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Show HN: Software Engineer to Novelist: Writing a Book Like Coding
I just published my first book, Means and Motive. ( https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GYCZJVGX https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GYCZJVGX )
As a software engineer, I approached writing like a software project. I used familiar tools (Emacs and HTML) for the primary writing.
I built my own tool (EPublish) to transform the HTML manuscript into an .epub file, the source for the ebook version. And I wrote shell scripts to reliably and repeatably transform the .epub version into PDF files for the printed editions.
I wrote 'design' and 'architecture' docs, describing the world, key actors, and timelines. I kept a task list of chapters and key scenes that needed to be written, in priority order. Along the way, I kept my files version-controlled so I could see the progress of the novel and edit mercilessly, without worrying about keeping old text around in backup files should I want it back for some reason.
If you've thought about writing a book, I highly recommend it. There are many similarities to the software engineering process. You'll also gain a newfound appreciation of the design, layout, and typesetting world, exactly how much work goes into each book you read.
- kalabrium 5mo agoCongratulations on your publication! Have you also tried integrating apps like obsidian, that help in sw development?
- TeaVMFan 5mo agoYou're the second person to recommend Obsidian to me in a week, I'll take a look. For long-form writing, I'm very comfortable with my setup from article (html-helper-mode especially), but for notes I'll look at Obsidian.
- zhxiaoliang 5mo ago[dead]
- Tanxsinxlnx 5mo agocongratulations ,will checkout
- kinow 5mo agoCongrats, the description sounds like a good mystery! It'd be interesting to read more about the tooling and process you used, even if you don't release everything open, maybe you could write/blog about it? I was also looking if there was a Wikipedia page about Software Engineers/Programmers who were also fiction writers. I know Andy Weir from Martian was a programmer. I thought Neal Stephenson would have some background in programming, but looks like he never wrote software professionally.
- TeaVMFan 5mo agoI made a new post about EPublish itself here: https://frequal.com/epublish/ https://frequal.com/epublish/
- kinow 5mo agoNice post! Short and simple to read. Is epublish on GitHub or somewhere? It looks simpler than previous approaches I've seen. I had the chance to help a bit with one of the AOSA books. It was a very powerful pipeline, but also quite complex to manage. IIRC it used pandoc (and a lot other tools). So having a simpler alternative like epublish would be interesting if I have to work on another book in the future. EDIT: sorry, just went to the main thread, and saw there you replied to another user it's not open source "yet" (hooray)
- ryanshrott 5mo ago[dead]
- johannesrexx 5mo agoOP mentioned a tool called EPublish and I gather it's a home grown tool. It's ability to take annotations like TBH and generate a chapter-by-chapter report that marks those with TBHs is very cool. If OP would consider open sourcing it I'd be interested in working with it.
- TeaVMFan 5mo agoNot open source yet, but I posted more information here: https://frequal.com/epublish/ https://frequal.com/epublish/
- johannesrexx 5mo agoThanks for sharing more information.
- bgsesr42 5mo agoCongrats, looks interesting, will check it out.
- TeaVMFan 5mo agoThanks! It's available for Kindle Unlimited so if you subscribe to that, you can start reading right away, no checkout or payment required.