Well, I've been largely absent from the blogging world for many moons now. As I mentioned in The Near Term Future for this Site, I am spending what little free time I have writing a Service Design Patterns book for Addison Wesley. Now, that's a big size project in and of itself, but around the same time that the contract came through another big thing happened. My wife and I had a daughter. Life as I knew it has ceased to be in so many ways.
My friends warned me how hard the book project would be. I knew it would be difficult. It turned out to be even harder. For some reason I can only think of drawing an analogy to climbing Mount Everest. Inch by inch, step by step, one needs to keep moving forward, persevering towards the goal. I'm several chapters into the book, but honestly, it only feels like I've gotten to Base Camp, and I have several more difficult climbs to make. Not only that, but I know that each journey made to the next higher camp will need to be traversed more than once because I've come to discover that effective book writing means a lot of rewriting as well. So, it really is like climbing the mountain (mentally not physically of course) ... push to the next camp, come back down again, push to the next camp, come back down again, etc. This is the way it unfolds. And the most difficult part of the journey is at the very end when the manuscript is ready for critical review. Is it worth it? For me the answer is yes.
I will forever be in debt to my wife for all of this. She has been amazing in her support for me. She's allowed me to spend significant time on the book with the promise that I help her out the best I can with the new family. Now that's amazing to me. For those of you considering writing a book, trust me when I say that you need a large support team comprised of family, superior editorial staff, technical reviewers, industry contacts, and if you are employed, an employer who supports your project. These are not projects one can do alone.
Well, it looks like it's time for me to get back to work. Those deadlines are staring me in the face. Yikes!!!
p.s. - I know some readers might be wondering why I didn't say that raising our girl is the hardest job I've ever had. I don't see it that way. Her smile makes it easy. You moms and dads know what I mean ;-)