nickd

some things i need to keep in mind in the process of writing my book and so i am writing them here so that i can hold myself to them at all future stages of the process

perceptual

1. the final book must be of a small size (din a5 or a6, e.g. approx.) so that it can be crammed into a backpack, read in loud bars, on public transit, on airplanes (incl. shitty airplanes), road trips, etc.
2. following #1, any example graphics must be small and finely detailed
3. , which means that the book should be printed at at least 2,400dpi.

and editorial

1. a fully-formed product should be abstractly inferable from reading the book and only the book, which means the book should be internally complete. cf., branches of higher mathematics’ textbooks work from a series of basic postulates and axioms upwards to create as full a portrait of a mathematical system as possible/needed, which is a principle that will be reflected in this text. postulates including e.g.,
   1. users prefer simple products to complex products.
   2. users prefer well-designed products to undesigned products.
   3. a product is the reflection of its creator, and that is why quality cannot be faked in it.
2. if you can’t hash out an example right now, mark it and describe what you need to do later in the draft, for your future self to read.
3. a lot of stuff in this is threadbare; it circles around the point without killing it dead. you will need to ask your friends and colleagues many questions before you reach what you’re searching for.
4. absolute worst case, your audience is yourself, which means absolute worst case, you will have a tremendously useful tool for you to refer to in any future career dealings.
5. typesetting the book will take as long as writing the draft in plaintext. when you are done with that, you are probably only halfway done.
6. for the first time in your career, you are actually doing good things that you believe in. this is the culmination of five years of damn-near-monastic research and ardent conversations with like-minded individuals, the near-entirety of which has taken place outside your education and workplace. the next time you think it’s justifiable to pick up your iphone and trudge through your instapaper backlog on the el instead of working on your drafts, ask yourself how else the book will be completed before retirement.