I always enjoy a good challenge. I had a lot of fun last December doing the 24-hour product challenge. So naturally, when Amy wrote The Ship by September Challenge, I signed up immediately.
July 15
Joined the challenge and committed to shipping a new product by September 15.
I’m writing a book about Swift. It’s not actually “about Swift” – it’s much more specific than that, but I’m not sure I’m ready to share the topic yet. I’m excited to have the first version out by September. I’ve wanted to write a book for years, and this seems like a great opportunity, with the SBS challenge and some email coaching from Amy.
July 16
The book is for beginner to intermediate Swift developers (per my definition in the Path to Mastery). I hope it’ll be generally applicable to anyone and everyone who’s writing Swift, but certainly people in those levels will benefit the most. And I’m going to write it for them, because a book for everyone is a book for no one.
July 20
Spent lots of time doing research for the book. The kind of research I learned in 30×500: Sales Safari. Basically this was all about studying what my audience (Swift developers) needs so I can deliver that. I hope I nailed it, but we’ll have to wait & see when it goes on sale.
Couldn’t sleep, so I stayed up way too late writing the pitch for the book. At least I had fun. And got the first draft done.
July 22
I’m self-publishing this book. In case that wasn’t already obvious.
Today I wrote down a bunch of notes on paper so I could better organize and categorize the pains I found on Safari.
July 23
I drafted the pitch for the book, then rewrote it at least 5 times. It’s probably better now than it was before, but I’m not sure.
I asked some of my peers to review it for me in The Forge, the 30×500 alumni community. Got some feedback to process. I’m probably going to rewrite it again. (And in case you’re wondering, rewriting pitches like this is normal for me. I rewrote the pitches for the iOS Boot Camp and Beginning Swift dozens of times. DOZENS!)
Eventually I’ll get to publish it and start taking preorders. Seems like that’s a long way off, but who knows? I’ll probably eventually get tired of rewriting it, call it good enough, then hit publish without even thinking. I just don’t want to put up a page that doesn’t accurately describe who it’s for, what it’ll do for you, and what’s in it.