New: #System #Design #Heuristics

You'd think that after publishing books for half a century, I'd know how to write a book. If that's what you think, you'd be wrong.

Sure, I've even written a book on writing books (Weinberg on Writing, the Fieldstone Method), and I've applied those methods to dozens of successful books. But way back around 1960, I started collecting notes on the process of design, thinking I would shortly gather them into a book. Back then, I didn't call these bits and pieces "fieldstones," but that's what they turned out to be: the pieces that, when assembled properly, would ultimately become my design book.

Ultimately? Assembled properly? Aye, there's the rub!

Building walls from randomly found fieldstones requires patience. So does writing books by the Fieldstone Method. My Introduction to General Systems Thinking took fourteen years to write. But a writer only lives one lifetime, so there's a limit to patience. I'm growing old, and I'm beginning to think that fifty years is as close to "ultimately" as I'm going to get.

So, I've begun to tackle the task of properly assembling my collection of design fieldstones. Unfortunately, it's a much larger collection that I'd ever tackled before. My Mac tells me I have more than 36,000,000 digitized bytes of notes. My filing cabinets told me I had more than twenty-five pounds of paper notes, but I've managed to digitize some of them and discard others, so there's only a bit more than ten pounds left to consider.

For the past couple of years, I've periodically perused these fieldstones and tried to assemble them "properly." I just can't seem to do it. I'm stuck.

Some writers would say I am suffering from "writer's block," but I believe "writer's block" is a myth. I've published three other books in these frustrating years, so I can't be "blocked" as a writer, but just over this specific design book. You can hear me talk more about the Writer's Block myth on YouTube 

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=77xrdj9YH3M&t=7s]

but the short version is that "blocking" is simply a lack of ideas about how to write. I finally decided to take my own advice and conjure up some new ideas about how to write this design book.

Why I Was Stuck

To properly assemble a fieldstone pile, I always need an "organizing principle." For instance, my recent book, Do You Want to Be a (Better) Manager? is organized around the principle of better management. Or, for my book, Errors, the principle is actually the title.  So, I had been thinking the organizing principle for a book on design ought to be Design. 

Well, that seemed simple enough, but there was a problem. Everybody seemed to know what design is, but nobody seemed able to give a clear, consistent definition that covered all my notes. I finally came to the conclusion that's because "design" is not one thing, but many, many different things.

In the past, I ran a forum (SHAPE: Software as a Human Activity Practiced Effectively) whose members were among the most skilled software professionals in the world. We held a number of threads on the subject, "What is Design?" The result was several hundred pages of brilliant thoughts about design, all of which were correct in some context. But many of them were contradictory.

Some said design was a bottom-up process, but others asserted it was top-down. Still others talked about some kind of sideways process, and there were several of these. Some argued for an intuitive process, but others laid out an algorithmic, step-by-step process. There were many other variations: designs as imagined (intentional designs), designs as implemented, and designs as evolved in the world. All in all, there were simply too many organizing principles—certainly too many to compress into a title, let alone organize an entire book.

After two years of fumbling, I finally came up with an idea that couldn't have been implemented fifty years ago: the book will be composed of a variety of those consulting ideas that have been most helpful to my clients' designers. I will make no attempt (or very little) to organize them, but release them incrementally in an ever-growing ebook titled Design Heuristics.

How to Buy System Design Heuristics

My plan for offering the book is actually an old one, using a new technology. More than a century ago Charles Dickens released many of his immortal novels one chapter at a time in the weekly newspaper. Today, using the internet, I will release System Design Heuristics a single element at a time to subscribing readers.

To subscribe to the book, including all future additions, a reader will make a one-time payment. The price will be quite low when the collection is small, but will grow as the collection grows. That way, early subscribers will receive a bargain in compensation for the risk of an unknown future. Hopefully, however, even the small first collection will be worth the price. (If not, there will be a full money-back guarantee.)

Good designs tend to have unexpected benefits. When I first thought of this design, I didn't realize that it would allow readers to contribute ideas that I might incorporate in each new release. Now I aware of that potential benefit, and look forward to it.

Before I upload the first increment of System Design Heuristics, I'll wait a short while for feedback on this idea from my readers. If you'd like to tell me something about the plan, email me or write a comment on this blog.

Thanks for listening. Tell me what you think.

Tiips on writing your first book

I was asked, "What tips can you give to someone who wants to write his first book?"

Don’t worry about it, because the first book is just practice.

Maybe the first few books.

So stop worrying and write your practice book.

If your first book happens to be a success, that’s gravy. You can control whether you win or lose, but you can control whether or not you learn.

Get the book out there and gather feedback. Then use that feedback to improve your writing for the next book Repeat this process a few times and you’ll become a successful writer.

Do you recognize this iterative development process? You should, because writing a successful book is very much like writing a successful program.

In the meantime, if you'd like some help getting that first book finished, read

Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method

Should I write my best book first?

The questioner wrote: "I have an idea for a great book. I have only have this one idea. I worry if I write this book and it doesn’t go well I might end up discouraged with no more great ideas to write about."

Someone once said, “There’s nothing as dangerous as an idea—especially if it’s the only idea you have.” 

By themselves, great ideas for books are essentially worthless. Hardly a month goes by without some eager soul telling me they have a great idea for a book that they want me to write in partnership with them. They simply don’t understand that it’s not the idea that’s worth anything, but only the writing of it.

99+% of “great ideas” never get written. Even though I’ve published over 100 books, I have had hundreds more “great ideas” that I’ve not (yet) written. I certainly don't need somebody else's great idea in order to have something great to write about.

So, either stop asking meaningless questions and write your book, or just file this “great idea” in the wastebasket and get on with your life. Chances are you’ll have hundreds of other great ideas in your life.

If you decide to write your book, or if you're simply trying to decide, you’ll want to read Weinberg on Writing: the Fieldstone Method.

Moving Through Molasses

Here's a letter I recently received from Agnes, one of my writing colleagues. I think it illustrates yet another one of the indirect changes arising from the changes in publishing technology. Here's the letter, followed by my response. (Edited, of course, to protect identity.)

The Letter

Currently I feel like I'm moving through molasses, going incredibly slow, and not getting anything done. I guess I've been feeling like that all year, since I began epublishing a year ago.

I've been annoyed with myself, because this past month, I've only gotten one chapter written on my new novel. I haven't got another novel in print yet though it is up electronically, and I've only gotten one more novel up on Smashwords and Pubit and not on Amazon yet. Blah. It's a strange feeling, like I'm just not moving at all.

But when I look back over the year as a whole, I have to think that feeling of not getting anything done is an illusion. Since last October, I've published electronically a dozen books and half-a-dozen short stories. And put eight of those books out in print.

What I can't figure out is why it feels like I'm not getting anything done at all, when if fact I'm being somewhat productive. It's just crazy.

My Response

Not crazy, Agnes. Just unfamiliar. I've been feeling the same way ever since I started publishing electronically, and I've put up over forty books.

I think, for me, it's not experiencing the various "mileposts" of traditional paper publishing: the letters back and forth from and to various editors, the contract, the galleys, the phone calls, the page proofs, more letters, the cover designs, ...

I didn't realize it all these years, but these mileposts made me feel I was accomplishing something—though of course I now realize they meant just the opposite. They were all delays, preventing me from seeing my work "in print."

Now, once I finish my part(s) of the publishing job, it's finished. Done. Ended. And on sale and earning royalties. And I'm left with the feeling I haven't really done that much.

One thing that helps me is watching the sales figures climbing every day. I know some of our colleagues say you shouldn't do that, but it takes less than five minutes a day. Those five minutes give me a sense of accomplishment, a sense that motivates me to do more work that day.

Anyway, that's the way it is for me. Perhaps it's something similar for you.

If you enjoyed this little essay, take a look at Weinberg on Writing, The Fieldstone Method. You can find it listed at these stores

• Barnes and Noble bookstore: http://tinyurl.com/4eudqk5

• Amazon Store: http://amazon.com/-/e/B000AP8TZ8

• Apple Store: http://apple.com

• Smashwords Store:

The Assumption of Fixed Requirements

Note 1: This post is extracted from Chapter 9 of my book, CHANGE: Planned and Unplanned.

Note 2: This book was written for project leaders in high-tech industries, but writers are also project leaders, and writing certainly requires great skill and precision. For writers, requirements may originate from publishers, agents, and for-hire customers—any of whom can cause unending grief by changing those requirements for a writer who has assumed they were fixed.

Until recently, the computing industry seems to have avoided the subject of requirements the way a debutante might avoid the subject of indigestion. We knew such things existed, but if we didn't think about them, perhaps they would simply take care of themselves.

Many of the classic early papers in software engineering were based on the position:

This is how we would design and build software (if we had unchanging requirements.)

[For writers: each of us has her/his own process for writing, but for many of us, that process is also based on having unchanging requirements. If someone changes our task, we may be thrown off our game, and into write-stopping turmoil.]

For instance, many of the early papers on structured programming were based on the Eight Queens Problem, a problem of fixed definition with no input whatsoever. Many papers on recursive programming were based on the Towers of Hanoi problem, another problem of fixed definition with no input whatsoever. The more recent Cleanroom methodology has the same basis: "The starting point for Cleanroom development is a document that states the user requirements." The following quotation from Parnas and Clemens shows how deeply this assumption runs, even in the most sophisticated process designers.

Usually, a requirements document is produced before coding starts and is never used again. However, that has not been the case for [the software requirements for the A-7E Aircraft]. The currently operational version of the software, which satisfies the requirements document, is still undergoing revision. The organization that has to test the software uses our document extensively to choose the tests that they do. When new changes are needed, the requirements document is used in describing what must be changed and what cannot be changed. Here we see that a document produced at the start of the ideal process is still in use many years after the software went into service. The clear message is that if documentation is produced with care, it will be useful for a long time. Conversely, if it is going to be extensively used, it is worth doing right.

Parnas and Clemens describe the benefits of returning after design to create a requirements document as if it had been present from the beginning.

In the light of all this literature, it's easy to understand why so many software engineering managers have made the mistake of believing they should have unchanging requirements before starting any project. This model or belief is what I call the Assumption of Fixed Requirements, an assumption that is a misreading of these classical works. These classics were not addressing the entire process of software engineering, but only selected parts of that process. What they are teaching us is how to translate requirements into code, once we have reliable requirements.

Translating requirements into code is an essential part of software engineering, and it is the part that has received the most research attention over the past decades. Because of that attention, however, it is no longer the most difficult part of the process. Many organizations know how to do this part quite well, but the quality of their products does not adequately reflect their coding prowess.

In recent internal studies of serious quality problems, three different clients of mine arrived at quite similar conclusions. They divided the sources of the most serious problems into a number of categories, including coding and gathering requirements. In all cases, coding contributed least of all categories to quality problems, and my clients would perhaps do better to work on the less glamorous job of improving their logistics processes. Perhaps these rather advanced organizations are not typical of all software engineering organizations. They still have a lot to learn about coding and especially design, but in each case, the majority of their serious problems stem from requirements.

Software engineers and their customers perceive quality differently, and this table accounts in large part for that discrepancy in perception. Over the past decades, engineers have seen coding faults drop dramatically as a result of their quality improvement efforts. The customers, however, have not seen a comparable decrease in the number of requirements problems, and so do not perceive the same increase in quality as the engineers, who are paying attention to their own priorities—which don't happen to coincide with their customers' priorities. The engineers need to learn that they will never become an Anticipating organization by getting better and better at coding—even though that was the improvement process that brought them as far as they've come.

Writers Are Losing the Fight Again

Dean Wesley Smith has written another scathing post about "agents" trying to scam writers in "the new world of publishing." Please read it: http://www.deanwesleysmith.com/?p=4096&cpage=2#comment-9194



It's a terrific post, which it has in common with all Dean's posts, but this time he made one little mistake, so I had to write a comment on his blog.

But there are so many comments (as there should be, and you should read them all), you might miss mine, so I'm repeating it here.


Dean,

I’ve been thinking about this whole scheme and decided it’s not a scam at all. It’s actually a terrific idea, with only one slight flaw.

All that it needs to make it a fair deal is to make it symmetrical. In particular, the agents have the right idea about expenses. This is a business, and it’s quite right that the partners in such a deal should be reimbursed for their expenses before any royalties are distributed.

So, I’m looking for an agent who will write a contract with me where s/he gets expenses and so do I. Let’s see, what are my expenses?

Well, there’s toner for my printer.

And several reams of paper.

And the printer itself.

And the computer.

And the software.

And my office, and its furnishings.

Let’s see. What have I forgotten. Oh yes, there’s about 20 years of schooling so I could learn how to write. Let’s figure conservatively about $50,000 per year. It’s probably a lot more, but we don’t want to take advantage of the poor agent, so we just have $50,000 times 20, which seems to come to $1,000,000 before I could write a word.

Now of course, my schooling was a long time ago, so if I hadn’t spent that money learning how to write, I could have put it into US Treasury bonds and easily earned, say, 6% on the average. And I finished my schooling roughly 50 years ago, which means the $1,000,000 would have doubled roughly 4 times since then, making $16,000,000 today.

Don’t you just love this calculating “expenses”? (That's an important part of the new agent scam contract.)

The way I figure is I’d happily sign with an agent who’d give me $16,000,000 up front to cover my expenses.

Or, since I’ve published roughly 100 books, I’d be willing to take $160,000 up front from any agent wanting to contract with me to handle a book of mine.

So, agents, if you’re reading this, better hurry and get your cash in hand and contact me before all those other agents beat you to the punch.

Yes, Dean, I’m sorry, but you’re just going to have to write a retraction saying what a good deal these new agent ideas are for writers. Agents, please insist on it.

Oh, and by the way, here are two of my most recent eBooks, which you can sample at http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/JerryWeinberg?ref=JerryWeinberg and purchase them there, or at Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

"Smashwords vs. Kindle?" Are Your Lights On?

Yesterday, Don Gause and I posted out book on problem definition, Are Your Lights On?—a book many have called a "classic."

Today, I ran across a perfect example of why the lessons in the book are so useful. On one of the writers' forums in which I participate, a reader posted a query entitled Smashwords vs. Kindle? Here it is:



Gemma, a writer, asks:

Can someone tell me what the benefits or advantages of publishing on Smashwords might be when Amazon, the number five most visited site in the USA, (according to Alexa.com) provides such a successful solution and so much higher traffic? To compare, Smashwords ranks 2,751 in terms of daily traffic. Amazon's "query popularity" is 86 out of 100, versus only 38 out of 100 for Smashwords. Amazon visitors spend an average of eight minutes on the site and view 8.8 pages while Smashwords visitors spend six minutes on the site and view 6 pages.

Still, I have found the folks on this list to be a savvy bunch, so I suspect there must be some hidden advantages or benefits of which I am unaware. Can anyone who has published on Smashwords help me out by sharing some benefits? I am about ready to put up some titles on Amazon and had decided to stick exclusively to that platform and to B & N, but maybe I am cutting off potential sales by not posting on Smashwords.

Perhaps someone else has the answer already:

One of the things Are Your Lights On? teaches is to use all the information you have. In this case, I had an earlier answer from another author, "Linda."

Linda offered this answer:

Yes, Amazon offers worldwide traffic, but Smashwords offers retail eBook outlets that we do not get at Amazon.  My books are directly at Amazon Kindle.  And then I have also added a number of my books and my husband's at Smashwords to take advantage of the retail outlets they distribute to.  At Smashwords I opt out of Amazon, and will continue to do so.  But Smashwords has not only their direct website, but the books are sent to the ebook retailers-- Kobo, Nook, Diesel, IPad, etc.  I love being able to check daily on my Kindle sales and be paid monthly by Kindle.  Royalty payments and sales via the Smashword's distributors are slower, depending on the retailer.

So the advantage is having more retail distribution (and hopefully sales) by putting your books at Smashwords, in addition to having them at Amazon Kindle.

Even good answers may not be complete.

Are Your Lights On? teaches:

"If you can't think of at least three things that might be wrong with your understanding of the problem, you don't understand the problem."

Well, I really liked Linda's answer, but applying the Rule of Three, thought about how it could be improved.


Jerry adds to Linda's answer:


First of all, listen to Linda. She and her husband use exactly the same strategy Dani and I use. [Note from AYLO: Answers don't just have to be right, they have to be convincing. Supporting Linda's excellent answer is the first job a consultant has to do to be effective in this case.]

So, my first answer to Gemma is this: You've done your research, and done it well, but the data you've gotten happens to be irrelevant to this problem. The traffic each site receives doesn't really matter. What matters is selling books. Suppose Site A receives 1000 hits/day, and the average stay is 10 clicks, and they sell one book per day. Site B receives 10 hits per day, and the average stay is 1 click, and they sell two books per day. Which is better for you, the writer, A or B?
The answer is "none of the above." Why, because you don't have to choose. You can put your book on both A and B's sites, and sell three books.

On to the details:

Once you have the right problem definition, the solution is often trivial, as above. Since I can't verify my assumptions about Gemma's problem definition, I can add some other facts to support various definitions, such as,

1. A book sold at Smashwords gets a higher royalty than the same book sold at Kindle. For each $7 of Kindle royalty, the same sales on Smashwords earn $8.

2. Smashwords, as Linda says, distributes to many retail outlets that would be a pain to reach individually, and perhaps not worth the small sales they generate. Through SW, I reach them with zero extra effort.

3. In addition to extra retailers, I reach readers who don't use Kindle. As Linda says, SW formats automatically for just about every eReader known to humanity, again, at zero extra effort.

4. I don't know how many SW sales I would have through Amazon if SW weren't available, but I do know that through SW, I earn about 2/3 of what I earn through Kindle, so instead of, say, $1,000 through Kindle, I earn about $1,666 through the combined offering. (plus another $100 or so through Barnes and Noble, which you should also use.)

5. SW has a "coupon" feature that Amazon doesn't offer. That allows me to offer special price deals for a day, a week, a month, or whatever period of time I wish, for whatever price I wish. Very useful for marketing, and for reviewers. On Kindle/Amazon, a price change takes about three days to start, and three days to remove, and is seen by the whole world. On SW, the change takes place instantly, and can be removed instantly. I can offer it to one person, or 10, or 100, or to the entire internet world. My choice.

6. And, if you offer a book on SW, you can pull the book(s) any time you want. So, if it turns out you don't like something about SW, you're out of the deal instantly, whenever you want--not cost, no fuss. It's totally under your control.


Bottom Line

Yes, the book-selling business can be complicated, but this one's probably a no-brainer when you have all the facts—if I have the right problem definition. In a real consulting situation, I'd be able to talk with Gemma and verify that I understand her problem. Since I don't have access to her, I'm guessing that her implicit problem definition is wrong from the start.

Gemma, I think it's not "Smashwords vs. Kindle," but "Smashwords and Kindle" (and Barnes and Noble, and any other sites you wish, as long as they don't restrict your publishing elsewhere).

Perhaps the definition would have been better stated: "How can I achieve the best sales results for my eBook?"

P.S.

You can sample Jerry's books on Smashwords, including Are Your Lights On?, then buy them there or at any other site you might prefer. See and sample all my books on Smashwords (more going up all the time).

Who Can Alienate Readers Better?

I'm an author who's old enough to remember when the people who ran "Big Publishing" were book people—people who had some fairly decent intuition about books and the people who read them (in other words, their products and their customers). My first book was published by McGraw-Hill They were the biggest of the big, but they treated me with respect. For example, when I spotted trouble on my royalty statement, the situation was handled personally by the company president (one of the McGraws).

Four McGraw-Hill books later, the company was having some trouble over a bogus Howard Hughes biography, and turned down every new project for a year—including my latest manuscript, The Psychology of Computer Programming. I was naive enough to be shocked that a publisher might turn down a good book, so thought I must have done something wrong. After moping for a year of self-doubt, I recovered sufficiently to circulate the book to four publishers and was offered a contract by each of them. I chose Van Nostrand.

A year later, when the printed book was delivered, I went down to NYC to receive my first copy from the hand of my editor (a ritual I had practiced with McGraw-Hill). When I suggested we go to my editor's office to sit down and talk, he told me he didn't have an office—because he had just been fired.

Turns out he'd been fired by the corporate executives for publishing my book. In the interval since contract signing, Van Nostrand had been purchased by Litton Industries, along with (as I recall) four other publishers. The idea was to convert publishing to a "proper" business model—and this was the first such acquisition/consolidation, the one that began this new era in the publishing industry.

This new model included taking editorial responsibility out of the hands of the editors (real book people) and putting it into the hands of the executives (real business people).

Apparently their business intuition told them the book wouldn't sell, but apparently that intuition didn't work. In spite of fantastic order fulfillment screw-ups (another byproduct of the acquisition/consolidation, but that's another story), The Psychology of Computer Programming outsold all other similar books in Van Nostrand's inventory. It's still selling (I got the rights back—another stupid business decision by the executives—and the book is still selling steadily after almost 40 years—over 250,000 copies in a dozen languages. (It will be out soon as an eBook.)

And, after 40 years, these business executive are still clueless about that "book business," as opposed to their "book business." If you don't believe that, watch them screwing up the eBook business in just about every imaginable way. (Nobody said they weren't creative.) For instance, here’s what MacMillan CEO John Sargent recently had to say about libraries and ebooks:

    "That is a very thorny problem”, said Sargent. In the past, getting a book from libraries has had a tremendous amount of friction. You have to go to the library, maybe the book has been checked out and you have to come back another time. If it’s a popular book, maybe it gets lent ten times, there’s a lot of wear and tear, and the library will then put in a reorder. With ebooks, you sit on your couch in your living room and go to the library website, see if the library has it, maybe you check libraries in three other states. You get the book, read it, return it and get another, all without paying a thing. “It’s like Netflix, but you don’t pay for it. How is that a good model for us?"

    "If there’s a model where the publisher gets a piece of the action every time the book is borrowed, that’s an interesting model." - from http://go-to-hellman.blogspot.com/2010/03/ebooks-in-libraries-thorny-problem-says.html

If you don't understand what's wrong with this statement, take a look at the article and comments, "Friday Alert: HarperCollins in cagematch with Macmillan to see who can alienate readers better." <http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2011/02/25/friday-alert-harpercollins-in-cagematch-with-macmillan-to-see-who-can-alienate-readers-better/>

Or, if that's not helping, take a look at past history—for example, the reaction of the Western Union executives when the technology for voice-over-wire (telephone) became available. Or, study the music industry executives' bungling of the digital music scene.
Whichever example you choose, it's always the same pattern of response to new science or new technology: The people on top of the existing industry always try to stifle the new in order to preserve the old. They bungle, and that opens the door for all sorts of brash newcomers. Brash, that is, until they become the fat cats and play the same bungling role when the next innovation comes along—as it always does.

The only question is "Who will be the brash newcomers this time around?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Find my eBook novels and nonfiction listed at these stores

• Barnes and Noble bookstore: http://tinyurl.com/4eudqk5

• Amazon Store: http://amazon.com/-/e/B000AP8TZ8

• Apple Store: http://apple.com

• Smashwords Store:
http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/JerryWeinberg?ref=JerryWeinberg
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Authors You May Not Know–Yet

The writing business is one of the most difficult to break into. (into which to break?) Excellent writing and story-telling are not sufficient to publicize your name and what you can do. I do my primary publicizing through my website:

http://www.geraldmweinberg.com

and through various book retailers such as Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords.

I also belong to a number of groups of aspiring writers, including one called Backlist Books. One of the ways we spread the word about ourselves is to exchange links to our blogs and/or websites. Below, I've placed a list of some of the backlist authors I like. There's a wide variety of genres, so take a look at them and see if there's anything to your taste. You'll be glad you did.


Doranna Durgin, http://doranna.net/wordplay

Marsha Canham, http://marshacanham.wordpress.com

Jacqueline Lichtenberg, http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com

Jeffrey A. Carver, http://starrigger.blogspot.com/

Jill Metcalf, http://jillmetcalf.wordpress.com

Terry Odell, http://terryodell.blogspot.com

Maryann Miller, http://its-not-all-gravy.blogspot.com/

Patricia Rice, http://patriciarice.blogspot.com

Pati Nagle, http://patinagle.livejournal.com/

Lorraine Bartlett or Lorna Barrett, http://www.LornaBarrett.blogspot.com

Karen Ranney, http://karenranney.wordpress.com

Free books! Looking for a Few More Book Reviewers

This post is about marketing. As you probably know, I'm in the business of writing books, as part of my consulting business (or vice versa). In the modern publishing world, with more and more books bought online, customer reviews really can help books reach their full potential. Although we work with professional reviewers as well, you don’t need to be a professional reviewer to review books for me. Any avid reader can do it!

Right now, I'm looking for a few more people to help spread the word about my books. If you’re interested, please email me at hardpretzel (at) earthlink.net with the words “Book Reviewer” in the subject line.

I’ll email you back with a password that will give you access to one of my titles in Kindle, PDF, and ePub format, for your computer or your reading device.

Here’s my current titles, with more on the way:

http://www.geraldmweinberg.com

All I ask is that you review whatever book you download on either Amazon or Smashwords or Barnes and Noble’s website (or all three—that’s even better). If you’re a professional reviewer, it’s great if you review it on your blog or website, and I’ll often link to it from my own site, but I still ask that you post your review to at least one of the three just mentioned.

It’s easy to do, and you don’t even need to use your real name if you like. Five or six sentences is fine, though you can certainly write more if you wish. Have fun! And if you’re not sure how to do it, just read some examples.

Please note: It would be unethical to require you to do a positive review; all I ask is that you’re fair, and that if it’s just not your kind of book (remember, everyone has different tastes), that you just pass on doing the review at all. In the modern book selling world, these reviews have become critically important to helping books reach their full potential. Keep this in mind when you’re reviewing and you’ll be just fine: I’ve staked many hours on my novels and nonfiction.

I can give away only so many free books, so I’ve limited this round of book reviewers. If interested, please email us ASAP.*

(Thanks for this idea to Scott at Flying Raven Press, http://flyingravenpress.com/. Why not give them a visit.)

The Myth of Writers Block (and what to do when you're blocked)

Writing is one of the most important activities for successful consultants. Writing helps you capture and clarify your ideas. Writing helps you polish your presentations to clients. And published writing is probably the second most effective marketing tools in your kit. (First, of course, is recommendations from satisfied clients.)

Yet most consultants never publish an article. Of those who do publish an article, most write only one. Many consultants never publish a report. Of those who do publish a report, most write only one. And certainly, most consultants never publish a book. Of those who do publish a book, most publish only one. If you ask them why they don't write more, they will commonly say they are stuck, or "blocked." But these words are merely labels. They explain nothing. Most often consultants stop writing because they do not understand the essential randomness involved in the creative process.

The Structure of Creation versus the Structure of Presentation

Please don't get the impression that I read in the random way I write (my "Fieldstone Method." Reading, by its nature, is more or less linear, like a string of beads, and I tend to read most works through from beginning to end. But written works can be created by superimposing any of a variety of organizations on that linear string of words. For instance, novels, being stories, are more or less linear; but novelists may use flashbacks, stories-within-stories, or parallel stories to break the linearity.

Dictionaries, encyclopedias, and reference manuals—though consisting of a bound sequence of pages—are generally organized for a random access by the addition of tables of contents and indices. Internets and intranets allow us to hyperlink written works in much more complex structures, though in order to use them, we frequently need aids such as index pages and search engines.

But none of these reading organizations have much of anything to do with the organization of the creative process by which the works came into existence. These reading structures are presentation methods, not creation methods. Creation doesn't work in any such regular way. It's more accurately modeled by the Fieldstone Method. Every day is different; every idea is different; every mood is different; so why should every project be the same?

Writer's Block and the Goldilocks Questions

"Of course every day is different," you may say. "Some days I'm entirely paralyzed by writer's block, and I don't accomplish anything at all."

If this is your problem, I can help, as I've helped many other consultants and professional and amateur writers. I didn't always understand how I was helping, until one student wrote the following:

As evidenced in some conversations with other students of yours and in my own writings, I think there are number of intangibles that you do offer—in much the same way that a coach or therapist does. These include motivation, raising self-esteem, building confidence in writing, considering self-other-context, discipline, thinking more clearly, or awareness, to name only a few.

Writer's block is not a disorder of you, the person attempting to write. It's a deficiency of your writing methods—the mythology you've swallowed about how works get written—what my sometime co-author, Tom Gilb, calls your "mythodology." Fieldstone writers, freed of this mythodology, simply do not experience "writer's block." Have you ever heard anyone speak of “mason's block”? (But, yes, I have heard people talking about "consultant's block"—and what I'm saying here actually applies to much of the work consultants do, or try to do when they get "stuck.")

Many writing methods and books assume that writer's block results from a shortage of ideas. Others assume the opposite—that writers become blocked when they have a surplus of ideas and can't figure out what to do with all of them. But it's not the number of ideas that blocks you, it's your reaction to the number of ideas.

Here's how it goes. You have the wrong number of ideas, and that bothers you, causes you discomfort, or even pain. To lessen the pain, you turn to some other activity—coffee, beer, sex, movies, books, sleep, or name your poison. This diversion relieves the pain in the short run, but eventually your mind turns back to that unfinished piece of writing (or other work). Now you feel worse because you've avoided the task. You might try writing again, but your mind keeps returning to what a bad, blocked writer you are. So, eventually, you turn to your relief—coffee, beer, sex, or whatever.

Do you recognize the addiction cycle? (This dynamic is described more fully in my soon-to-be released Volume 5, Managing Yourself and Others, of my e-Series, Quality Software.) The Fieldstone method allows you to break this cycle in exactly the same way you break any addiction, by using your intelligence and creativity. I sometimes begin to feel "blocked," but when I do, I simply ask myself what I call the Goldilocks Questions:

"What state am I in now? Do I have too many ideas? Do I have too few? Or, like Baby Bear's porridge, is it just right?"

If I have too many ideas, I begin some organizing activities, like sorting ideas into different piles. If I have too few ideas, I concentrate on gathering more. Usually, the first place I look is in my own mind, staying in the flow of the moment, one idea building on the next.

For instance, when I’m writing dialogue, I don’t stop to search externally for just the right conversational “stone.” That approach leads to overly clever dialogue, rather than the more natural-sounding stones that just pop out of my head from millions of past conversations I’ve heard or overheard. Only if my natural mental flow fails me do I start searching for an external "fieldstone" to trigger a new flow.

Then, when the number of ideas is "just right," I organize them, trimming and polishing a bit in the process, until I have a finished product—or until I have to ask the Goldilocks Questions again. Sure, I may be stuck for a few moments, but I'm never "blocked."

In my book, Weinberg on Writing, I sketch all three parts of the Fieldstone Method—first the gathering of ideas (stones), then the organizing, then the trimming and polishing. The book describes them in that order, not because I perform them in that order, but because it's a book, and books are linear organizations of ideas.

Unlike what your schools taught you about writing, the Fieldstone Method is not dependent on any particular order of doing things. Instead, Fieldstoning is about always doing something that's advancing your projects. As a Fieldstone writer, you will have a variety of keep-moving activities, a handy list of tasks of all sizes, plus the knowledge to match each task to your mood, your start/stop time, your resources, and your total available time. As a Fieldstone consultant, you will have a second handy list of keep-moving activities—a list with your writing list as one of its sublists.

Each Fieldstone writer also has to find her own “magic” tasks, not all of which may seem “logical” to other writers. Meditation works for me, but others find it disturbing. Aikido boosts me, but it tires others. Some writers say you have to have a cat, a cigarette, and a cup of coffee laced with brandy.
The cigarette and brandied coffee would kill me, which would be merciful because then I wouldn’t have to watch the Lovey and Caro tear apart the cat.

Observing Your Activities

In order to be a non-blockable writer (or consultant), you need to do a bit of observation of yourself. Here's what I suggest you try:

1. Choose a day or several hours that you plan to devote to writing.

2. In your journal (all professional consultants keep a journal) record the start-stop time of different activities.

3. Record your feelings at the beginning and end of each activity. Don't interrupt your flow, but just capture a word or two.

4. At the end of the day, look at what you wrote in your journal. Do you see an addiction cycle?

5. How did you respond any time you were temporarily stuck?

6. What other activities could you have done that would have served you better?

7. How will you remind yourself of those activities when you repeat this observation exercise in a month or so?

(This article is adapted from Weinberg on Writing: The Fieldstone Method )

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Find my eBooks sampled free, and offered for sale at these stores

• My Barnes and Noble page

• My Amazon Page

• Apple Store

• My Smashwords Page
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Rumors of My Quitting Are Grossly Exaggerated

InfoQ's website ran an essay that said:

"Now he doesn't do that much in software anymore, he writes science fiction [and] he runs his AYE Conference, which is a human potential kind of conference."

I tried to reply, but their reply function crashed on me, so I'm putting my response here, to clear things up:

Gee fellas and gals,
Well, I was slowed down for a year while beating "incurable" cancer. bit how many of the rest of you have published even one book on software in the past two years? (I've done several.)

If that isn't "much," then how about my Problem-Solving Leadership Workshop (PSL), or my keynotes at software conferences? And AYE is principally for software folks, just like your website. Isn't your website "doing much"? (I think it is.

And, then there's consulting. Don't my clients think they're doing software?

Maybe my novels are confusing you (and others). They're entertaining stories, to be sure (at least I think so, but see for yourself). But they are full of s/w lessons--just another one of the ways I'm trying to get these lessons across. You know as well as I how hard that is. So, after 50 years, I decided to try something new--in ADDITION to my other activities--books, essays, blogs, workshops, conferences, consulting--AND responding to other people's blogs, like right now.

Thanks for listening. - Jerry Weinberg

Visit my website if you'd like to know more about what I've been doing.

Reader Feedback: Sample Pages

If you want to have a successful business, you have to pay attention to customer feedback. In the case of eMarketing, that feedback can be fast and focused. Using Google Analytics, I discovered my eStore was attracting 50 or more readers a day, but most these potential customers were not buying books.

Following some astute reader feedback, I've now made sample pages available for each of the novels in my eStore:

Mistress of Molecules

First Stringers: or eyes that do not see

The Freshman Murders

The Hands of God

This way, my readers will not be buying a pig in a poke. We'll see if it works.

eNovel Store: First Month Report and Lesson

It's been about a month since I opened my eNovel store. After a snappy first two weeks, activity slowed to zero, and I thought nobody would ever buy another novel of mine, let alone put me over the tipping point where the novels would take off like Harry Potter.

I learned that worrying over day-to-day or week-to-week sales is a futile wasted of time. After one dry week, sales picked up again. If they stay at this level, I'll earn a small but welcome addition for my charities each year.

Will I be satisfied? I don't know, but at least I won't worry day-to-day. I've learned my lesson.

It's a worthwhile lesson for consultants in all phases of their business. By its nature, independent consulting is a highly variable business. As I wrote in The Secrets of Consulting, there are, theoretically, three states a consultant's business can be in: A: too much business; B: not enough business; and C:just the right amount of business. But no individual is ever in state C.

So stop worrying and do something about it. Me, I'm asking everyone I know to take a look at my book store.

eNovels for Nerds

I've decided it's past time for me to join the electronic age.

Five years ago, I gave myself the assignment of spending five years learning to write the kind of fiction that would further my life's goal:

helping smart people be happy

I have achieved my goal, and have now completed ten novels, one of which has been published as The Aremac Project. All of the novels are written about smart people and their struggles to be happy. They're intended to make the learnings from my other books and my workshops come to life in a new medium. So far, they seem to be working that way.

I've achieved something else besides my original goal: I have learned more than I wanted to know about the fiction publishing business.

Most of all, I've learned how hard and slow it the business is, and how difficult it is to break into. For example, one of my fellow writers just sent me statistics on his responses to queries about his crime thriller: 93% of the editors simply did not bother to reply, even with a short email. My own success rate (at just receiving a reply, even in an enclosed, stamped, self-addressed envelope) has only slightly better.

From the editors' point of view, there are good reasons for this rude-looking behavior: they are simply swamped with manuscripts and queries from would-be authors. And, even when they do reply, and even when they do accept the manuscript for publication (a much lower percentage still), they usually require years to get the novel in print. And, once it's in print, chances are it won't stay in print for more than a year or so.

I've decided I'm too old to put all my chips in that game. I'll still seek print publication by some publishers, while at the same time, I'm publishing some of my novels in eBook format (pdf) sold through my website for the value price of $4.99 apiece. I invite you to visit the site and try one of them. (I always give a money-back guarantee on all my work.)

I would love to have your feedback on the store itself, as well as the form and content of the novels. If this approach is well-received, I'll put some more of my novels up there.

So, visit http://www.geraldmweinberg.com/Site/eBOOKS.html and take a look. As time goes by, I'll report here on the outcome of this experiment.