Writing a book with someone (Reshan) who is a great project manager has its benefits for someone (Steve) who is used to writing alone and used to writing short essays or blog posts. You can sprint through a short essay or blog post; you can't sprint through a book. So you need to find ways to maintain your energy, the quality of your writing, and even your interest.
Reshan structured our work using simple tables in shared Google Docs, and he invented a way for us to track of our progress with a color-coding system. For example, here's the way Reshan might have organized the work that went into our first chapter:
Reshan structured our work using simple tables in shared Google Docs, and he invented a way for us to track of our progress with a color-coding system. For example, here's the way Reshan might have organized the work that went into our first chapter:
Once this table was functional, and shared between us, we could choose tasks for ourselves or assign each other tasks:
As we started working and adding color to the table, our momentum became visible. We could easily see that we were heading in the right direction. At the same time, the colorless cells became opportunities. If either one of us had some time on our hands, we could look at the blank spaces and see if we could work toward our collective goal -- completion of the table.
We used this simple organizing principle to drive the completion of dozens of small projects in support of our big project. Whether we were working on writing, editing, citations, permissions, or gathering endorsements, slow waves of color crashing across tables reminded us that we were making progress -- that we were actually writing a book.
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