On Writing

Sometime in late 2000 (I think that's right.. 7 years exceeds my reliable memory span for dates/events) I was working in the Portland, Oregon area and just happened to get a random extra invite to a 3-hour event Microsoft was putting on. They gave us breakfast, so that obviously meant I would attend (Free food exceeds technical merit in terms of deciding whether to attend!).

This is where Microsoft unleashed the .NET Framework 1.0 pre-alpha on the world. Basically we got some bits that included the C# compiler (csc.exe), and the core runtime. Visual Studio .NET did not exist yet, neither did any documentation on the language, except a book that was published a couple months after that event that contained a 70-something page description of the C# specification, but almost no documentation on the BCL (Base Class Library) at all.

While painfully trying to write code with no documentation using notepad and CSC, I got upset and wrote a quick letter to Wrox press - the people who published nearly all of my then dog-eared books on "legacy" ASP, VBScript, COM, etc. I told them they needed to get off their butts and publish something on the .NET Framework, because it was going to change development as we know it. They wrote back asking me if I'd be interested in writing a chapter. That chapter grew into six more, which grew into me contributing to just over half the chapters for my first book, Professional .NET Framework which was published in 2001.

So then over the next 6 years I contributed to another 13 or so books. I say "or so" because I think there's a VB.NET book that I didn't contribute any prose to - someone converted my C# from one of the books, left the prose basically unchanged, and the book was then republished as a VB.NET book so I don't really like claiming credit for that one.

Where the introspection starts is I look back on the last six years and I wonder - was it really worth it? I think about the amount of time I spent in my "zone" where I was inaccessible to my wife and now my daughter. I think about all of the time it took to write those books. In case you're curious, it takes a flaming truckload of time to write these books, even if you have a co-author. I keep wondering about what I missed while writing the books.

To be blunt, I don't really know what it feels like to be relaxed at this point. When I get home from work, I have a very short transition period involving somehow finding something to eat before I switch into "book mode" where I start work on the latest chapter. I think I've posted it before, but I am driven.. not just driven , but driven in bold and italics ... to learn. This uncontrollable urge to learn has, for the last 6 years, been somewhat satiated by the learning required in order to write the books.

I originally started writing the books to satisfy this need because my day jobs had all been boring and didn't provide anything remotely close to a challenge. So I manufactured a challenge and excitement in the form of learning and writing books. Now that I have an extremely satisfying and challenging day job... I often find myself looking at all the work I'm doing and I ask myself... Why?

I don't know anymore. Sometimes I think that I've been writing for so long (6+ years), that the thought of coming home and not working on a book has become scary - it's become something that my brain is so used to doing that it rebels when I don't do it - a strange kind of withdrawal, if you will.

When I spend time with my family, I often feel guilty for not working on the books. That's what really scares me, because I should feel guilty for working on the book instead of spending time with the family. I've read the dedications in a lot of technical books where the authors thank their families for putting up with them during the book writing. You might think that's just a sappy line, but there is a real, expensive price to be paid for devoting the time and energy required to write a book. Some people get paid to travel around the country and present powerpoints and evangelise and their schedule makes it a little easier for them to also write books... but when you commute for an hour each way, you work a full day, and you have a family... you can't possibly write books without paying a price.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with this post and it feels kind of rambling and disorganized, but that's kind of how I've been feeling lately. There is a misconception that technical book authors wake up in the morning, saunter into a den in their smoking jacket with pipe and a few hours later they emerge with a shiny new chapter. While that might work for people who have made enough on their books to not need a job (like Stephen King, Terry Brooks, Robert Jordan, etc), but that's just not even close to the reality for many technical authors.

At some point in the recent past, I saw a comment where someone actually accused me of not having a "real job" like the "rest of you", implying that my day is filled with buttferlies flapping, faeries singing and half-naked women fanning me and feeding me grapes while pontifications of such greatness pour out of my very orifices... I have been writing code for my job for the last 13 years, and writing code for my hobby for the past 22 years, and writing blog posts, articles, and books has been squeezed into that time that some people consider "spare" but my family considers "where is Kevin/daddy?" time.

So next time you see a technical author walking around a Borders or Barnes and Noble, and he looks pretty damn tired, buy his book and give the poor guy a hug, as there's very little that is glamorous or even fun about being a tech author. It's something we do because we are uncontrollably compelled to do - for better or worse.

tags: writing  blogging  publications  introspection  

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