Earnest means “serious in intention, purpose, or effort”. It means serious in the pursuit of one’s goals. One of the qualities all successful writers have in common is the earnest desire to write. It is a quality that every writer, who wants to become successful, should acquire.

Like any other creative profession, writing too is 90 percent perspiration and 10 percent inspiration. Every successful writer will tell you the importance of making writing a part of your daily life—a routine activity or habit like sleeping, eating, or bathing.

The amount of time, the exact time of the day (or night), the place, the writing material—all can vary depending on the individual.

Some people choose early mornings to write. Some others write late in the night, after everyone has gone to sleep. Yet another group of writers write both in the morning and evening. Some of them use mornings to write and evenings to revise and edit. Some write for 4-5 hours at a stretch. Some others write for 2 hours in the morning and 3 hours at night. It is a matter of individual preference.

Some people use pen and paper; some use computer; yet another group writes their first drafts or outlines on paper and then key-in the work once they have got their ideas in place. Some writers use a Dictaphone to capture the ideas and later transcribe them on to the computer or notebook. Again it is a matter of preference.

One important thing every writer needs is a writing space—a quite place where he can practice his craft without interruptions and disturbances. It can be a well equipped study, it can be a table in corner of your room, or it can be the dining table when it is not used. You can use any place as your writing space as long as it is comfortable, you can write without interruptions and disturbances, and it is available every day at your preferred time. Some writers have the gift or ability to write whenever they want and wherever they want. But for most writers, writing space is a must for producing quality output.

Irrespective of the location, duration and mechanism of writing, one factor that separates successful writers form others is that they show up to write; day after day, week after week, month after month, and no doubt year after year.

Some days you won’t be able to write anything. You just keep staring at the blank page or the empty screen. Don’t get upset or become frustrated. It happens to all writers. There are good days and bad days. But the important thing is to show up for work—to write, to read, to research, to edit, to revise, to rewrite and to write again.

You can do many things to hone your craft on your bad days. You can read, learn new words and new usages of words you know, read books on the craft of writing, solve crossword puzzles, play word games, and so on. So even if you are unable to write on a particular day, it won’t be a waste of time. You are improving your craft, learning new skills, practicing the ones you already know; all with the aim of improving your writing.

If you are stuck or you don’t have a topic to write about, you can use the prompts available in many books on writing and idea generation. But for a person who keeps his eyes, ears and mind open, I don’t think there will be any shortage of ideas.

It is not very important whether you write or do some activity related to writing. If you write, what you write is not very important. The important thing is to sit in front of your computer or notebook at your allotted writing time every day without fail. Some days you will be able to write and some days you won’t. Some days you will write pretty ordinary stuff; some other days you will write exceptionally well and on a few occasions you will create magic. But for creating the magic, you have to show up and be prepared to capture it.

As they drove away, Gallagher asked, voice slightly muffled, “How did you manage to do such a difficult task so naturally and this fast?”
“Practice, Sean, that is what it takes. Lots of practice,” Martineau told him and turned into the road that led towards Red house.
- Jack Higgins in Night of the Fox.

Once you start and continue practicing your craft day in and day out without fail, your writing will improve and there will be more days when you could write brilliantly and create magic. Once writing becomes part of your daily routine you will find a lot of things to write about as your subconscious mind is always working in the background generating ideas and crafting stories for you. So, as you progress, your writing will become effortless, the ideas will flow smoothly, the words will come marching out and arrange themselves into beautiful sentences and most of the days you will be able to write something worthwhile.

Once you become a ‘daily writer‘ your output—the amount of quality material that you can produce—will improve and soon you will have something substantial to share with others—an article, an essay, a story, a poem or even a book! Happy writing…

“The most difficult part of being a writer is living the life. There are no guarantees that you will be a success, and, if you are, there are no guarantees that you will continue to succeed. But you keep on working. You have no choice: it’s as if being a writer is encoded in your DNA.”

So starts the wonderful book —The Constant Art of Being a Writer: The Life, Art & Business of Fiction by N. M. Kelby, the award-winning novelist and short story writer. Even though this book deals mainly with writing fiction, writers of other genres will also benefit tremendously from this book.

The book is divided into three parts—The Life, The Work, and The Business. The first part—The Life—explores how to live the life of a writer. It explores the issues like how the writer’s life and the lives of people close to him change and how to adapt to such a life. It explains why writers write, even at the risk of losing everything they hold dear. This part also gives practical advice on how to set up your writing practice, emphasizes the need for a writing space and how to design one for you, the importance of writing regularly and creating a routine, etc. It also deals with topics like how to read as a writer, what to read, how to capture your thoughts and ideas, how to review books you have read and learn from them, how to create your support system, whether to join a writing community or create one, etc. You will also find topics like the importance of understanding your reader and how to do it, techniques to overcome the writer’s block, how to develop yourself, tips on how to apply for grants, fellowships, residencies, etc., whether to quit or keep your day job, how to manage your finances, why you should never give up, etc.

The second part—The Work—deals with the craft of writing. It starts with advice on how to generate ideas for your story and moves on to details like creating and developing characters, choosing the style, voice, tense, and point of view for your story, and how to structure and build the plot—beginning, middle, and end. This part also explores the different writing styles like magic realism, metafictive structure, and humor, how to create the outline of your story, how to research for your work, how to revise and fix problems, etc. One of the best chapters in this part is on creating bestsellers—tips on writing, presenting, targeting, marketing, and promoting your book so that it becomes a bestseller. This part also deals with tips on improving your visibility by sending the work for contests, sending them to publications for reviews, etc.

The final part—The Business—deals with the issues like agents, whether you need them, finding one that is right for you, dealing with them, etc. It also addresses the topics like contracts, your rights, what to look for in the contracts, how to sell your rights, and tips on negotiating great deals, This part deals with how to handle poor sales, how to improve the sales, how to deal with publicity, how to avoid burnouts, how to promote your book by creating your website, using images and videos, creating book trailers, blogging, networking, etc. There is an excellent chapter on book tours, book fairs and festivals, bookstore appearances, and tips on how to make the best use of these promotional activities without wasting too much of your time. It also deals with whether or not to employ a publicist and how to deal with her. This part also examines the pros and cons of self-publishing and gives useful tips and advice.

Then there are two appendices: one is a glossary of publishing jargon and the other is a list of books that will inspire and motivate you and keep you going (the surprising omission being On Writing Well by William Zinsser).

One of the best advices of the book is in the Introduction—Never waste a word on the page.

This is a MUST READ for every writer.

Book Details:

• Author: N.M. Kelby
• Publisher: Writer’s Digest Books
• Edition & Year: First, 2009
• ISBN: 9781582975757
• Cover & Page Count: Paperback, 262 Pages

Jack Heffron, the author of this book, is a freelance writer, editor, actor, and teacher. In this book he has created a resource that will help writers to jump start their writing by developing ideas from the more than 400 prompts.

According to the author writing is an act of hope, courage, joy and celebration. Writing must be approached with a sense of play, of risk and experiment, openness and laughter. You should have fun when writing.

The book is divided into four sections, each geared toward a different stage of writing, offer dozens of unique approaches to unleash your creativity. All the chapters contains prompts that will help you generate ideas for your stories, essays, novels, journal entries, etc.

Part I (Bending and Stretching) contains four chapters—Making Your Way to Schenectady, Enemies of Creativity, Leading a Creative Life and Getting Ready to Write. This part is mainly concerned with the good habits that writers should develop like showing up (keeping a specific time to write), accepting the difficulty of creative writing process and learning to tackle it, making writing a habit or part of the daily routine, turning obstacles into opportunities, etc. It also describes the enemies of creativity—procrastination, talking, critiquing, judging, not enjoying the writing and not writing. According to the author, “Write regularly and you will find ideas flowing through you.” This section also talks about the topics like where to write (creating your own writing space), when you should write and how you should do it. All these things varies depending on the individual needs of each writer. This section helps the one that will work best for you. It also emphasizes the importance of taking chances and risks. The final chapter of this section deals with creativity techniques that will help you gain momentum. The techniques include free writing, brainstorming, automatic writing, listing, clustering, cave writing, cut and paste, mix and match, etc.

Part II (Exploring) contains 13 chapters—I Yam What Yam and Other Lies, Schnitzel with Noodles, Nellie Malone from Fifth and Stone, With a Banjo on my Knee, Thought of a Sundrenched Elsewhere, What’s Your Road, Man?, The Love You Make, Don’t Get me Started, Your Fifteen Minutes, All Our Secrets are the Same, Minding other People’s Business, A Day in the Life of a Writer, and A Life of the Spirit. This part identifies the different sources—yourself, family, country, hobbies, likes and dislikes, relationships, emotions, other peoples interests, etc.—from where you can generate ideas for your writing and explains how to do it. It also offers numerous prompts to get you started. It is one of the most interesting sections of the book and will help you in writing many stories and essays than you ever thought possible.

Part III (Finding Form) contains five chapters—Of Sonnets and Toasters, Fools Like You, The Shape of Thing to Come, It All Depends on Your Point of View, Other Rooms, Other Voices, Vast is the Power of Cities, It was the Best of Times, A Sort of Miracle. This part deals with choosing your form, how to create and develop characters, how to deal with space and time, how to tell the story, who should tell the story, ho to create great openings and endings, etc.

Part IV (Assessing and Developing) contains four chapters—What’s at Stake, Sitting Still, Tell it Slant, and Anything is Beautiful if You Say it is. In this section, the author introduces the finer points of the craft of writing like adding details, introducing symbols, not telling everything, and so on.

This is a book that is quite useful for a beginner. It gives a lot of practical advice and the prompts will help one find topics and generate ideas for writing and make writing a daily routine. A book worth reading and there are some real gems that will be useful for all.

Book Details:

• Author: Jack Heffron
• Publisher: Writer’s Digest Books
• Edition & Year: First, 2000
• ISBN: 9781582971797
• Cover & Page Count: Paperback, 262 Pages

The Book Publishing Process

The different phases of the publishing process are:
1. Book Idea
2. Book Proposal
3. Proposal Review
4. Signing the Contract/MoA
5. Schedules, Milestones, and Deliverables
6. Writing
7. Technical Review and Manuscript Modification
8. Copy-editing
9. Author Review of Copy-edited Manuscript
10. Typesetting
11. Indexing
12. Proof Reading
13. Cover Design and Selection
14. Printing
15. Binding
16. Marketing & Promotion
17. Sales & Distribution

The book publishing process will vary considerably from publisher to publisher. But the phases given in this section will be present in most cases. We will see the different phases in more detail in the next sections.

[Note: This is the first draft of the book. I would require your comments, suggestions and feedback to make the book more useful, interesting, and as error free as possible. Please send your comments, suggestions and feedback to me.]

Brooks is a software engineer and computer scientist, best known for managing the development of OS/360, then later writing candidly about the process in his seminal book “The Mythical Man-Month.” Mythical Man-Month changed the way software was developed and Brooks’s law became one of the most important laws of software project management and Brooks became a cult figure in the software engineering field.

Humphrey is also a software engineer, key thinker in the discipline of software engineering, and is often called the father of software quality. His books Managing the Software Process and A Discipline for Software Engineering are ‘must reads’ for software engineers.

Weinberg is author or co-author of several hundred articles and more than 30 books. In 1971 he published the book The Psychology of Computer Programming, which is considered by many the beginning of the study of software engineering as human behavior.

Davis is a software engineer and has held numerous teaching and consulting positions in various organizations and universities around the world. He has written five books and in 2006 his book 201 Principles of Software Development was voted by ACM members as one of the 20 classic computer science books.

McConnell is an author of many software engineering textbooks including Code Complete, Rapid Development, and Software Estimation. In 1998, McConnell was named as one of the three most influential people in the software industry by Software Development Magazine, along with Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds. Code Complete is considered as a software engineer’s Bible.

What is the secret behind the phenomenal success of these authors? Their books have passed the test of time and remain as bestsellers. They continue to influence the new generation of software engineers as they did the earlier generations. Their lecture tours are fully booked and they speak before jam-packed audiences.

These authors are great speakers and excellent in written and oral communication; they have the ability to explain and illustrate complex topics in simple terms that even a novice can understand; they have comprehensive knowledge of their areas of specialization; they have years of experience in dealing with real-life problems (both technical and management) and solving them; they continue to learn; they contribute immensely to the development of the profession by teaching, mentoring, and writing; and they work real hard.

If a person has all these attributes and if he or she decides to write a book, the chances of that book becoming a success are very high. The reason is that the book such a person write will be interesting, easy-to-read and understand, engaging, and will give practical know-how and wisdom that a professional can right away apply to his/her work.

In this book we will see how to write a book that will be interesting, engaging, readable and of practical value. We will examine the successful authors and their secrets and will find out how some people continue to write bestsellers while majority of the professionals do not even think about writing a book.

[Note: This is the first draft of the book. I would require your comments, suggestions and feedback to make the book more useful, interesting, and as error free as possible. Please send your comments, suggestions and feedback to me.]

In this book you will find comprehensive information about how to write technical books. You will find tips and tricks, tool and techniques, software and hardware resources, etc. that will assist you in becoming more productive. You will find strategies and techniques that will help you in marketing the book better and making it popular. You will also find information about how to make extra income and how to move up the career.

The tips, techniques and strategies discussed in this book are applicable to all who write technical books. The examples and case studies in the book will be mainly from computer science, information technology and management fields as they are my areas of specialization. But that will not prevent the readers from other fields (say medicine, commerce, or chemistry) in understanding the book as the examples will be generic and I will not be using any jargon.

This is not a site on how to get your book published. Even though the issues like how to find a publisher, how to write the winning book proposal forms and synopses, what are things that you should be aware of in the contract, etc. are covered, they are not the main objective of this book.

The primary audience of this book, as mentioned earlier, is people who are writing or are planning to write a book—a technical book. It will provide you information about how to organize and structure your book, how to add value to the information that you are providing, how to research and write more efficiently and effectively, and so on. It will make you more productive so that you can finish the books faster without compromising on the quality. The book will arm you with information and tools that will help you in improving the quality, visibility, and sales of the book.

I wish you all the very best in your writing endeavors and hopes that the inputs and knowledge that you gain from the book will help in making your book a bestseller.

[Note: This is the first draft of the book. I would require your comments, suggestions and feedback to make the book more useful, interesting, and as error free as possible. Please send your comments, suggestions and feedback to me.]

Forgetting the readers and their level of understanding is one of the major reasons for a failed book. But it is one aspect that authors often ignore. So, let me say it once again—READER is the King. As a technical writer, you are the expert; you know the subject well; you know which areas are difficult to learn and which concepts are tough to grasp. So it is your duty as the author to simplify, illustrate and demonstrate the subject and its concepts in such a way the user will understand. If you can write in an ‘easy-to-read’ style so that the reader does not lose interest and can present the topics in an engaging manner then your readers will love your book.

Some of the techniques to simplify the difficult topics and make it easy to learn is the use of examples, case studies, diagrams, illustrations, photographs, tables, graphs, quizzes, trivia, etc. If the examples given are based on your experience, they will give the book a personal touch and that is very important to connect with the readers. The real-world case studies will help the readers to understand how the concepts are applied in real life and how they help in solving real problems.

Studies show that communicating visually, illustrating your message with visuals, is more than six times as effective as communicating with text alone. A single diagram, illustration, or photograph can convey what pages of text can. For example, the organization of an ERP implementation team is best understood if it is given as an organizational chart, rather than trying to explain it using words.

Organization of the ERP Implementation Team

So, use figures and illustrations appropriately and effectively. The photographs that are used should be apt for the situation. The figures should be neatly drawn and should be able to convey the concept clearly instead of confusing the reader. Here the author must take the help of a graphic artist, if he/she is not proficient in creating high quality sketches and clear diagrams.

Tables and graphs are used to present data that is difficult to convey as text. For example, the percentage of different types of software maintenance can be best expressed in the form of a Pie graph.

Percentage Distribution of Maintenance Activities by Type

The relationship between the cost of correcting a bug and the stage of software development where it is discovered is best illustrated using a table. Rather than writing pages of text, one can just give a single sentence—“it is better to find the bugs as early as possible as the cost of correcting the code increases as the software moves from design to production.” Then a table of the cost of of correcting a bug during the different stages of software development can be given.

Quizzes, interesting facts, and tidbits can be included in the book to keep the readers involved and interested. The quizzes will also help the reader in self-evaluation.

So when you are writing something the first thing you should consider is the target audience of the book—for whom the book is written. Once you identify the knowledge level of your readers—beginner, intermediate, advanced, etc.—you can decide on the writing style and the terminology that is best suited for the book. A book for beginners will be boring for an advanced reader; similarly an advanced book would be beyond the comprehension of a beginner. You can specify for whom you have written the book in the preface—Who should read this book?

If you have to include the introductory and advanced topics in the same book, then try to build the concepts and fundamentals in the initial chapters and introduce the advanced topics once the readers have a working knowledge of the subject. Also you can flag the difficult topics and can advise the beginners to skip those topics.

When you write a book or article with readers in mind, your writing style will change to suit the reader. The length of sentences, the choice of words will also change. The number of illustrations, photographs, and the presentation style will also vary. All these changes will go a long way in improving the usability of the book and the value it will deliver. So, when you are writing the next time, think about the readers and what they want.

One of the questions many aspiring writers ask is “When is the right time to start writing?” The answer in a single word is NOW!

A person who wants to write something, may it be a book, an article, a blog post, or even a letter can start writing as soon as he thinks about it.

In the case of writing about a technical subject, you will never start, if you wait for an appropriate or auspicious time. You know the subject, you know what you want to write and you know how you want to write about it. Then why wait? Start now…

Many people make the mistake of putting off the actual writing giving various reasons—I will start writing as soon as I finish this project; I will start as soon as I finish the research; I will start as soon as I finish this novel, etc. But in most cases, there will always be some reason or other to prevent you from writing. You have to get rid of the inertia and make a start. You need to take a conscious effort to do this.

Another common misconception is that you need at least one or two hours uninterrupted hours to start writing. While uninterrupted hours is great time for writing, you will be surprised how much you can accomplish with shorter durations—even five minutes could used productively if you know how to use it.

Every writer should know how to breakdown the work into small units. Some of these units might need a couple of hours while some others might take only a couple of minutes. Once you have the set of tasks with you, you can choose one that suits the time that is available to you.

Suppose you are waiting at the airport or railway station. You have 30 minutes before the journey. You can finish a small chapter or a section of a chapter in that time. While on the plane, train, bus, or car, you can spend your time constructively. You can write if you want; you can read an article or a book that you need for the next chapter; you can organize your notes or thoughts, and so on.

Once you start looking for writing time, you will realize that there are so many slots available for you to write or do something that will help you in writing.

So don’t wait. Start writing and continue writing whenever you can. You can carry a pocket notebook, (I recommend Moleskine), your laptop, PDA, or smart-phone with you. You will be amazed by the writing opportunities and with your improved productivity.

Irrespective of whether you are a novice or a seasoned writer, you can always improve your craft by reading what the masters have written. George Orwell is one such master. One essay that is a must read for every writer is his essay “Politics and the English Language.” Given below are the questions and rules on good writing taken from the essay.

When writing a sentence you should always ask yourself these questions:

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
5. Could I put it more shortly?
6. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

When choosing words, follow those rules:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

This is a book that talks about the craft of writing from a master craftsman who has written more than 50 bestselling, novels. He has also written many novellas, short stories, essays, and articles.

In this book King describes his life, his writing and how to improve both. In King’s case, the writing career and the personal life are tightly intertwined, which makes reading more interesting as the book is replete with personal details and anecdotes as it is with knowledge and wisdom that one gains through extensive practice of one’s craft. King’s passion for life and writing shines through each and every page of the book.

The book is divided into 5 sections—C.V., What Writing Is, Toolbox, On Writing, and On Living: A Postscript. It also has two appendices—Door Shut, Door Open (an example on editing and rewriting) and A Booklist (a list of books recommended by the author).

The fist section—C.V.—contains King’s childhood memories and his growth as a writer from a novice teenage writer to a novelist while struggling to make a living. It contains glimpses and snapshots of King’s childhood, teenage, and youth. King describes how, his mother, brother and he struggled to meet the ends with his mom’s paycheck and how he became interested in writing and what sort of writing he did during his childhood, and teenage and how it influenced him. It describes, when and how King met his future wife and how they fell in love and are still in love. The section ends when King’s writing career is poised to take off—he has published a few novels, had become a drug addict and got out of addiction and has realized that “Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way round.”

In the second section—What Writing Is—King tells you that it is telepathy. He then goes on to explain his theory. In the section named ‘Toolbox,’ King uses the analogy of a toolbox and its contents to explain the skills needed for a writer. The cardinal principal is that the more one practices the better his writing becomes. To quote the author, “If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time or the tools to write.” King’s toolbox for writers contains tools like vocabulary, grammar, hard work, and so on. He gives some general rules about his likes and dislikes, what is good and what is not (avoid passive voice, eliminate the use of adverbs, etc.), but points the readers to Elements of Style by Strunk & White for more on grammar and usage.

The fourth section titled ‘On Writing’ is the heart of the book. This is where King explains the intricacies of writing—writing fiction. Readers get advise on how to create an environment that promotes writing, how to get ideas for writing, how to begin the story, how to develop the characters, how much details is required, why it’s important to tell the truth, how to prevent writer’s block, how to edit and rewrite, how to find a select group of reviewers, how to handle criticism and so on. It also has a section on literary agents and how to find them. This section, like all sections of the book, is full of anecdotes, real world examples, and experiences.

The final section (On Living: A Postscript) is about his accident that nearly killed him in 1999. He was hit by a van during his morning walk. He had chipped his spine in several places, had multiple fractures on both legs and hip and almost bled to death. He survived and slowly got back to his life and completed the book—On Writing—which he had just started before the accident.

According to King, “Writing is magic, as much the water of life as any other creative art. The water is free. So drink. Drink and be filled up.”

This is one of the best books on writing you will ever find. It teaches you a lot of things not only about writing but also about life. King never assumes the role of a teacher; he just tells his story and shares his impressions and his opinions. But in that process, he imparts a lot of knowledge and wisdom to the reader. This book must be on the desktop of every writer—novice and accomplished, beginner and expert. When you are stuck, when you need inspiration or motivation, read this book and you will find what you need. I recommend this book to all writers.

Book Details:

• Author: Stephen King
• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2000
• ISBN: 0684853523
• Cover & Page Count: Hardcover, 288 Pages

You can order online at Amazon.

Copyright © Braintree Books. Reproduced with permission.