Writing

There are 45 posts filed in Writing (this is page 3 of 5).

A first look at Bookdown for book publishing

I recently completed the first draft of a book using Google Docs (subject is how to create a social media presence through your own web site and newsletter), but when I saved a copy as a PDF, it did not look as good as I would like. I had been considering trying out Scribus (an open source desktop publishing tool), but had read about the Bookdown toolset when I was looking at some resources on the R programming language. This weekend, I decided to install the toolset and see how much effort that took and what the results looked like.

The creator of Bookdown has written a book on how to create books with Bookdown, so I thought I would start there with the Get Started page/section. I downloaded a repo from Github containing a demo book. Next, I downloaded and installed RStudio, which is supposed to be used to create the book. In the process of installation and startup, I found out that I needed to download and install R as well – ooops! Funny how this was not mentioned in the Get Started page….

The next step was to install the bookdown package using the R IDE. However, there was a popup asking if I wanted to set up a separate library. I clicked “No” and tried to install, but got the error message that the R library was not writable. After some searching, I found this Stack Exchange post that addressed this problem…again, interesting that this was not in the book.

Finally, I got the bookdown package installed, opened the demo book, and was able to build the book in HTML form. The console displaying info on the build process showed some errors in generating ePub and PDF versions of the book. The Get Started page indicated that another toolset (TinyTek) was needed for the PDF output. I used the Windows batch file to install Tiny Tek, and went ahead and restarted all the apps (R, RStudio). I then rebuilt the book, it took 1-2 minutes to generate the demo book in PDF form. It had a few pagination problems, but looked ok. Overall, I spent about an hour working through these steps. I will explore it some more, but will also check out Scribus as well. To me, I would have to go through some effort to convert my book draft to R Markdown. If Scribus could create a book with less work, I might head in that direction.

 

 

How I am getting things done on Christmas projects

TL/DR version: make a short list, break tasks down, prioritize, be gentle with yourself

Full version:

My company has a holiday shutdown at the end of the year, and I usually take enough vacation so I get a two week break – nice! In the past, I have tried to take advantage of this time to do lots of things, but ended up not completing a lot. This year, I decided to change how I approached this opportunity:

Step 1: Make a short list of projects to accomplish

After reviewing the things I might want to do, I settled on two large tasks that I had not made any progress on in the last month. One was a writing project to document the tools and processes I used to create and publish the Portland Protest News website. I had an outline that was several months old, but had not made time to get this done. The second task was starting to read How to Engineer Software by Steve Tockey. I had watched some videos of him talking about the use of semantic modeling, and was intrigued enough to buy his 1100-page book. However, it has been sitting on my desk for almost a month, and I had only opened it once.

Step 2: Break tasks down

For the writing task, I decided to go for a daily word count of 500 words per day, following Jeff Goins’ Three Bucket System for starting a writing habit. For the reading task, I set a goal of one chapter a day. With these constraints, I hoped that I could fit these in around holiday activities and still feel a sense of accomplishment.

Step 3: Prioritize

I worked to try to do these as soon as possible each day. That did not always work, but knowing that these were my most important items to get done helped me to maintain focus.

Step 4: Be gentle with yourself

If there was a day where I did not get both tasks done (or maybe none!), I decided that was going to be ok. After all, this was a vacation, not a job!

Results:

I have completed my first week of vacation, and managed to write at least 500 words each day. I completed 5 chapters in the book, so there were two days I did not complete my reading task. But that’s ok! I feel good about what I have gotten done, and managed to fit in a few more things (like this blog post).

I hope this is helpful – let me know what you think about my method!

 

I am back

For my five loyal readers, I wanted to let you know that I am returning to active posting on this site. I have been spending the majority of my writing time on my Portland Protest News site, but I am drawing that to a close. Another obstacle was a unforseen hospital stay a few weeks ago, but I have pretty much recovered from that, so I think it is time to jump back in. I have a few posts on the 1999 blog tool to get out, as well as some other items of note, so sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride!

Replied to Building a Day Log Habit by Ton Zijlstra (zylstra.org)

Last week I joined an IndieWeb conversation on blogs and wikis. I ended up with three take-aways. One of them was a tip by another participant to keep a day log as a means to add more to the wiki, do more wiki gardening. Writing a list of things you do during the day as you go along, you can the use…

Ton, I am replying to your post, I had been keeping a daily journal of what I was doing, but your description of  a day log includes a little more, I am going to try that this week.

Bookmarked 10 top writing tips and the psychology behind them (withoutbullshit.com)

writing tips Photo: Wikimedia commons
There are plenty of folks happy to tell you how to write better, just as any doctor will tell you to “eat right and exercise.” But changing your writing (or eating) habits only happens when you understand why you do what you do. I can help you with that.
…

from Josh Bernoff

Bookmarked Should you write a book during the viral apocalypse? (withoutbullshit.com)

Image: Leonid Pasternak via Wikimedia Commons
You’re stuck at home. You have internet access and, maybe, a little more time to yourself. Should you write a book?
This advice is mainly for those who write business books and self-help books to gain influence — my primary audience. But I hope that…

Another great post from Josh Bernoff on breaking a big project into manageable pieces.

 

Bookmarked

A good set of writing principles for all writing.

Starting off the year 2020 – My Three Words

As I came to work this morning, I began to think about how to start the New Year. Over the Christmas break, I did some listening/reading at Sean McCabe’s website on writing (It All Starts With Writing, podcast episodes 39, 139, 303). I would like to do more writing in 2020. I also listened to an Akimbo episode on “showing your work“. Harold Jarche (Seek-Sense-Share) and Dave Winer (Narrate Your Work) are other views on this topic.

Other thoughts that I had:

  • If you keep doing the same things, you will get the same results
  • Failing to plan means planning to fail

After this reflection, I think the three words I would like to guide my year (following Ron Chester’s example) is – Read Write Help.

 

Report on building my daily writing habit – September 2019

I started again on a quest to build a daily writing habit back in August. Since August 13, I wrote 18 posts in August (one a day) and 4 posts so far in September (again, 1 a day). I decided to use my weblog as the writing tool, with the goal of at least 100 words in a post (WordPress has a word count in the editor, so it’s easy to check). During the work week, I do my writing at lunch (before I do any web surfing…). Sometimes I have a topic in mind, but if not, I read through the new items in my RSS reader app (powered by River5) and find something to comment about. I have also talked about some software activities I am involved in, as well as a resumption of interest in computer music stuff. Today, I read a post from Colin Devroe about bad reasons not to blog, and I think I have avoided most of these. He also has a list of blogging tips which I think I will try to incorporate in my writing.

So far, I have only had problems once or twice in getting to 100 words, so this is a reachable goal for me. The other important part of the habit was making it a priority (I tried writing at lunch before, but ran out of time after web surfing, so I changed the order and – voila – I was able to write!).