion white paper was a must read for anyone wanting to write a technical article and get it published. But my editor at MC Press, Merrikay Lee, felt strongly that many of the principles that were covered in my training were just as applicable to writing technical books as they were to writing technical articles. She also believed that there was a market for a book that could teach readers how to use these principles to write a technical article or a technical book and get it published. So, with her encouragement, I drafted an outline for such a book that was largely based on the information I had covered in my educational seminar. Shortly afterward, she sent me a publishing agreement and convinced me to write this book.

If you look closely at my body of work, you will quickly discover that practically everything I have ever written has one goal in mind—to teach the reader how to do something. For example, how to develop applications that interact with DB2 databases, how to prepare for a particular DB2 certification exam, how to utilize a new feature or function found in the latest release of DB2: the list goes on and on. This book is no different. I wrote it because I wanted to teach others who may have struggled through high school English, as I did, how to turn an idea for a technical article or book into a published work. I trust you will find that it does just that.

Introduction

According to a 2003 survey conducted by Jenkins Group, Inc., a Michigan publishing services firm, 81 percent of Americans would like to write a book. And, although it appears that a similar study about writing articles has never been done, it’s probably safe to say that a fairly large number of people have entertained the thought of writing for a magazine as well. There are certainly enough books on the subject of writing to back up this theory, as well as support the 2003 survey’s findings—a recent search for books on writing at Amazon.com returned an astonishing 149,911 hardback and paperback titles.

With so many books on the subject of writing available, choosing the right one to help you get started can be a daunting task. To begin with, only a fraction of these books are designed to guide you through the process of turning an idea for an article or book into a published work. And unfortunately, many of the books that focus on this aspect of writing contain material that’s outdated and no longer relevant. For example, most books describe how to query an editor by way of regular mail, even though today, the majority of editors prefer to be contacted by e-mail. (And there is a significant difference in how e-mail queries are submitted.) Or, they fail to provide information that every first-time author needs to know, such as how to use tables and artwork, and how to revise early drafts until the wording is clear, concise, and strong. More importantly, almost all of these books neglect to mention just how difficult the task of writing can be. They also fail to offer suggestions on how to develop good writing habits; habits that will help you overcome any obstacle you are likely to encounter.

This book is different. First and foremost, it contains up-to-date information on everything you need to know to turn an idea for a technical article or book into a published work. I can make this claim without hesitation because I contacted several editors and an agent to find out how they do business before I documented the process a writer should follow when creating and submitting a query and/or a book proposal. Furthermore, it combines and summarizes important information found in a wide variety of resources, some of which are only available to authors who have already signed a publishing agreement. For example, when you sign an agreement with a large publishing house like McGraw-Hill or Prentice Hall, you normally receive a copy of their author guidelines, which you are expected to adhere to as you prepare your manuscript for publication. Portions of Chapters 6, 7, and 10 were developed by combining the information found in the author guidelines used by six well-known publishers who specialize in producing technical and educational books. Similarly, a careful analysis of the publishing agreements I received from publishers I have worked with in the past, as well as a comprehensive examination of agreements I received from friends and colleagues who have worked with other publishers, went into the creation of Chapter 4—a chapter that took me just over five months to complete and that many reviewers have said is the most important chapter in this book.

More importantly, much of the information found in this book is derived from my own personal experience writing technical articles and books for publication. When I set out to create this book, one of my goals was to capture, in writing, tips and suggestions I have offered friends and colleagues who have sought my advice in the past. Another was to reinforce many of the concepts presented with real-world examples taken from my own writing projects that were ultimately published by companies like McGraw-Hill, Prentice Hall, CMP Media, IBM, and TDA Group. But, I didn’t stop there. As I developed the manuscript for this book, I relied heavily on the feedback of subject matter experts, to ensure that the information being presented was both accurate and complete. (Refer to the Acknowledgments section for the names and qualifications of the subject matter experts who helped me with this book.) As a result, if you have little or no experience writing, this book will give you a clear and accurate picture of the steps involved in authoring a technical article or book for publication. It should also answer any questions you may have about turning an idea for an article or book into a printed work. If, on the other hand, you’re an established author with a list of published works to your credit, this book may teach you a few things you don’t already know. (All of the published authors who reviewed early drafts indicated that they had learned something new.)

If you’ve bought this book (or if you are thinking about buying this book), chances are you have already decided that you want to write a technical article or book and get it published. I am confident the information presented here will help you do just that.

Who This Book Is For

This book is written primarily for professionals and subject matter experts who are interested in writing a technical article or book for publication, but have no idea how to get started (or what is involved in the process). However, any individual who would like know more about writing technical papers, articles, theses, dissertations, and/or books and getting his or her material published will benefit greatly from the information contained in this book.

How This Book Is Organized

The information contained in this book has been organized into the following chapters:

Chapter 1, Before You Begin

Chapter 1 is designed to introduce you to the less-glamorous side of writing— to point out that although it can be rewarding, writing is hard work. In this chapter, you will learn about some of the obstacles that frequently get in the way of writing, such as procrastination and writer’s block, and you’ll be given some techniques that, if used, can help you overcome many of these obstacles. You’ll also be shown how to develop good writing habits that will help you keep working when the writing gets tough.

Chapter 2, First Steps - Technical Articles

Chapter 2 shows you the process that most writers use to submit an idea for an article to a publisher. In this chapter, you’ll learn how to identify trade journals and magazines that might have an interest in publishing your work, and you will see how to pitch your article idea using a device known as a query letter. You’ll also learn how and when to follow-up after querying, as well as what to do if, for some reason, your query is rejected.

Chapter 3, First Steps - Technical Books

Chapter 3 shows you the process that most writers use to submit an idea for a technical book to a publisher. In this chapter, you will learn how to locate a publisher that routinely publishes the type of book you plan to write, and you’ll see how to develop a proposal that conveys a sense of your planned book’s focus, format, and style to anyone who reviews it. You’ll also learn how to compose a query letter that will encourage an editor or agent to ask for your proposal, and you’ll learn when and how to follow-up, what to do if your query and/or proposal is rejected, and how to find a reputable agent (should you decide to hire one to represent you).

Chapter 4, The Publishing Agreement, The Author Questionnaire, and Working with an Editor

Chapter 4 is designed to introduce you to two very important documents most writers receive after getting an offer to publish their work. In this chapter, you will learn about the document that is used to describe the work that is to be published, and that provides the framework upon which author-publisher relationships are built—the publishing agreement. You’ll also see the terms and conditions that are frequently found in a publishing agreement, and you will receive recommendations on how to make many of these terms and conditions favorable to you. Additionally, you will learn the purpose behind another important document—the author questionnaire—and you’ll see the types of questions you are likely to encounter, should you be asked to complete and return one. Finally, you’ll be given some basic guidelines on how to build a healthy working relationship with an editor. (He or she is the individual who will oversee the production and publication of your article or book.)

Chapter 5, Developing the First Draft

Chapter 5 is designed to provide you with some general guidelines that successful writers often employ when developing an early draft of a technical article or book. In this chapter, you’ll learn how to create a working outline, and you will discover why it’s important to have an outline you can adhere to as you write. You’ll also learn how to use headings and subheadings appropriately, how to incorporate the basic elements of good writing throughout your article or book, how to find your voice and set the proper tone, and how to use transitions effectively. Finally, you will learn how to craft an opening that draws the reader in, as well as how to develop a closing that resonates in your reader’s mind long after he or she has put your writing aside.

Chapter 6, Using Tables, Artwork, and Sidebars

Chapter 6 introduces you to three important elements that are frequently used to enhance the information presented in a technical article or book—tables, artwork, and sidebars. In this chapter, you will learn how to use tables, artwork, and sidebars to present complex or important concepts in a manner that makes them easier to understand. You will also be given guidelines on when to incorporate each of these elements into your writing, and you’ll learn how to create various types of artwork, such as line drawings, screenshots, photographs, and text figures, that can easily be reproduced without sacrificing quality.

Chapter 7, Staying Out of Trouble

Chapter 7 is designed to introduce you to four very important concepts that every writer must know if he or she wants to stay out of trouble: how to write bias-free text, how to avoid making libelous statements, how to avoid plagiarizing others, and how to avoid copyright infringement. In this chapter, you will learn how to keep from alienating or offending others by using bias-free text, and you’ll discover how to avoid making libelous statements in your writing. You will also learn what plagiarism is, as well as what you can do to avoid it, and you’ll become knowledgeable about things like copyright, copyright law, the public domain, the fair use doctrine, and the proper way to reuse someone else’s copyrighted material in your work.

Chapter 8, Revising for Perfection

Chapter 8 shows you how to revise your writing until your finished article or book is the best that it can be. In this chapter, you’ll learn why revision is important, and you will receive suggestions on how to turn your first draft into a second draft, your second draft into a third, and so on, until you have a polished manuscript that’s ready for publication.

Chapter 9, Soliciting Feedback

Chapter 9 shows you to how to invite early readers to provide constructive criticism on your work. In this chapter, you will learn why feedback is important, and you’ll receive some basic guidelines that will help you find reviewers who are qualified to critique your work. You’ll also learn when it’s appropriate to solicit feedback, as well as what to do with the feedback you receive, and you will learn the proper way to deal with your personal feelings when you receive feedback you don’t agree with.

Chapter 10, Last Steps

Chapter 10 is designed to introduce you to the elements that most publishers expect you to supply when you submit a completed manuscript, to provide you with guidelines on how to review your material as it moves through the publication process, and to give you some ideas on how to promote your published work. In this chapter, you will learn about the elements that make up the front matter and the back matter, and you’ll be shown how to prepare both the byline and credit line for an article and the front matter and back matter for a book. You’ll also learn how to submit a completed manuscript to a publisher, as well as how to review copy edits and page proofs. Finally, you will learn how to handle mistakes found after printing, and you’ll be offered some suggestions on how to promote your writing once it’s been published.

CHAPTER 1

Before You Begin

Contrary to popular belief, it is possible to write and get published. But doing so requires more than knowledge of the basic principles of good writing, an understanding of the elements of style, and the ability to sell both yourself and your work to publishers. To become a published author, you must have a burning desire to succeed and you must possess an unshakable determination—an iron-willed resolve to follow through with your desire in spite of what other people say, think, or do. But, more importantly, you must be willing to persevere when the going gets tough. Because, believe me, it will get tough. Especially if your goal is to write a technical book.

This chapter is designed to introduce you to the less-glamorous side of writing—to the reality that, more often than not, writing is hard work. This chapter is also designed to provide some tips and techniques you can use to stay on task once you decide to embark on the journey to become a published author. It begins by emphasizing that writing truly is a job that requires a significant amount of effort on your part. Then, it presents a list of obstacles that frequently get in the way of writing and explains how most of these obstacles are merely excuses for not doing the work required. Next, it provides suggestions on things you can do to write a lot. Then, it continues with a discussion on procrastination and concludes with some tips on how you can break through writer’s block.

Writing Is Hard Work

"If you find that writing is hard, it’s because it is hard."

—William Zinsser

On Writing Well

Just a few decades ago, it was common practice for people to write long letters to family and friends. But, with the invention and subsequent widespread use of the telephone, and later the cell phone, the practice of writing long letters became obsolete. Today, when we want to communicate with our family or friends, we are much more likely to call them or send them a quick e-mail or text message. In fact, some educators are now teaching students how to write with the short message format that’s commonly used with Short Message Service (SMS) text messaging (where abbreviations and acronyms are typically used in place of words). We have become a society that not only looks for, but also teaches, ways to write less.

Writing is hard work, which is one of the reasons why so many of us do as little of it as possible. And, an unfortunate fact of life is that for most people—myself included—writing is always going to be hard work. Your ability to craft well-written sentences will improve with experience and confidence, but the actual task of producing the right well-written sentences and stringing those sentences together to create paragraphs that take the reader on a satisfying journey probably will not get much easier. And, because writing is such hard work, a variety of obstacles frequently get in the way. Therefore, to be successful as a writer, you must learn how to avoid these obstacles.

Obstacles That Get in the Way of Writing

It has been said that there are two great flashes of inspiration in the process of creating an article or a book; the first takes place when the project is initially conceived, and the second occurs when you hold a printed copy of the article or book in your hands. These are separated by a long and seemingly endless time of writing—especially if you are writing a book. Some time after the project is started, inspiration fades and it becomes easy to find reasons not to write. Some of the more common reasons people give for not writing (or for not writing more) include:

I need_before I can write. (Fill in the blank.)

I need to do more research.

I can’t seem to find the time to write.

I can only write when I’m inspired.

A close examination, however, reveals that these are not reasons, but merely excuses. Let’s examine each one and see why.

I need___before I can write. (Fill in the blank.)

In order to write, all a man needs is paper and a pencil.

—William Saroyan

The Bicycle Rider in Beverly Hills

Of all the reasons given for not writing, this one is the weakest. Unproductive writers often complain that they can’t write (or that they can’t write more) because they don’t have a quiet place to work. Or a good computer. Or fast Internet access. Or just about anything else that you can imagine.

The truth is that in order to write, all you really need is access to a computer, some kind of word processing software, and somewhere to sit. (In this day and age, paper and pencil have been replaced with computers and word processing software; thus, the statement Saroyan made is true only if you don’t plan on getting your writing published.) This book was written on a 15-inch Apple MacBook Pro using Microsoft Word 2008 for Mac. Most of the time, I worked at a small desk located in a corner of my living room, and I sat in a $99 computer chair that was purchased from Staples. The only other items I used for this writing project were an Apple keyboard with numeric keypad, an Apple Magic mouse, an mStand laptop stand, and a Toshiba 500 GB external hard drive (for Time Machine backups). I could just as easily have worked without the keyboard, mouse, and laptop stand, since the MacBook Pro comes with a built-in keyboard and trackpad, but I like the feel of a normal-sized keyboard, and I’m more comfortable performing cut-and-paste operations with a mouse.

Although you don’t necessarily need this in order to write, it’s also a good idea to have some kind of backup media at your disposal (assuming you are doing your writing on a computer). And you should back up your writing often so you don’t run the risk of losing your work. (A friend of mine once lost several chapters of a book in progress when the computer she was working on failed; unfortunately, because she didn’t have backup copies of her work available, she was forced to rewrite everything she had lost.) Any time I am working on a writing project, I back up all my work to a USB drive on a regular basis, and when the project is over and done with, I burn everything to a CD or DVD for permanent safekeeping.

Tip:

As you work on your manuscript, if you decide to delete a significant a mount of text from a particular file, make a backup copy of that file before you perform the deletion. If you discover later on that you need some of the text that was deleted and you have a backup copy available, retrieving the deleted text becomes a simple process. (For this reason, many writers prefer to keep multiple versions of their files to maintain a running history of significant changes that have been made to a particular document.)

I need to do more research.

At first glance, this statement seems reasonable. After all, the development of most technical articles and books requires you to perform some amount of research. If you’re an expert on the topic you plan to write about, the amount of research needed may be minimal. On the other hand, if your knowledge of the subject is limited, a significant amount of research may be required.

However, when it comes to technical writing, your research should consist of reading, outlining, and performing any testing and data analysis that is necessary to generate text. Start by studying what’s already in print, then turn your attention to what others have overlooked. More specifically, look for important resources that other writers have ignored. (Keep in mind that editors don’t want and can’t use information found in other publications; they’re looking for fresh ideas and new material or material that’s presented from a unique point of view.) Find out as much about your subject as possible; when you sit down to write your article or book, you will find that it is far better to have too much information than not enough. But, keep in mind that you don’t have to know everything there is to know about a particular subject to write about it.

One of the biggest pitfalls writers must avoid when conducting research is falling into the trap of doing nothing but research. It’s not uncommon for writers—especially beginning writers—to spend so much time researching their topic that they never get around to writing about it (which is why I need to do more research is a popular reason people give for not writing). One way to avoid this trap is to establish an end point for your research before you begin. When this end point is reached, put your research material aside, gather your notes, and turn your attention to the task of writing.

Note:

Some authors prefer to conduct their research in discrete units, say one chapter at a time, and complete the writing for that unit before continuing. There’s nothing wrong with this approach, provided you don’t fall into the trap of letting your research efforts prohibit you from finishing the entire writing project.

I can’t seem to find the time to write.

In today’s fast-paced world, time is a precious commodity, so it’s easy to believe that this is a credible excuse for not writing; it’s reassuring to think that circumstances are beyond your control and that you would write more if only you didn’t have such a hectic schedule. But, if you’re under the impression that you can write only when you can find the time, you’ll never do a lot of writing. Why? Because finding time to write is a destructive way of thinking—instead of finding the time to write, you have to make the time to write. Successful writers make time for writing and then use that time to write (or re-write).

Over the past fourteen years, I have authored twenty-two books (most of which are over 600 pages in length) and numerous magazine articles, tutorials, and technical white papers. And, although all of the white papers and eight of the books were written during normal work hours as part of my job, the bulk of my writing has been done after work, on my own time. So, how do I make the time to write? When I’m under contract to deliver a manuscript, I limit phone use, I cut out all leisure reading, and I drastically reduce the amount of television I watch. In other words, I avoid doing anything that can impede my productivity and make me