In 2004, while still plugging away at the video editing books, I got this strange idea. “Hmmm… Maybe I should write a book someone would actually want to read?” Not that people weren’t reading the video books. But they weren’t reading them, if you know what I mean.

With my epic fantasy novel seemingly on perma-hold and the video editing treadmill winding down, the idea of a “diet book” popped in my head. It wasn’t going to be a diet diet book. That is, I didn’t have the next big craze ready to foist upon the world. I more or less wanted to tell my story and maybe entertain along the way. I have a knack for humor (or so I’ve been told: personally, I don’t see it) and that pretty much set the tone.

The title jumped out at me almost immediately. (If you don’t know the title, it’s right over there at the top of the left hand column. If that thumbnail is too small, I recommend buying the book for easier viewing.) In fact, the title essentially meant this was going to be an anti diet book. (Not a book against dieting, but the exact opposite of a diet book.)

I wrote the first twenty pages or so in a single sitting. (Not the order the pages were in the published book, however.) I printed it out, sat back, and read it. “Hey, this isn’t bad,” I thought to myself. “Maybe I’ll try some more.” Of course, I still had those video editing book projects to work on, so it really wasn’t until 2006 that I began to focus on it more. Then I really put the pedal to the metal in 2007, just to get the stupid thing finished. After all, four years had gone by since I first conceived the idea, and I was tired of regularly scratching out the copyright year on the title verso page.

Once the writing was finished, things moved very quickly. Here’s the run down:

• Self-Published the book.
• Looked for a publicist.
• Canceled the publicist. Looked for a literary agent.
• Discovered real publishers very rarely touch self-published books
• Got a publicist. Gave some book talks.
• Discovered non-fiction books are really hard to sell if you aren’t Madonna or a famous doctor
• Decided to start some serious blogging to help make a name for myself (yes, I did this completely bass ackwards.)
• Blogged like crazy for about a year.
• Realized I spent about three times as much time trying to promote the book as it took to write the book.
• Watched book sales soar to upwards of one copy every seven weeks.
• Realized this little project was essentially doomed.

That’s when the blogfunk set in and that’s when, back on the left side of this summer, I wrote this post.

It still feels strange to me to only write one or two posts a week, after writing five a day for nearly ten months. And it feels even stranger to build up a small but loyal following, and then just piddle out like that. Heck, even Lyn not a couple days ago thought I hadn’t posted in four months. (Although I blame a bad RSS feed on that.)

But … if I’m really going to ever write another book, I don’t have much choice. I can’t work sixteen hours a day, commute another hour, sleep four hours, blog for two hours, then clip my toenails the rest of the time. That doesn’t leave a lot of room for forward progress. Something’s gotta give.

Next in the series: Confessions of a Middle-Aged Whiner

Well that was a fast year. (But aren’t they all?)

Although BTTF existed before August 25, 2008, I really count that date as my blogoversary. That’s when I launched my (then) new look and got five-posts-per-week serious about this.

Believe it or not, that site is still up. If you’re new here and missed it or if you’ve been around since then and are feeling nostalgic, you can find it right here:

http://version2.backtothefridge.com/

Very first post is at the bottom of this page.

Enjoy!

November 1996, Los Angeles. I’d had this video editing book idea in my head for four months now. Oddly enough, while talking to a product manager for Ulead Systems, he said to me, “We were thinking it would be good if you wrote a MediaStudio Pro book.” Well whaddaya know: I was thinking the very same thing.

That was all I needed to immediately set to work on it late 1996. Then again in 1997. And then again in 1998. (Yeah, I’m like greased lightning.) Granted, most of that time was spent actually doing the video editing jobs and not necessarily writing about it. But as I realized my future in video editing was limited, my thoughts turned back to the book.

In June 1999, I self-published the first edition of Getting Results with MediaStudio Pro. Just a year later, a new version of the software was out so I extended the book and sold two editions simultaneously: one for version 5 and one for version 6. In 2001, the book was further extended. Then in 2003, a new version of the software came out. *sigh* After that, for some crazy reason, I decided to adapt the material for VideoStudio (their entry level video editing product). And after that, I revised the entire MediaStudio Pro book again, based on the new VideoStudio book. At which point a new version of VideoStudio came out and … well, you get the picture.

In what seemed like just a few short years, I’d somehow written eight editions of the two books. Writing technical books was an absolute treadmill. So when MediaStudio Pro 8 came out, I decided that was the end. I was going to write the bestest version ever and call it done. And I did. In 2006, after 10 years, I felt like I’d actually written the book I’d set out to write in the first place. Here it is:

Did I say ten years? Where the heck did ten years go? Holy moly. I mean, sure, it was nice having this done, but had I done the right thing? Shouldn’t I have been working on that epic fantasy novel this whole time instead? Yes. Yes, I should have. And so, with this out of my system, I immediately set to work on … well, a diet book.

Next in the series: A diet book?

So as soon as I realized I wanted to: 1) write and 2) have somebody read what I wrote, I smugly assumed I had it all figured out. Unfortunately (for me) I missed one minor variable in my calculations. I needed an actual topic.

Coming off my Rings read just the year before, I felt the very same thing a very long line of Tolkien wannabes felt before me. I wanted to write squarely in the high fantasy genre. Swords and sorcery! Magic and monsters! Boy, what a concept.

I immediately set pen to paper (er, I mean, fingers to keyboard) and began writing. I wrote paragraph after paragraph, each worse than the one before it. But I never stopped thinking I was still on to something. In hindsight, I almost wish I was writing on actual paper back then because today I could upload for you a photo of me sitting at a desk, staring at yet another blank sheet of paper, the quintessential wastepaper basket at my side overflowing with the quintessential crumpled up failed attempts. (It’s just not the same crumpling up your monitor.)

This was still 1993. I was 27 years old (and, at the time, fourteen years into my mid-life crisis). If I couldn’t come up with a good book idea, then at least I could do something creative with my life. Coupling that with the fact I didn’t want to be in software development for the rest of my life, I started a small video production company.

That went well, but it didn’t completely drive away my desire to write something. That desire was rekindled fiercely when I came across this book and suddenly I got a new idea. I could combine my mad video editing skillz with my desire to write and maybe come up with a pretty cool book on video editing instead.

Next in the series: A pretty cool book on video editing.

I’ve worked in software development my entire professional career. It’s a great livelihood for anyone who wants to experience the thrill of going from absolute brilliance to bone-headed stupidity twelve or more times a day.

After I finished reading Lord of the Rings in 1992, I was by that point full swing into a project at work called ‘TBX’. It didn’t stand for anything, simply being the word ‘Toolbox’ with all the Os and Ls removed. TBX was a collection of reusable components for other software developers to use.

And if I truly wanted other software developers to use it, it had to be documented. And document it I did. I wrote and wrote and wrote. Some parts were ‘how tos’, others were examples, much of it was reference material on how the various TBX APIs worked. But when all was said and done, it was over 400 pages. (And it’s worth mentioning, this reference manual had the greatest twist-ending ever! Turns out the HTX subsystem which was feeding information into the TD.930 components was dead the whole time . . . and never even knew it!)

As I printed copies for distribution (remember, at this point in time, the web was only about six hours old) I got this strange feeling. I thought to myself, “I like this. I like this a lot.” And oddly enough it wasn’t because of the writing. It was the copying that got me. I realized I didn’t want to just write but I wanted lots and lots of copies of it. I wanted what every writer wants: to be read.

Next in the series: An author’s detour.