My First Week as a Budding Author

 I promised my “reader” that I would keep them updated with progress as I ventured into a new career of attempting to write a book about cycling. And so I fulfill this promise (at least once) with a progress update on week one of the “The project”. I’m calling it “the project” as I need to be a little cagey concerning what exactly it is that I’m doing, because clearly the idea is so brilliant that the rest of the internet will have copied it within a week.

“The project” requires a decent amount of research and a thoroughly indecent amount of cycling to go with it. So, I managed to spend the first two days of freedom from a life in IT, doing research. In carrying out this research I came across the first temptation that the non-fiction author must resist:-

Thou shalt not simply lift it all from Wikipedia

What did authors do before the internet? Did they actually have to go to libraries and stuff? It seems that I can write nearly 50% of this book using the cntrl-C and cntrl-V keystrokes, fantastic! However, I’ve been a good boy and spread the net a little wider, this climaxed in today’s phonecall with a vicar during which we had a five minute conversation concerning a cherub. Life’s definitely moved on for me, last year I was postulating service based architectures for IT systems, now I ask vicars nicely if I can look at their cherubs.

It hasn’t all been frivolity and larks though, I’ve sat down and carried out some proper planning including a full outline for the book. I’ve even written an introduction for it, however a quick scan back through it shows that the grammar, structure and flow of the text is “shonky” at the best, much editing required.

The indecent amount of cycling needs planning as well. I’ve given Tracklogs a right old thrashing and have knocked up over 2000 miles worth of planned pedaling already. I’ve got a very secret site with the routes shown in Google Maps, anyone within the circle of trust can contact me for a sneaky peak. This is going to need some fitness, so, purely in the interests of work, I’ve done a little bit of cycling as well. When I say “a little bit” I mean about 100 miles worth, mostly off road, so my legs and the washing machine are both suffering a bit as of Friday.

In summary, I’ve been pretty busy. I haven’t watched a single minute of daytime TV and contrary to popular belief I’ve not been sat in front of a computer in my pants either. To have a thousand words written already is on track, as I reckon “The project” will need 50,000 of them before editing, so at this rate I’ll be done by New Year’s eve.

I must also mention the “oh so hilarious” texts, emails and IRC comments from my ex-colleagues who kindly encouraged me to “do the dusting”, “get the dinner on” along with various other incredibly witty japes. I dedicate this video to them, it was filmed whilst they were in meetings.

Dave, 7th January 2011

WEEK TWO >>>>