Writing my book part two: The First Draft
I don't mean like an NFL or NBA draft, or draft beer. Now that I think about it, why is it called a draft?
Once again, we’re starting with the shameless plug, now with better linking.
So, the first draft, that all-important initial completion of your book. That feeling of, “Okay, I said that I’m gonna do this thing and I did the thing”. Now getting to this point when you have all the things that you want to write already planned out and ready should be a piece of cake, right? Well, that is just not the case.
Like I have said before, it has been a difficult journey writing this book. Perhaps difficult is not the word, challenging is a better description. The challenge that I faced was that I was doing all of this while moving to a new country, finding a new job, going through all my grad school stuff and essentially starting a new chapter in my life (I cover some of it in the book). But these weren’t the only challenges. We’re going to take a close look at the process of writing each chapter and how I had to manage the whole writing process and juggle my entire life at the same time.
The chapter-by-chapter process
Here’s how writing a chapter works when you’re writing a technical book:
Submit initial chapter draft.
Have it looked through by the editor. They will judge the flow of the chapter and try to make it better (this was really helpful).
Submit the review corrections, if there is something that hasn’t been addressed, it will come back to you and you keep doing this until all the comments have been addressed.
The draft is then submitted for technical review where a couple of your peers will look through it and give their opinions in a questionnaire.
You then get all this information and make corrections where necessary.
Then a final edit by copy editing people.
Then a final print version is created with graphics and all the bells and whistles.
So that’s how we do that. And you’ll notice that I have used bullet points here. That’s an effective technique for technical books in terms of dividing information. Pro tip. But this is the technical aspect of my techno-philosophical book. So you may be wondering about the human aspect, the aspect of me. Well that’s what I’m going to tell you.
(My editor encouraged these little paragraph ending sentences, as he said they helped transition topics very well. He was right, it made the writing flow incredibly well, made me a better writer.)
The author’s journey
This book project has been on the same journey as me. It came from Nepal to Sweden with me and I have written it through the vast changes in my life that occured during my time writing it. For a while, it was the most consistent thing in my life. And mentality-wise, having that consistent thread when you are essentially starting a new life was very important to me in my initial months here in Sweden. In a way the book helped me settle down. It was an interesting topic to be brought up in conversation as well, which helped break a lot of ice.
I wrote much of the book indoors during the harsh Swedish winter when temperatures could get as low as -30 degrees Celsius. I think the journey of writing the book itself and all of the challenges that came about, all of the changes I had to make on the original vision, all of the things that I had to change in collaboration, helped make me a better author and a more determined person. In doing so, I made a great many connections and I re-enforced what I believed and what I wanted to share with the world.
Conclusion
We’re in the final stretch folks. I haven’t gone into the technical details of the book, because if you want those: read the book. But I hope this blog has helped you understand the technique and the human side behind the book writing process. The final part of this blog series will focus on the final stretch of the writing process and everything that came out of it.