Hi. I’m Lou Franco and this is episode 44 of Write While True.
Write While True is an infinite loop, and that’s because I think of writing as an infinite game. A game I’m playing for fun and to get better at it. Like a game of catch.
So in each episode, I’ll tell you something I learned about writing, and then I’ll throw you the ball with a writing challenge or a prompt.
Episode
I recorded the last episode of this podcast in April last year, almost 9 months ago. It was the fourth episode of the fourth season and the fourth part of a four-part series about the lessons in The Four Disciplines of Execution [affiliate link] and how I was applying them to writing a book in 2024.
The Four Disciplines of Execution is a book that describes a technique for reaching goals outside of your normal every day life. It recognizes that you have a lot to do just to keep things going. It’s about aspirational goals on top of that whirlwind.
I went through each of the disciplines and described how I was applying them to my goal of writing a book in 2024. Let me recap those episodes.
Episode 40 was about the first discipline, which is to pick a goal: My goal was to write a pamphlet-sized book (about 50 pages) by the end of 2024.
Episode 41 was about the second discipline, which is to identify and act on the leading indicators. These are actions that you could do each week that would hopefully build up to the goal in the end. I decided to spend 1 hour on each of 5 different days of the week writing and working on my book.
Episode 42 was about the 3rd discipline, which is to build a scoreboard that tells you if you’re winning. You are essentially tracking the leading indicator against a weekly goal. I used the Chronicling app on my iPhone so I could see how I was doing right on my home screen.
Finally, episode 43 was about the 4th discipline, which is to have an accountability meeting each week. Since I’m working alone, this was harder, so I joined a writing group that has 3 weekly 1-hour meetings where we write together. So, just those meetings got me 3 of my 5 hours. The group could also offer guidance on writing a book since several of the members had already published one.
They also have a culture of sharing work early, which they instilled in me.
My intention after episode 43 was to follow along the process of writing the book and share what I learned along the way. But, a few things happened that derailed me (in a good way).
I published episode 43 right before I went on vacation. I kept writing during my vacation, but not much, and there was no way I was going to podcast. This was an intentional break, which is important (see Episode 23-Take a Break for my thoughts on that).
But, before I left, I had about 40 pages done, which I posted online for feedback. A couple of days before my flight back, I got a message from Gergely Orosz, who writes The Pragmatic Engineer newsletter. He said that he read my draft and wanted me to propose an article based on it for his newsletter. His newsletter gets seven hundred thousand readers. I’m one of them.
The chance to premarket my book and get feedback from Gergely and his readers was too much to pass up. Also, he pays guest writers, which I thought of as pre-sales of the book and a good signal that I was on the right track.
I wrote a proposal, which he accepted. Then, he sent me a guide to writing for his audience and the style he expected. His audience of software engineers and engineering managers matches what I think my audience is. I’m also trying to write directly for them.
I spent a few weeks writing the article, but when I sent it to Gergely, he didn’t like it. He gave me useful and direct feedback, and I used that to submit another draft, which was a complete rewrite.
That draft was a lot closer to what he was looking for, so we developed it further — he has a thorough editing process which includes professional copy editing. All of the feedback was invaluable, and I learned a lot about how to write successfully for his audience, which, like I said, is the same audience I want to reach with my book.
The article was published in September and it helped me get beta readers who wanted early access to the chapters as I was writing them. They have been providing feedback for the last few months.
The feedback helped me develop my ideas, and the book grew to about 160 pages. So, while I didn’t finish the 50-page book I set out to write in 2024, I’m happy with the result. I sent a draft of the complete book to my editor in December, and I hope to have it published by March. If you want to get updates on the book, go to loufranco.com — there’s a link to the book at the top of the page.
All of that came from writing in public and showing my work — the book that I would have written in private would have been very different (and not as good).
If you are following along season 4 because you are thinking of writing a book, then my tip this episode is to take what you have and post it publicly somewhere. I used the helpthisbook.com platform, but a read-only google doc is good enough to get started. If you don’t have anything written yet, you don’t need much — I shared what I had after about a month.
I have more to say about writing a book — the rest of season four will be the other lessons I learned in the past year that helped me write my book.
But until then, this has been Write While True, a podcast where we love infinite loops as long as they’re fun.