[stylist] Developing strategies

[Bridgit Pollpeter]

Jim,

I agree with Chris. For the type of material you want to write, an
outline will be beneficial and necessary. Informational and how-to books
take a lot of organization; an outline will flesh out the important
points to focus on and how the info should be organized. I also like the
suggestion of setting a certain amount of writing to accomplish each
day, or whatever time frame you have to work with. Good luck.

Sincerely,
Bridgit Kuenning-Pollpeter
Read my blog at:
http://blogs.livewellnebraska.com/author/bpollpeter/
 
"History is not what happened; history is what was written down."
The Expected One- Kathleen McGowan

Message: 20
Date: Mon, 26 Sep 2011 09:58:47 -0400
From: "Chris Kuell" <ckuell at comcast.net>
To: "Writer's Division Mailing List" <stylist at nfbnet.org>
Subject: Re: [stylist] Story development/strategy
Message-ID: <DBC572623C5144359B2BBE9FB176C7FC at ChrisPC>
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
	reply-type=original

Jim,

One of my favorite books on writing came to mind as I read your post.
It's 
called 'Bird by Bird' by Anne Lamott. The title for the book came from a

story she tells about her brother when he was in high school. I read the

book many years ago, so I may have the exact details wrong, but it went 
something like that he had to do a school project on the birds of North 
America. He was just overwhelmed by the project and didn't know how to 
start. Their father came over, put his hand on his shoulder and advised
him 
to go 'bird by bird'.

Lamott is a fan of breaking down a project, especially a non-fiction 
project, into chunks. Here an outline is a necessity. What do you want
the 
book to accomplish? What are the various big areas that will need to be 
discussed to cover this goal adequately? How can you break down the big 
areas into smaller ideas that support the big idea, and so on. I'm not a

computer guy, but shooting from the hip, your web accessibility idea
might 
have the main goal of helping blind people to fully utilize the power of
the 
web. The big ideas might be search engines, social networks, online
stores 
and information/data sites. Or, perhaps these would be sub-categories
under 
various accessibility programs--screen readers, screen enlargers...
Anyway, 
you would spend time figuring out how you think you might best convey
the 
information, then start by setting writing goals and chipping away at
it. 
Since you are working at this part-time, a modest goal might be 250
words 
per day. However, I should interject here that before you started
writing a 
non-fiction book like this, you should first put your time and energy
into 
writing a book proposal, which would cover most of the aforementioned 
outlining. Most non-fiction books are sold via the proposal, whereas
novels 
are sold, especially by first-time novelists, as finished works.

chris