Books I'm Currently Writing (November 2009 Edition)

OK, if you skimmed over the title of this blog post, so back and re-read it. I'll wait.

That's right, this time I'm referring to books that I'm writing.

I can't really say that I'm currently writing my novel, as it's been stalled for several months now. That's not because I have writer's block, as I know where the story has to go next. It's not that I've lost interest in the book's contents, as I haven't. If anything, that book is on-hold because I realized that I need to get just a little bit better at writing before I can really pull it off. Which isn't a terrible thing to discover, as long as you expect to improve (as I do).

On the other hand, what I can say that I'm working on right now - almost literally - is a new book idea. It came to me over the summer and probably won't surprise you when you hear what it is. In fact, I'd say that "lack of surprise" is a pretty good way to describe how most everyone has responded to the news of its existence, as I've shared it around. I finally decided today that the time was right to blog about it, and so here we are.

The new book is called No Kid of Ours is Failing at Math, from which you may be able to deduce its general theme. It's a non-fiction addition to my body of work, very much along the lines of the two Real-Life Adventures of AgileMan books, but probably less controversial (although you never know)! It's intended to be an entertaining mind-dump of what I've learned as a Math tutor, specifically geared toward parents. I suspect that I'll end up sub-titling it something like "How Parents Can Help Kids with Math".

I sat down for an afternoon in September and came up with an outline for No Kid of Ours, after mulling over the idea of writing it for more than a month. Just as I did before beginning the original AgileMan tome, I wanted to know if I really had enough material to make it worthwhile. After a couple hours of note-taking, it seemed fairly clear to me that I did, and so, not long after that brainstorming session, I began writing it.

As of today, I have most of seven chapters written, albeit in very rough form. I've shared some of it with Vicki as I've been producing it, and gotten positive feedback each time. Needless to say, that reaction has helped increase my confidence in the concept and in my own ability to pull off its execution. Based on the outline and how things have been going so far, I expect that the finished product will weigh in at somewhere between twelve and sixteen chapters, and probably boast a page count of around 120 to 150. (Word count is looking like it'll run 40,000 to 50,000, if I had to make a guess.) In other words, it's not going to be a massive book, by any stretch... but I definitely hope that it'll turn out to be a useful and readable one!

In news that should make AgileBoy weep with joy, I've even been thinking that perhaps No Kid of Ours is a book that I should figure out how to market. With the AgileMan collection, I've done almost no promotion, and have the sales figures to prove it. I was always a little ambivalent about pushing those books too hard, though, as the subject matter was both touchy (considering that it shed some unfavourable light on my previous work place) and of limited interest (how many people really care about Agile, or even software development for that matter?). With a book about helping kids understand and succeed at Math, on the other hand, I've probably stumbled upon a subject that could have a significant target audience. Whether it's good enough to really tap into that particular demographic still remains to be seen, but at least there's more potential this time around. So we'll see.

Anyway, yet another cat is now out of its bag (see my "pig in a poke" post if you want to learn where that expression came from). Wish me luck! And feel free to place your advance orders for No Kid of Ours is Failing at Math anytime now! (Or you could wait until I'm at least finished writing it!)