Prag Pro Wri Mo

It's time to write that book you've always wanted to write.    

We'll start together on November first and in thirty days or less you'll know if you are meant to write a book or not. Your commitment is to sit down every day and write pages. They don't have to be good pages---they won't be great pages---you'll have plenty of time to fix them later. Keep writing.

Less than a month to find out if you can do something you've always wanted to try. Such a deal.

I'm not saying you will finish the book in thirty days nor that what you write will be worth publishing. I'm saying that by December first you'll know.

You'll have a pile of pages or you won't.

On one hand, if you don't, then you are one of the many people who wants to have written a book but doesn't want to write a book. There's nothing wrong with that. In a month you'll know if that describes you or not.

On the other hand, you might find that you love writing. You've got something to say and you love the hard work it takes to craft words into sentences, sentences into paragraphs, and paragraphs into passages that people want to read. Then you are meant to write a book. You won't be able to stop. You still might not be able to publish your book, but that doesn't keep you from being an author who has written a book.

In between those two hands are the vast majority of us. We write when the planets align. We have blogs but weeks or months might pass between our posts. We can participate in this month of writing by posting a solid blog entry every day for the month of December. Then we might go back to the once in a while or we might continue.

If you're writing a novel or need more infrastructure, check out National Novel Writing Month at NaNoWriMo.org. Really, we're just piggy-backing on their idea. If you are writing a Pragmatic Programmer style book (either for the Pragmatic Bookshelf or for the Pragmatic Life series) then NaNoWriMo may not be for you. We're encouraging you to write anyway. Even if you're not joining NaNoWriMo, check out their web site they have a lot of great resources.

For today, ask yourself if you've always wanted to write a book. Tomorrow we'll try to figure out what it should be about.

Comments

[Jeff Casimir]

Love the idea and was just daydreaming about book writing yesterday. It seems that writing is done best when following an outline, even if it's just a collection of ideas and not a strict guideline.

Will the month kick off with laying the groundwork for successful writing, or should you be ready to go on day 1?

[Julio Greff]

I started to write a book about Git two months ago, but I'm avoiding to sit down and write beyond the third or fourth page (I don't know why, maybe I'm just too lazy...). But I think that this is a chance to write a lot more, and maybe (someday) finish my book =)

[Lyle Johnson]

@Jeff: If it's like NaNoWriMo, you should be ready to go on day one. The emphasis with NaNoWriMo is on volume, not so much quality, since the goal is to reach 50,000 words (or more) by the end of month.

[brian doll]

When I start hacking on a new webapp idea, I usually grab a slick free UI template online and get a basic visual layout in place. This takes very little time, but having a "hello world" page show up in a good looking UI is much more motivating than just plain text on a white otherwise empty page.

To that end, I have always felt like one reason my writing hasn't gone the distance is that I don't have a good publishing process that can cut editions of my writing in a slick layout. Like many among us, I prefer a text editor vs. a "word processor" so this highlights one disadvantage to that choice.

I'm wondering then, if participants in this effort might be extended the opportunity to use the often-heralded Prag publishing toolset. I'm fascinated by the workflow that you guys have developed and would love to have the opportunity to experience writing with that sort of "build your book from source" publishing experience with quick "release" cycles.

Any chance you'd be open to opening that process up for the larger community to use? Certainly if any publishable books came out, it would be a no-brainer to publish with the Prags.

[Eric J. Gruber]

Count me in. I'm eagerly awaiting this, and any tips and pointers for writing a book is appreciated.

I'm a former journalist so writing is not new to me, but writing specifically for a book is.

[Nilesh Thali]

I'm going to try. But let me make sure i understand this: NaNoWriMo has a login and your page, and you update your word count every day (or whenever you feel like it).
i don't see anything on praglife.com with that functionality. Am i missing something?
Thanks,
Nilesh

[Gordo Ruiz]

Count me in. I second the motion to have a look at the Prag publishing toolset -- perhaps at the end of the month?

[Benjamin Geiger]

Has anyone written a PragProg-style book about how to write a PragProg-style book?

[Daniel Ice]

Challenge accepted. I am going to try to write 1 page a day.

[Vitaly Osipov]

I have not written anything serious in years, this might be just what I need to restart my writing "career"...

[Tanja Pislar]

Fantastic idea! .. I will join and hopefully won't give up before the month is finished

[Lisa Crispin]

Writing a little every day is definitely how to write a book. And the reason to write a book (as Mike Cohn advised me) is because you have something to say. I'm not ready to write another one just now, but am happy to provide moral support to those of you who try this!

[Alondo Brewington]

I think it's a great idea and would join in in if I wasn't already writing a novel for NaNoWriMo. Maybe there can be an official PragProWriMo during the summer, to space it out for those of us who want to do both in a year, which leaves enough time to EdYoLibro.

[Brian Bommarito]

I think I may have to actually do this.

I have had a book kicking around in my head for the past year (Prompted by my consulting work as well as the talks I have given) so I may have to write the book.

[Eugene Abarquez]

This is a great idea! Can I join? Also, how do we track our progress?

I have been wanting to write more posts for my blog lately but I am as usual taken over by laziness and procrastination. My blog dashboard is littered with so many unfinished drafts that I really need to start writing. Like write now!

Anyway, great post. I will get back on you and see how I did.

[Paul Klipp]

Count me in. I have three books that keep trying to squeeze out in notes, emails, blog entries, and speeches that really deserve to be books. I'll write either the book on distributed agile or the book on agile outsourcing in November.

[Thomas Crown (AFR)]

This is one of the best ideas I read from a publisher.

So I am not a writer but please please, write this time something about PC not Mac specific stuff.

I am currently searching for a C# Best practices book. This would be so great!

Thanks and good look for all.

[Dale Emery]

I did this three years ago, in October. I called it DaNoFiWriMo: Dale's Non-Fiction Writing Month. As the month progressed, I learned stuff about my writing process, and wrote about that: http://dalewriting.dale.emery.name/tag/danofiwrimo/ (Those blog posts are in reverse chronological order.)

[propecia]

i like this part of the blog:"In between those two hands are the vast majority of us. We write when the planets align. We have blogs but weeks or months might pass between our posts. We can participate in this month of writing by posting a solid blog entry every day for the month of December. Then we might go back to the once in a while or we might continue." is very good

[New York Defensive Driving]

How much time it will take for you to complete a book.

[Outsourcing Philippines]

Is there a recent updates to this site?

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[R4i]

i like this part of the blog:"In between those two hands are the vast majority of us. We write when the planets align. We have blogs but weeks or months might pass between our posts. We can participate in this month of writing by posting a solid blog entry every day for the month of December. Then we might go back to the once in a while or we might continue." is very good

[favourite Jewellery]

So I am not a writer but please please, write this time something about PC not Mac specific stuff.

[R4 ds]

Will the month kick off with laying the groundwork for successful writing, or should you be ready to go on day 1?