###The Write Stuff
If anyone would have told me 30 years ago that I'd actually enjoy writing, that I'd actually look forward to writing something, that I'd actually earn part of my living from writing, I would have sent them straight to a psychiatrist. But it's true. Since February of 2012, I've written one and a half NaNoWriMo's (http://www.nanowrimo.org) spread across 60 or so different postings. I didn't always like the process, in fact, I hated it for the longest time.
###Perspective
Unlike the people that write for the pure joy of it, I need to have a purpose. I need to have a task to do, and (ideally) a deadline to complete it. Maybe that purpose is a blog post. Maybe it's finishing a batch of course notes that'll ultimately become a book. Maybe that purpose is to make some of my friends smile on LiveJournal (or is it Geocities? I always forget where the hip kids hang out.) Before coming to this realization, I dreaded the process. I'd stare at a blank screen wondering how to start. Then maybe write a sentence. Then edit it. Then write another one. Then go back and edit the first one. It was slow, time consuming.
I was listening to this interview (http://www.70decibels.com/generational/2013/3/24/027-aaron-hillegass-and-teaching-experts.html), and had to laugh when Aaron suggested that people learn to type, because I make that recommendation too. I've had students in classes before that were hunt-n-peck, and were definitely limited by the speed of their interface to the computer. If you can't get your thoughts into your word slinger of choice fast enough, you'll just be frustrated. It doesn't have to the traditional home-row typing either (I don't type that way - just a hand position that grew organically over the years), just so you can type without having to look at the keyboard. This will pay off huge dividends - faster programming and writing, being able to use a prank keyboard (http://www.amazon.com/Happy-Hacking-Keyboard-Professional2-Keytop/dp/B000F8OECM), as well as high scores on TypeRacer typeracer.com .
How do you learn to type well? There of course are software packages you can get that'll drill you. For me, it was a combination of wanting to get information from paper into the computer as fast as possible (back in the old days when typing in program listings from magazines, and these days typing in exercises from Big Nerd Ranch books), as well as keeping up with my friends in the old-school days of BBSs systems. One of the popular systems in my area was multi-user (a rare thing in the 80's), and there were often many threads of conversation happening during after-school time. I had to type fast just to keep active in the conversation. If you have a competitive streak, games like TypeRacer can give you some motivation.
One of the best things I learned when doing this writing thing is to silence my inner editor. That's the voice that keeps saying "This sucks. This isn't good enough. This isn't your best work. You're only going to embarrass yourself and bring shame upon your family for seven generations of you publish this." We hastes this voice, precious.
For awhile, I was on a kick reading books about writing. My two favorite ones are Elizabeth George's Write Away (http://www.amazon.com/Write-Away-Novelists-Approach-Fiction/dp/0060560444) (I ended up getting hooked on her mystery novels afterwards), and Stephen King's On Writing (http://www.amazon.com/Writing-10th-Anniversary-Memoir-Craft/dp/1439156816). A common thread through all of them is "Write now. Edit later." Just get the words on the paper or in your lappy. It doesn't matter if it works or not. Once you have a first draft done, go back and edit. Then edit again. If you try to edit as you go, you prevent yourself from entering that flow state where words, well, just flow out. As you can guess, creation and editing are different mental disciplines, and I personally have a large cost when context switching. I like to stay in one more or the other.
That being said, don't be afraid to be your own editor (http://iamthewalr.us) - http://iamthewalr.us/blog/2011/03/be-your-own-editor/) . You get better by doing, so edit. Practice practice practice.
I was wrapping up work on the third edition of Advanced Mac OS X Programming : The Big Nerd Ranch Guide and this title is entirely too long kthxbai (http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Mac-OS-Programming-Guides/dp/0321706250), and was getting the dreaded "writer's block". My internal editor was screaming in my head. I was tired. I wasn't motivated. I just couldn't get the spice^H^H^H^H words to flow.
I stumbled across this posting (http://confusatory.org/post/4066495734/contested) about a neat writing exercise, where you write for 20 minutes and post it. Being somewhat lacking in the reading comprehension department, I interpreted this as "do this every day" rather than the once a week that Christopher was talking about.
So, every day I came up with a topic, did a quick outline, wrote the text, edited it, marked it up, added a photograph from my collection, and posted it to a wordpress blog (http://borkopolis.wordpress.com/tag/20-minute/), all within 20 minutes. I do admit to keeping a list of possible posting topics, but all of the writing and editing happened in 20 minutes. That made a great warm-up act for the bookwork. One of my most popular postings https://borkwarellc.wordpress.com/2011/03/28/borkwares-first-timers-guide-to-wwdc/ came out of one of these 20 minute postings.
My Tools
I have a suite of tools I use for the writing process. Some get used all the time, some only in certain circumstances. Research: I've mentioned VoodooPad before. It's a wiki on the desktop. I use this when I research stuff. I read documentation and type (not copy and paste - typing is an integral part of my learning process http://borkopolis.wordpress.com/2011/04/13/rapid-learning/) interesting bits. I watch WWDC videos and type interesting information. I also read blog postings and re-type the good parts, keeping a lexicon of terms and common data structures for easy reference.
Writing: I use Scrivener (http://www.literatureandlatte.com) for all my writing beyond a simple email. It's easily one of my favorite pieces of Mac software. I love the way it "feels" when typing. All other word processors feel sluggish when chugging along at a hundred words a minute, but Scrivener always seems to be responsive. I also like how I can organize and outline material - keeping each chunk of text as its own NSOutlineView entity and easily move them around. Here's a screen shot from a session for some custom materials for a client:  Each of the pages in the outline view can be considered to be independent documents, but Scrivener can show them all in-line. That way you can focus on a particular topic (Associative Arrays here, all of 665 words), or you can view the section on variables (2250 words), or the entire thing (which ended up being about 10,000 words). Over the course of writing this stuff I ended reorganizing stuff pretty often (should the profile provider come before the pid provider or not? Should I talk about $1 and -c before or after the objc provider?). It's just a click and drag to move it from place to another and see how the narrative flow works.
I pretty much treat scrivener as the source of writing, and then once it's as done as I can make it, it moves into other tools. The workflow getting stuff back into Scrivener (or any other word-processory kind of thing) is not great.
Publishing: For blog postings, I use MarsEdit. Copy from Scrivener, paste in MarsEdit (http://www.red-sweater.com/marsedit/), and then mark up and edit the content. MarsEdit is a great tool
We use DocBook (http://www.docbook.org) for books and course materials. Writing XML. Yummy? Well, not really, but it's what we use for our materials. DocBook is nice because it's a very distinct separation between content and presentation. Back in the first edition of the Advanced Mac book, we created a website with forums based on the chapter and section structure. A little bit of XML processing gave us the skeleton, and then some web scripts created the forums. This was back before automated spam tools were good, and the spammers quickly took over, so we shut it down.
I don't like to do markup while I write - it's too much like editing. I like to get the prose in there, get the prose well organized, the narrative flowing, and the words edited, before I do a (tedious) markup pass. Text that gets marked up too soon gains inertia. You don't want to edit it because you might break and need to fix the markup. Best To Just Let It Be. You also waste a lot of time interrupting yourself making <did I close the quote earlier?> sure the <whats the tag for instance variables again?> markup is accurate.
- Type fast
- Don't try to edit as you go
- Use good tools
- Practice Practice Practice