Writing "The Shape of Knowledge"

I've never written a book before. I've written a lot of things in my professional career, mostly presentations, but never a book. It's damn hard work.

The content of the book has been evolving in my mind over the course of the last 13 years. We started Apprentice Systems officially in 2000, and it became my fulltime job in 2001.

I have notes that are relevant to the book dating back to 2004, so that's ten years I've been working on the basic ideas. But I only really started to write it two years ago, when I decided to spend one day a week working on it at one of my favorite sites: the Main Reading Room at the Library of Congress.

One of the benefits of being located in the D.C. area is I get free access to this astounding place! I didn't do research there - the book is pretty much completely based on our work at Apprentice Systems - but I went for the inspiration. For some reason, in this setting, I could concentrate better than in my office. No distractions. I would start to write and the next thing I knew, five hours would have passed. The first version of the text was written during 9 months of weekly visits to the LOC.

The second pass through the text required a lot of work in Adobe Illustrator, to create the 70 illustrations that are spread throughout the book. The hand-drawn versions were done at the LOC, but working in Illustrator meant I had to be at my desk. Reluctantly, I gave up my weekly trips, but my LOC-driven momentum stayed with me. It took about three months, one day a week, to generate the first version of the illustrations. I could move on to doing the first major rewrite.

At this point, I had learned how to focus on writing at the office, without constantly being pulled away by my day-to-day responsibilities. That meant I could save the 2 hours of Metro riding that it took to get to and from the LOC and put that time into working on the book. The revisions/rewrites that followed were done at the office, though I truly missed the ambiance of the LOC! At this point, however, the most important thing was to actually get a first version done and published. Everything was taking much longer than I expected - as things always do - and two full years had elapsed. I needed to get a version out so I could enlist feedback from beta readers and begin the refinement process I knew would be inevitable.

Now The Shape of Knowledge, or 'TSOK' as I call it, is off for editing. If the revisions required are not extensive, I hope to have it published within the next couple of weeks.

A Milestone for "The Shape of Knowledge"

Today I sent my book, The Shape of Knowledge, off to an editor for its first review by a set of eyes other than my own.

It was actually a little traumatic; it's like sending your baby off to a stranger. I sent it to a professional editing service that specializes in nonfiction. They have good reviews if you can believe their website, but how can you really know? It is nerve-wracking.

It will take 4-5 days to get it back from the editor. In the meantime, we need to get the new version of the website ready for launch. It should go live the same day I self publish the book on the Kindle. I also intend to use Smashwords to reach the other ebook platforms.

I originally thought I would use content from the book as blog posts, but I have since decided against that. The book is 37,000 words and 70 (simple) illustrations. To do it justice, piecemeal in blog posts, would be very difficult.

Instead, I will use the blog to apply the techniques and principles I lay out in The Shape of Knowledge. The content of the book is very conceptual. The reason there are so many illustrations in the book is because I felt it needed copious amounts of real world examples to make it relevant. This blog should continue to go down that path, providing even more examples.