Tag: Writing

Having a Reader Focus

I get a number of reader e-mails each month about writing in general and becoming an author in specific. A lot of people write to say that they feel they have one or two books in them. In fact, it’s entirely possible that most people have one or two books that they could write, but becoming an author is more than simply having a good idea. In fact, it’s more than even having talent or education. Yes, good ideas, talent, and education all help, but what an author really needs is a reader. Actually, a whole bunch of readers is important.

When I start to consider a new book idea, I write down goals, topics, and needs that a reader would have (see my post entitled Developing the Reader Profile). There is none of me in that list. It’s the reason I spend so much time encouraging you to write. The more I know about you, the more often I interact with you, the better I become as an author. The whole purpose of writing a book, any book, is to serve the reader. Fiction books provide entertainment and possibly some enlightenment, while non-fiction books tend to educate, enlighten, and possibly entertain the reader. A book that doesn’t serve the reader is doomed to failure. That’s why many vanity books fail. Most vanity books are written to serve the author, not the reader.

It’s fairly common for me to write back to someone about their book idea and get a response that discusses an author need. In all reality, it’s a human response. Giving up self in order to serve another, especially someone who you have never met (and may never meet), is one of the hardest parts of becoming an author. Writing is about helping others in some way, not about making money or becoming famous. There are millions of authors, but there is only one Isaac Asimov (replace Isaac with your favorite author). Authors who make tons of money and achieve lasting fame are extremely rare, but the contributions made by authors as a whole to society could never be met by the few famous authors out there.

Of course, I don’t mean to discourage anyone either. Creating a piece of literature that helps even one person is a rewarding experience. The thank you e-mails I receive each month are worth their weight in gold. It’s not that I want applause—it’s simply makes me happy to know that some bit of information I have learned the hard way has helped someone else do something interesting.

Developing the relationships I have with readers has also helped me considerably over the years. I’ve learned a great deal about places I’ll never see from people I’ll never meet. Working with people from various countries has also broadened my horizons and has enabled me to see things from different perspectives. All of these benefits, and many more, come to the author who has a reader focus. If you really want to be successful, make sure you write for the right reasons and with the correct viewpoint. Let me hear your reader focus questions at [email protected].

 

Improving Your Technical Writing

I receive a number of e-mails each month from people who want to improve their technical writing skills. Most of the people who write are in a technical trade, but not writers by profession. For example, I might get an e-mail from a software engineer or an IT manager who needs to write better reports. Of course, the primary way to improve your writing is to practice. A good friend of mine expresses this idea in Make Writing a Habit. It’s good advice. No matter how much talent you might possess, you can’t become good at something until you practice (often, quite a lot).

Practicing applies to any sort of writing, but technical writing has a few special requirements that you need to consider. The first rule of good technical writing is to ensure you know what you want to say. This means creating an outline, even if you’re working on an article length project. In some cases, you won’t even use the headings you create as part of the resulting piece-the headings are there to keep you on track and focused. The more detailed you can make your outline, the better your writing will go.

Creating an outline doesn’t guarantee any sort of success, unfortunately. People often see a heading and can’t quite remember what they planned to put there. It’s a common problem, so you shouldn’t worry about it. What you should do instead is provide notes to yourself on what you plan to put into a heading. I often include URLs for sites that I want to review in depth or provide as part of my piece right there with the notes. If you got an idea for something you’d like to do by reading some resource, make sure you include a specific reference to that resource as well (never plagiarize though-always create your own text from the sources you use). As a little extra safety cushion while you’re working, you may consider downloading a grammar tool, and this grammarly review might help you decide if something like this would help – our eyes alone are not always enough.

In depth research is also a huge part of writing technical documents. Keep thinking about what you want to write and verify every fact by researching it in some way. In some cases, research includes creating an experimental setup on your own system. This may sound like a lot of work, but it’s often the best part of technical writing. Experimenting to find out whether some idea will actually work is fun and interesting. It’s also time consuming, so make sure you plan ahead if you want to perform some experiments as part of creating your piece.

All of these approaches will help improve your technical writing. However, the biggest mistake that many technical writers make is writing for themselves, rather than for their target audience. You have to put yourself in your reader’s shoes and answer the sorts of questions your readers will have. Role-playing may not seem like part of technical writing, but it is. You have to put on your reader hat to be successful. In some cases, getting the reader hat on right is nearly impossible, which is why I also rely on beta readers to read my material. These people ask questions I’d never think of even if I spend weeks trying to do so.

Technical writing is about organized and succinct content. It’s about creating a flow of ideas from your mind to the reader’s mind through the medium of the written word. You’re a teacher of sorts, but your classroom is vast and you’re not able to speak with your pupils. To write good technical documentation you have to think about the sorts of questions your reader will ask or find someone who will ask them for you. The outline, research, and roll playing all come together to help you create a document that conveys information to your target audience in a unique manner that reflects your particular philosophy of solving technical issues.

Creating good technical documentation is something that most people can do with enough practice, thought, and research. Knowing your audience is an essential part of any kind of writing, but with technical writing it’s an absolute necessity. Let me know your thoughts about technical writing at [email protected].

 

Diamonds

Winds and the mists that swirl,
their fierce beauty unfurl,
glistening diamonds in the sky.

The barren branches creak,
subtle language they speak,
lustrous diamonds on the plant.

Nature’s children at play,
frolic throughout the day,
gleaming diamonds on the ground.

Light beams shatter and break,
their paths beguile and quake,
polished diamonds in my eye.

The day is at an end,
no more light can it bend,
reflecting diamonds no more.

Dedicated to Rebecca for her homecoming.
Copyright 2014, John Paul Mueller

Happy New Year!

Welcome to the New Year! It’s going to be an interesting year from a number of perspectives. I’m really looking forward to seeing the changes and I hope that you are too! Make sure you subscribe to my blog to keep up with all of the new material I provide with greater ease. A subscription will automatically send a synopsis of new content directly to your e-mail, which will make it a lot easier to determine whether you want to follow a certain post (and it’s associated comments).

The computer market will continue to move away from the desktop toward all sorts of mobile devices. Of course, this will make browser-based applications become even more popular because you can achieve the same look and feel no matter which platform you use to interact with the application. I’m not saying the desktop is dead, but look for browser-based applications to take on added importance. In some respects, browser-based applications can still be limited, so you’ll continue to see the desktop used in situations where a user must interact with complex data from multiple sources.

Self-sufficiency is going to take on added importance as well. There are a number of reasons for the increased participation by people. Of course, the economy continues to provide ample reason for many people who are looking to ways to make their money go further. A lot of people are starting to realize that self-sufficiency also comes with substantial health benefits and is also good for the environment. In fact, except for the time commitment and the requirement to learn new skills, self-sufficiency has a lot to recommend it. I’m planning to provide more emphasis on self-sufficiency in the coming months.

My blog will also feature some of the additional kinds of content that you’ve come to know and love. I’ll be posting a number of reviews and a bit more of my poetry as time permits. A few posts on writing technique are almost a requirement. A number of you have sent e-mail asking about my crafting. A few personal issues have kept me from posting on the crafts that I enjoy, but I plan to address that particular need soon. I hope that you continue to enjoy my blog and will let me know the sorts of content you’d like to see at [email protected]. In the meantime, Happy New Year!

 

What Am I Reading?

Readers often write to ask me what I’m reading. It’s a hard question to answer in some respects because I have a broad range of interests and I often find myself reading more than just one text. However, it’s a valid question and concern because what I read eventually affects the content of the books that I write and that you read. I strongly believe that the most successful people in life are voracious readers as well. Of course, there are likely exceptions (and please don’t fill my e-mail with listings of them). Reading opens doorways to all sorts of new worlds and different ways of seeing things.

It won’t surprise you to discover that I do quite a bit of technical reading. Every day sees me scanning articles from eWeek, ComputerWorld, and InfoWorld (amongst others). I also regularly read a variety of magazines—some quite serious like MSDN and Dr. Dobbs Journal, others a little less serious like PC Gamer. I also technically edit some books every year and read them end-to-end. Sometimes I read a book simply because I want to learn something new. Currently I’m exploring Rod Stephens’ Essential Algorithms (an outstanding book that I’ll review at some point).

Given the content of this blog, it shouldn’t surprise you to discover that I also read a number of gardening magazines such as Mother Earth News and Horticulture (again, there are others). I usually read books from publishers such as Storey. It wasn’t long ago that I completed reading Storey’s Guide to Raising Chickens. Of course, I look for articles online as well.

What you may not know is that I also enjoy reading other sorts of books and magazines. For example, I’m currently engaged reading the Patrick O’Brian novels for the sheer pleasure they bring. Captain Aubrey is turning into a favorite character of mine. National Geographic and Smithsonian are both monthly magazines that I read. I keep up with what is happening in the Navy by reading Seapower. Rebecca and I also enjoy a number of crafts and we read some of the same crafting magazines.

As you can see, it’s quite an odd assortment of materials and I love it all. The vistas opened by the materials I read help me provide you with better material that is both more creative and easier to understand. You don’t have to have the best education in the world to succeed. All you really need is a strong desire to find the information you need when you need it. The more you read, the better you understand the world around you and the better prepared you are to take advantage of the vast array of reading resources at your disposal when you need them.

It’s important to know that the authors you read are also well read—that they make use of all of the available materials to write better books. Experiencing the world through the written word is an essential part of the learning process. Today we have all sorts of multimedia presentations vying for attention with the written word, but in many respects writing isn’t easily replaced because it brings the world to you in ways that other forms of media can’t. Of course, that’s a topic for another post. Let me know your thoughts on the importance of reading at [email protected].

 

Learning About Online Publishing

Eventually, you’ll likely read absolutely everything in electronic format. As e-book readers like the Kindle and Nook (too many to list) become more popular and the cost of producing paper-based products continues to increase, people will naturally gravitate toward the less expensive medium. Yes, many older people, like me, will continue to enjoy at least their fictional reading in paper format, but even the most steadfast amongst us has gravitated toward e-book format for professional and technical reading.

Besides saving trees and reducing costs, e-books make it possible to bring many marginal topics to the market. An aspiring author can self publish books that a publisher might not be willing to touch because the perceived profit margins are too low. Once books are published, looking into how to get book reviews could be a step with considering, especially if an author is looking to make a name for themselves in this industry.

Articles such as Bestseller Success Stories that Started Out as Self-Published Books point out the times when publishers simply got it wrong. The book idea really produced a great book, but the publishing staff didn’t know it. Of course, self-publishing can also produce atrocities that can hardly be called literature. The book publisher has acted as a kind of testing ground for book material in the past, but that era has passed and now the consumer must filter out the good from the relatively large flow of bad material. There are so many publishers and printers out there, that it can be hard for one to even choose a book publisher – pushing people to get their work self-published instead. By simply searching for london print services, or printing services wherever you might be located, an array of choices are given to you. As a writer or business owner, it can be hard to know where to begin.

There are many sites online that tell you about online publishing and getting your work self-published. I personally started with Creating an e-book: Tips on formatting and converting your document. It’s a comprehensive article with a lot of great tips that just about anyone will find useful. A problem with many of the resources you find online is that they’re oriented toward a particular genre, device type, publication method, or content type so that the advice is less useful than it could be.

However, my favorite new source of information for everything to do with e-book publishing is The Electronic Author. The material on this blog is published by someone who actually does output a number of e-books each year and has a copious number of books to his credit, Wallace Wang. In fact, I recently reviewed on such offering, Math for the Zombie Apocalypse. So, unlike many other places you could go for information, this blog really is run by someone with a considerable amount of experience.

The point I’m trying to make is that if you do plan to self-publish the next great American novel, you need to research the required techniques before you make the attempt. Otherwise, you could find that your book doesn’t sell well (or possibly at all). There are a lot of resources out there for improving your product. Everyone who wants to read your book also wants to see it in a usable format. Let me know your thoughts about self-publishing at [email protected].

Lampooning Our Societal Woes

Normally I don’t write much about comedy in my blog because it really isn’t my strongest talent as an author. In fact, you’ll find some tongue-in-cheek humor in my books at times, but I generally downplay it in favor of other kinds of presentation. Even so, I can’t help but appreciate great humor, especially when it makes me laugh about something everyone else is presenting in the worst possible light. Laughter truly is the best medicine and with all of the negative things happening in our society, we could all do with a good laugh about now.

That’s why a particularly humorous piece, What to Do About the Detroit Bankruptcy, by Wally Wang (a good friend of mine) caught my attention. It’s great satire that’s presented in a way that everyone can read. There is no swearing or off-color jokes to ruin the genuinely humorous piece. It’s the finest type of humor. You should read something like this because it truly is funny, rather than because it evokes an odd side effect due to the internal embarrassment evoked by some of the supposedly comedic presentations today. Some comedy simply isn’t funny.

It’s easy to become mired in a wallow of self-pity and doubt. Sensationalizing the bad news of the day to make it appear even worse doesn’t take a lot of effort. It seems at times as if society is devoted to hearing and believing the worst. Creating an environment where we can laugh a little at adversity and potentially see a solution where there was none before really does take talent. Take the time to enjoy a little humor today at the expense of our nation obsession with bad news. You’ll feel better for it and might even see that rainbow you were looking for all along.

 

Ah, the Elusive Dash

Every author seems to have problems with punctuation of some sort. It’s the reason that copyeditors are so incredibly important (among other reasons). Using the correct punctuation is essential if you want the reader to gain the right idea from your writing. Punctuation often fills in the gap in helping a reader decide how you’d say something if you were speaking directly, rather than through writing.

My personal demon is the dash and all of its forms. No matter how often I try, I end up needing someone else’s help to get the punctuation precisely correct. I recently read, “You’re using that dash wrong” and found it quite helpful because it tells you when and how to use the various forms of this punctuation mark. The article makes it quite apparent that the term dash is only used for specific forms of the horizontal line. However, the article doesn’t tell you about the special ways in which the punctuation marks are used in technical writing. Here are the forms of the dash (er, horizontal line) commonly used in technical writing and their use in that form of writing (which may not necessarily agree with other forms of writing).

 

  • Hyphen: Used to break multi-syllable words at the end of a line. It is also used in some types of coding. You use the hyphen to create a minus sign in code and also to indicate ranges.
  • Minus sign: Used to indicate a negative value. Visually, a minus sign always appears with numbers on the same line as the number, rather than at the end of a line to break words as a hyphen would. In most cases, technical documents actually rely on an en dash to create a minus sign within the text.
  • En dash: A horizontal line that is the width of the letter N that is used to create compound words. It is never used in coding. The en dash always appears within the text of technical writing.
  • Em dash: A horizontal line the width of the letter M and is used to indicate a pause longer than provided by a comma, but not as long as a period. The em dash is often used to separate dependent clauses in a complex sentence. Most authors use the em dash and semicolon interchangeably.


Knowing how authors use punctuation in a document will help you understand the document more easily. The correct breathing makes the meaning clearer. Think about this kind of punctuation the next time you have a conversation with someone. We automatically add the correct breathing when we talk to convey a specific meaning that would be lost without it. You can say precisely the same sentence in a number of ways and have that sentence mean different things. We interpret a sentence based not only on what it contains, but also in how it’s spoken. The lowly horizontal line (of varying length) makes this meaning clearer in writing where you can’t hear the breathing the author means. Let me know your thoughts about punctuation at [email protected].

 

An Avoidance of Technology

As an author, I’m always interested in hearing how people use technology to better their lives or as a means of entertainment. However, I’m just as interested in the non-use of technology. In fact, there are people who outright avoid technology or keep their use of technology at a certain level and I find that learning about these people makes me a better author. For example, I recently read about a family that won’t use any technology newer than 1986. A number of other people are discussing the avoidance of technology for technology’s sake as a means of creating a more sustainable environment. Some people equate these kinds of movements as a backlash against technology, but that truly isn’t what’s happening here. These people aren’t some new age Amish who choose to ignore certain technologies as part of a religious conviction. What is really happening is that people either fail to see a need to embrace certain technologies or they have chosen to use only the technologies that serve a specific need in their lives.

It’s currently estimated that 15 percent of Americans don’t use the Internet because it doesn’t make sense for them to do so or they lack access in some way. Interestingly enough, 9 percent of Americans don’t have cellphones of any type. There are many reasons for not having a cellphone, but in many cases it’s a personal choice. Even if the person had access, they wouldn’t want the cellphone because it would interfere with their lifestyle. The assumption that everyone owns a smartphone (essentially a computer sized down to fit into a cellphone body) is also incorrect. Only about 56 percent of Americans have a smartphone now. All these statistics, and many more, point to the idea that not everyone embraces every technology and there are many reasons for not doing so.

All of my books to date have assumed that someone has embraced a particular technology and wants to know about it. However, while many people assume that the potential reader has lots of experience with technology, my lower end books usually don’t make this assumption because many people are still adapting to technology. I also don’t assume the use of technology is a personal desire—many people use technology solely because of a job requirement.

The reason this post is important to you is that it helps to explain some of the things readers have questioned me about in the past. The question of why it’s important to explain a concept at a certain level hinges on the audience I’m addressing. Within this audience are people who have no experience and a low level of desire to interact with the target technology, so I must ease them into learning what they need to know. Unfortunately, the very act of easing some people into a technology offends other people who openly embrace a technology and were really looking for the short explanation for a technology. It’s hard for any author to find the precise mix of information that will meet the needs of the broadest range of readers possible and there will always be some level of disappointment for many readers.

Trying to figure out precisely how to present information to my readers is important to me. That’s why your input is so important. Always feel free to let me know how you feel about the coverage of technology in my books. I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to change the manner in which I cover technology, because I’m always faced with competing interests between readers, but I’ll always listen to what you have to say and make changes as appropriate. Are you avoiding technology? Let me know why at [email protected].

 

Contemplating the Future of the Written Word

Last week I wrote a post entitled, “An End to the Written Word” that generated more e-mail than most of my posts have in the past. The e-mail content covered a broad range of thoughts and emotions about the written word. Of course, it’s hard to imagine that anything we have used so successfully for so long will eventually go away, but that’s how technology works. A technology is kept only as long as it’s useful. However, I need to provide some more input on my thoughts about the written word based on some of the e-mails I received.

Let me put one thought to rest immediately—I’m not just talking about paper print. Yes, everyone has been predicting the end of writing on paper for many years now and if anything, some businesses actually use more paper than before the computer revolution. However, paper will eventually go away in its entirety. There are a number of indicators of its demise in my own life and I’ll share them with you.

 

  • Manuscripts: At one time I sent my manuscripts to the publisher in printed form. I boxed up my books and sent them for editing in double spaced form. The manuscript would come back with editors marks in place at some point, I’d make any required changes and send it back (the postage really got out of hand at times). In fact, paper would pass back and forth several times before a printed book came out. The process was incredibly slow. Today I’m using electronic media for all my book needs and my printer is collecting dust.
  • Royalty Statements: All of my royalty statements used to come in paper form. Some of them still do, but many of them come electronically now. I eventually look for the huge folders used to store my tax information to become quite svelte indeed.
  • Contracts: A lot of my contracts are now issued in electronic format. I use an electronic signature to sign them. Not only is this approach faster, but I don’t have to provide storage for bulky contracts any longer—the contract goes right into the same folder as all of the other electronic files for my book.
  • Book Purchases: Most of my books are now sold as e-books, not as printed books. It will eventually become uncommon for me to sell a printed book. In fact, I have to wonder how long I’ll continue to obtain printed author copies.
  • Banking: More and more of my banking is done electronically. Even when I do send a check to someone, they often don’t send it back to the bank. The transaction is performed electronically.


I’m sure you can come up with examples from your own life, but the fact is that printed matter is going to go away. However, that’s not what I’m talking about. Eventually, writing itself will become something that professionals use to express abstract ideas that can’t be presented in some other way. People will commonly not use any form of writing because there will be other ways to convey thoughts and ideas to other people. In fact, those other ways already exist. I don’t look for writing to go away in my lifetime, or even in the lifetime of my grandnephew or grandniece, but I do look for it to go away.

Many of the uses that writing once fulfilled are being filled by other technologies. For example, it’s quite possible that contracts in the future will be written using a video record, not writing. A mortgage might show an actual recording of the property in question and include pictures of the participants in the deal. An iris scan of the parties will encrypt the video so it can be played, but not changed. Of course, this technology is quite futuristic indeed, but the concept isn’t all that hard to grasp.

Books and other forms of general communication are already starting to become more visual and less written—it isn’t much of a leap to think other communication will follow. Sites such as YouTube have become popular because it’s easier to show a video of an event than to write about the event in words. In addition, the recording is actually easier for other people to understand. Sites such as Facebook also rely heavily on graphics, not on the written word. The point is that anything that is concrete and easily conveyed using a combination of audio and graphics is already being presented in precisely that form, without written words.

I’ll be discussing this topic more as time goes on, but for now, this gives you an idea of some of the questions I’ve received. This whole idea of writing going away has taken some people by surprise (and others simply expect it to happen). What are your ideas about writing? Let me know at [email protected].