204: Free Your Inner Nonfiction Writer - Johanna Rothman
On test and code today, I am thrilled to have Johanna Rothman. She is a fellow author from the
Brian:wonderful Pragmatic Bookshelf Company, and, and we're gonna talk about a whole bunch of stuff, including, writing books. So, welcome, Johanna.
Johanna:Thank you, Brian. I'm very happy to be here.
Brian:Now I I I don't think that you're at least, if you know Python, you know, I don't think you're very active in the Python community. So No. My my my people might not know who you are. I'm mostly Python people. So, can you introduce yourself other than an author?
Johanna:Sure. I'm I'm a management consultant and have been that have been a consultant for almost 30 years. Back in the seventies is when I started to write code. And, no, Python did not exist. So, so, yeah, I my code experience is very old, and I am very glad that there are many, many new ways and new, new ideas in the programming community because we don't know we don't need to go back to the old bad stuff.
Johanna:We just don't.
Brian:Well, we keep reinventing the same errors in different languages, I think. So everything old Yeah.
Johanna:I mean, the assembly language, things I was I excelled at writing infinite loops. And so but that was back in the day when you could see the lights on the front of the computer. So if they repeated the same pattern, debugging was actually not so difficult. But I will say that in my first object oriented language, which was Lisp, I found that more difficult to to do correct garbage collection that I I had not needed to before. Right?
Johanna:So all these advanced programming languages bring all this new the the new needs to the program.
Brian:Yeah. Yeah. And wow. Debugging a list, but I never tried to do that too much. My my experience with list was scheme, which is the offshoot of list, and that was taught, as part of one of the CS classes back in university.
Brian:And then, also, I tried to try to extend the eMax using eMax because eMax is written in Lisp also. And and, I I I do appreciate Lisp and Emacs for the reason that that pushed me over to learn Vim. So I'm grateful for the kick in the pants to go learn Vim. I never looked back. Although, I there's a lot of people that use, what, there's like a Elvis or there's like a there's Neovim.
Brian:That's it. There's a there's like a VIM that's like a, EMAX VIM hybrid thing that anyway, that's way off track. You've written a ton for Pragmatic. You have, like, what, 97 book? No.
Brian:I didn't count. A lot of books with Pragmatic.
Johanna:Yeah. I well, I, the pranks are very nice to me. They also distributed they they distribute my self published books. So I wrote, or 4 or 5.
Brian:I don't
Johanna:I guess I should figure out which which ones, with the pranks, and then I've been writing ever since, and in between, self publishing. So it's yeah. But we're
Brian:selling it well. Your most recent is is this your most recent for your inner nonfiction writer?
Johanna:Well, actually, successful independent consulting is now my most recent. Oh, okay. But for your inner nonfiction writer was before that. So, the only good thing about being home a lot in the pandemic was I got a whole lot more writing time in.
Brian:Yeah. Well, I mean, even if you just say without the commute, you got an extra hour or 2 depending on your commute. Right. So nice.
Johanna:Right.
Brian:So you you say you're a management consultant. So do you do you do, all of that remotely now, or do you go out to companies? Or
Johanna:So I actually discovered during the pandemic that all of my workshops were more effective, especially the more senior leaderish I work, if I was remote and we only got together for an hour or 2 every day, maybe 4 or 5 or 10 days in a row. But that way, people could actually integrate what I what I was teaching, and I could change how I taught. So I could say, read this stuff. Try this thing. We'll debrief it in our, real time meeting as a cohort, and that was so much more effective.
Johanna:I'm not teaching programming. Right? So I think that with programming, if we want to do that, I'm not sure that doing any independent work is always the good first step because that that's when you might wanna see somebody do something on on a on a screen or, you know, on a whiteboard or something, and then try it yourself. But that try it yourself part, oh, that's so, so valuable.
Brian:Yeah. So, like, I I'm gonna poke at this a little bit because it I I I've done, some training, and the the fun fun way to do it, that I've thought is is, like, in person. You got everybody together. It's for for programming training. And to, it to try to do, like, a little bit of presentation, like, teach something, and then have people play with it.
Brian:And then and then maybe do a challenge or something. And then hop back into talking about the solution and then do some more training and sort of cycle through that. And it's a hands on sort of thing, but I'm still trying to I'm still struggling with how to incorporate that into how to do that as a remote thing and have it make sense. So that's a interesting feedback of, I I still think that maybe it's doable. Like, maybe, maybe a quick presentation and then try to do, like, 3 or 4 days in a row instead of trying to do a full day.
Brian:I think it's still doable, but programmers are bad. I don't know about management, but programmers are bad about, like, actually doing the homework, like, between sessions. So, I don't know. That's a completely different topic. What I'd like to ask you about is how do you get people that are basically you know, a lot of our there's a lot of people that I think have books in them that we'd like to get them to get out and write those books.
Brian:So is that part of what your book was about, the for your non inner nonfiction writer?
Johanna:Well, part of it is just getting getting anything out. What I what I've I've been running cohorts of this writing workshop that goes along with this book for, I think since 2016. I ran the cohorts before I wrote the book. I I often find I often find that when I run a workshop and I I learn from the participants in the workshop. So and that's why I really like to run the workshop before I write the book.
Johanna:And I find that when I when I propose writing something down to anybody in my circle, They all get that look like, oh, please, god. Tell me now. And and the reese the reason they get that look is because they think they have to start with an outline. They think they have to edit everything. They think they have to write slowly.
Johanna:They think they have to use passive voice, which they might wanna use, but probably not.
Brian:Yeah.
Johanna:So they have all these rules that their English teachers gave them back when they were, you know, 8 or 9 or 10 and writing their first essays about somebody else's book. That's not what they're doing now.
Brian:I I just I blame school, yes, for teaching me bad writing habits and for be and for teaching that, like, books have to I mean, the the only time we thought of a book as good or entertaining, that was that's not good writing. Good writing is like this weird, difficult literature. And, yeah. I mean, like, can we stop trying to get people to recreate Scarlet Letter and stuff like that? That's that's bad.
Brian:I Well
Johanna:and and if you wanted to do a remake of Scarlet Letter, I also have been writing fiction, then then set it on a planet.
Brian:Yeah. Right? Yeah.
Johanna:Have have some very cool, night sky and and morning sky. Make make it interesting to the reader. That's that's how I try and write my nonfiction. I don't always set them on planets. But but I want I want peep I want to invite people into my nonfiction.
Johanna:I want them to stay with me until they've finished, excuse me, the damn book because because I want them to get all the value that they can wring out of it. Now, I mean, how many good ideas will people find in a book or a blog post? I don't know. At least 1. Hopefully, 1.
Brian:That well, you brought up blog posts, and I think that's important. Do you think it's I think it's important to have people just start writing a blog. If they're thinking about writing a book, just start writing a blog. What are your thoughts on that matter?
Johanna:And that's actually what for your inner nonfiction writer is really about,
Brian:short
Johanna:pieces and articles. Because if you think you wanna write a book, maybe you only need to write 20 blog posts. Probably not. But if you if you actually do write a book, now you have to write blog post to support the marketing of the book. So why not learn how to write?
Johanna:Why not practice writing in your blog, in articles, and then write your book, and then market it with, excuse me, with your blog and your articles?
Brian:Yeah. And blogging is big I think it's easier now than it's ever been before. There's, I mean, there's so many platforms. You could pick up like wordpress.com or, or or some of these, like, hosted things that work do it for you, and it's free. I switched to Hugo.
Brian:So the the great thing about this is I can just write in markdown and and commit and push, and it's published. That's it. That's that's what I do. And if there's a what I really love is because I'm writing technical content. When I, if somebody tells me that there's something wrong or I notice something's wrong, I can just it's in GitHub.
Brian:I can just edit it and push it again. That was the that's the main thing that that pushed me away from WordPress. I was in WordPress before, but editing things was difficult, because I had to go I mean, he had to go in and, you know, copy the code from one place to another and all that stuff. So, anyway, it's gross. And and the formatting was weird.
Brian:Anyway but, I mean, WordPress, I I'm grateful because it did get me started blogging. It was a great way to to not have to care about the back end so much and just start. So that's good. That really, anybody could start. It's just so easy now.
Brian:You just you don't even need need your own domain name. So but
Johanna:No. You don't need any of that. Just get get a blog somewhere for free and then start publishing. Write and publish. Write and publish.
Johanna:That's actually, all about chapter 7. Write something, ship it. Write it, ship it. Write it, ship it.
Brian:Well, now I'm gonna I'm gonna, like, see how bad I am about this because I told myself that the reason why I wasn't blogging so much anymore, was because I was tired of WordPress, so I switched to Hugo. And so now I'm on Hugo, and, oh, there's not a lot there. So let's get back to it. Yeah. Anyway, how often Yeah.
Brian:Do you keep a log?
Johanna:Do I keep a blog? Yes.
Brian:Yeah.
Johanna:I've had my my managing product development blog since well, I had it on blogger first. And I believe I moved to WordPress in 2005 or 6 or 7. So I started blogging in 2003. I'd had a website since, I think, 96 or 97. I I I started in, oh, Dreamweaver back when or maybe the thing before Dreamweaver.
Johanna:Oh, page mail. Oh, god. Yeah. My site has undergone many, many transformations, but I moved all into WordPress, I think, in 2005 or 6 or 7. And that has allowed me to have all that old content because some of it's actually really interesting, especially if I go back and look at it and see how my writing has evolved.
Johanna:It's my my ideas have morphed a little bit as I have learned more about agile and lean lean, especially. But my my writing style has gotten much, much better, which is good.
Brian:I was I'll have to get you on again sometime when we can talk about Agilent and Lean because, I've got a lot of questions around that. But the, one one of the things you did point out is that so you switched from something else to, to WordPress. Did you have jrothman.com before? And and did you just keep that, or was jrothman.com when you started WordPress?
Johanna:Yeah. So jrothman.com was my website, and I got that domain name. Oh, as soon as we could get domain names. I mean, I started my business in 94. I must have gotten the domain name in 95 or 96 because it it was fine back then to have your first initial and your last name as your domain name.
Johanna:There were not that many domains. So Yeah. And, of course, I did not foresee the explosion of the Internet. How could I have done that? So yeah.
Johanna:Yeah.
Brian:Well, I the I bring it up because I think that, even though I've switched domain names a couple times, I I personally think it's important even though it oh, there's a lot of free tools out there. The little bit of an expensive, like, you know, $15 a month a year or something like that to have your own domain name, I think is important because then the back end, you can change, you can fiddle with it. You can go from WordPress to Hugo to or whatever, and your readers don't notice. I mean, they might your all your links might break or whatever, but at least they can find your website still, and then they can find it again. So I I think, think I think people should start writing blogs, and they should get their own domain name, and everything else is noise, except for the habit.
Brian:The habit of writing is good. So but
Johanna:Right. One of my writing secrets is always publish on your site first. Because that way, all of all of the search, the SEO goes back to you. Yeah. You might wanna promote it or market it on Twitter and Mastodon and LinkedIn and Facebook and wherever else you wanna be.
Johanna:I'm sure that you folks in the Python community have Python blogs and right. So you wouldn't you might wanna have another place to republish the work. But as long as all of your work starts in one place, people are much more likely to find you.
Brian:Okay. So let's say, let's say I'm, I've I've started blogging and I'm thinking about writing a book. Is that even is that even a smart thing to do anymore in 2023? Does anybody read books?
Johanna:Oh, yeah. People read a lot of books. Well, let me rephrase this. People buy a lot of books. I'm not sure when they read them.
Johanna:Okay. So there are, as a let me poke a little bit of fun in the, about the actual community. Don Reinerson wrote a very dense book, called principles of product development book. Even the name is dense. Right?
Johanna:It doesn't say. Here's everything you need to know about how to really produce a product in in a manner as possible. Right? And that that was off the top of my head. If he had if he had changed the title, he would have made the book more accessible.
Johanna:I have studied that book, and I have struggled. And I I have tremendous respect for Don and all of the work that he's done, but it's not written in an accessible way. And I'm not sure if he blogged or wrote articles before he actually wrote the book. And if he had, maybe people like me would have asked him questions. Can you please clarify this one thing?
Johanna:So a lot of people have bought that book. I'm not sure how many people have read it.
Brian:Okay. So let's say I wanna let's say I wanna write a book that and I'm I was a kind of a facetious question coming from me because I I wanna write several more books even. And I don't know how many I'd as far as, like, the economics of it, I don't know if it makes sense, but I like writing books. And I like reading books. And the thing that I really like about reading books over blog posts or other things is is especially now after going going through the writing process, I it it is a long form writing is different.
Brian:It is thoughtful, and it it is a, you know, a journey from I think that you need to know this stuff. It isn't everything. That's one of the things that Pragmatic really taught me is you're not teaching a 100% of of subject. What you want is the the x percent, maybe 80% or something that everybody needs to know. Maybe it's 20%.
Brian:Maybe whatever. You're the the things that everybody needs to know and some extra stuff, teach that. And the stuff that also this isn't gonna change that much. It's like maybe a maybe it's a new a technology, but it's you don't wanna teach the stuff that's gonna go out of out of fad next year or something. But, or maybe you do.
Brian:I don't know. But the the, it takes a while to write, so you have to you have to go through that. And then you have to, and then working with an editor and working with technical reviewers and stuff like that. Blog posts don't have that. I mean, maybe some do, but mine doesn't, of having a technical reviewer make sure that it's correct and making sure the code works and making sure that the the story is tight.
Brian:And you don't get that from blog posts, but you do get it from books. So hopefully.
Johanna:So what you're you're talking about several different things here versus the ideal reader. Right? So each of us has an one ideal reader for our blog posts or our books. But in a blog post, I might not have to, be as careful about my ideal reader. I might I might talk to a couple of ideal readers, and that's okay.
Johanna:Yeah. But in the book, we need one ideal reader and a user journey for that reader to the book. Now in a blog post, we do need to make sure it's logical. I excel at putting the first sentence at the end and my last sentence at the beginning. So when I re when I reread my blog post after I'm done writing, I say, is is this in the right order?
Johanna:And I have now fixed that because of the way I tend to write my blog posts. I tend to use either one sterling sentence that Kent Beck, introduced from his experiences with Oopla back in 94 or something where he states the problem and why the problem is a problem, or I do, hey. You see so or I use a little anecdote. All always one paragraph because a blog post also needs the context setting. And then I either have 3 ideas or maybe one idea expanded enough, and then a wrap up that, summary that wraps back to the way I started.
Johanna:That's a very satisfying read. And even if I go too long with my, I don't know what too long is. But I've been trying to make my blog post shorter because I was at the point where I was writing full articles several times a week, and I wanted to finish a book instead of writing several articles on my blog. So, you know, I've been working on shorter posts, and that's that's a very satisfying read. So some people really like long blog posts that are worn like articles.
Johanna:Some people really like short, punchy. Give me give me the deets. Get out of here. Right? And that's fine.
Brian:Well, I can I can we, like, review that again? So, I said I this seems like an interesting format. So you've got kind of a three phase thing. Your opening paragraph, you said you'd you have a couple options for the opening paragraph. What are those again?
Johanna:Right. So the first is 1 well, there's actually 3 options. I use the rule of 3 all over this book. So the first option is one starling sentence, which is, which all three of these options set the context.
Brian:Okay.
Johanna:But one startling sentence talks about the problem, why that thing is a problem. Right. So one one of my is multitasking. So if I say multitasking is a problem, I wouldn't say it like that, but that's the problem. And then why is it a problem?
Johanna:Because I don't make progress on anything else. I have so much work in progress. I, I get frustrated. I'm ready to kill my manager. I mean, there are any number of reasons why this is a problem.
Johanna:Now I have the one sterling sentence that sets me up for the rest of of the piece. And that might be, instead of killing my manager, I'm going to show him or her a Kanban board of all of my work in progress and how old everything is. That's the starting sentence, and that kicks me off. And then I have, the 4th sentence that is the effects, the startling sentence. Look at one startling sentence.
Johanna:Just search on it, and and you'll get all 4 sentences. But the startling sentence is the is the is the tip into what the body of of this piece is.
Brian:Okay.
Johanna:Now you can use one journaling sentence as a as a description for a book, which tips you into the journey for a book.
Brian:Oh, yeah.
Johanna:Yeah. Kent is a very, very smart guy. I don't think he knows who I am, but I I have learned from lots of this stuff. And I'm sure all your all your normal listeners have also learned from him.
Brian:Yeah. Bad habits on TDD from Kent Beck. No. I'm like, so okay. So that the one startling sentence is one of your options, and then there were 2 other options?
Johanna:And then there's, hey. You see so. Hey. Grabs the reader. See is, what this person can take a look at and say, this is why you, my ideal reader, needs to see this thing.
Johanna:So is the 1 or 2 interesting facts or unique ideas that you have. And then so is this is why it matters to you. Now let's read the rest of the piece.
Brian:Wow. Okay. Okay. So that's, say you see so one starting sentence, and then the third is a story?
Johanna:A little Alright. A little, one paragraph story.
Brian:Okay.
Johanna:Bob, an actual project manager, Blah blah blah. Right? And I I when I do that, I often say, here's the problem. I'm I'm having trouble starting one of my columns for projectmanagement.com, and I think I finally started it this morning. Well, I'm an agile project manager is being promoted to a senior scrum master.
Johanna:What the heck is that? Now right. And when I ask that question wait. What is the question in Bob's mind? My ideal reader can identify with that question.
Brian:Yeah.
Johanna:And that that way, I can I can write this?
Brian:I I kinda love this idea, and I'm a if people that haven't started blogging, you're like you might be thinking, like, what what what what's the big deal? And the big deal is the blank paper syndrome, or the you you just you're looking at a blank editor screen, and you don't know what to do. But if you have this you don't even have to write you could write these these things as, like, comment outlines or something. But you if you have this this format in mind, you could be thinking, okay. I'm gonna cheat and just use, like, some and it's not really cheating, but it you could do like, pick a format and go, okay.
Brian:I think this might be, a hey you thing. Can I fit it into there? It doesn't quite fit. Maybe I'll do the startling sentence. It doesn't quite fit.
Brian:Pick one of these, and then, try it, and then write the rest of it, and then come back to the beginning. And if maybe maybe rewrite the the opening paragraph. But then you've kind of gotten all the junk out of your brain, and you're not trying to because one of the problems is I'm starting writing, and I've got things I wanna I wanna wanna make sure I say. And I don't wanna forget them, so I'm thinking about them. But once you've written it down, you don't have to think about them anymore.
Brian:They're there, on the page. And and so then you can look at the entire piece, and then just, like, sit on it. I I think more bloggers will be good if they wrote and then publish the next day. At the very least, to sleep on it, read it again to make sure that, it's okay. I don't do this.
Johanna:And you actually do that. I I actually advocate write while you're hot. Publish while you're hot. Yeah. Check for spelling and grammar.
Johanna:Great. But just publish it and get it out.
Brian:I Oh, yeah.
Johanna:I have many so let me talk about the blank page problem for a second. I have, this notion of an idea bank that I built on Jerry Weinberg's fieldstone idea. Right? Fieldstones are one word, a phrase, a sentence, paragraph of something you don't wanna forget to write about. But me, I needed something different because I had fieldstones all over the place.
Johanna:So I had this notion of an idea bank. Everything in the idea bank is at least one one word long, and maybe it says about this thing. Right? And then it's not really a field zone. It's an about.
Johanna:That's totally fine. So that that gets me away from the blank page. And because I always have some idea that I wanna write about. But, having drafts of half finished things that you have not yet published that are much, much larger than a deal stone, that says to me a lot of width maybe, or you don't know how to Right? You don't know how to finish.
Johanna:Oh, width means work in progress. And it's not bad to have a lot of drafts as long as you finish them at some point and publish, which is why I really we are the worst judges of our own work.
Brian:So Yeah.
Johanna:Write it hot, edit hot, Publish while you're hot. No. I I do not see the value
Brian:of waiting to Okay. Yeah. Because you can always edit. Right? If you if if if you if you get feedback or you just look at it later and go, wow.
Brian:I don't agree with that anymore. You can change it or delete it or whatever.
Johanna:Yeah. So Yeah. I I have several, blog posts where I tried to do arithmetic in public. I even tried to check it with my calculator, and I was wrong. And so I said, fine.
Johanna:I'm wrong. And I thanked the people who told me, and I did a PS, updated this thing, and be you know, I'm still here. I'm still alive and kicking. No one has killed me because I made a mistake on my blog. Nobody.
Brian:Well, speaking of feedback, what are your thoughts on, comments then?
Johanna:I really love comments on unpublished work. I love it when people engage with me on my site.
Brian:Okay.
Johanna:That's happened a lot less these days, at least for me, because people comment on Twitter or Mastodon or wherever it is I publish the thing. So I I personally find that a little frustrating because I I would much rather be able to respond to people and say, thank you. Right? I mean, I I respond, but I lose all that on my blog. So that's fine.
Johanna:It's it's what it is. But I really and if people tell me I'm wrong, that's fine.
Brian:Do do you delete any comments? Like, if people are mean?
Johanna:Oh, if people, if people swear and comment at me, if they call me names yeah. But I'm I'm a female. People don't tend to do that to
Brian:me. Okay.
Johanna:Right. I mean or I or I'm older. You know? It's something.
Brian:Well so, when I had a WordPress blog, I did have comments on for a while. And then, and when I so I started when did when did I start really writing Python blogs? Way back in it's probably 2,010, 2011, maybe that time frame. And I got some great feedback, and then and it helped. And then, and, actually, people were writing on the blog, like, writing comments there.
Brian:And then it had a filter system, which is good because there's there's a lot of junk comments that come through.
Johanna:Yeah.
Brian:And then, and then it sort of dried up, and then I was I started just mostly getting weird link back comment, like people linking to junk. Yeah. And or just, like, comment like, asking a question of, like, something about something that that I wrote, like, years ago. And I and I thought I could I could respond, or maybe I'll just take off comments. And so I've I took him I, like, turned him off on the WordPress blog, and then now when I switched to Hugo, apparently, there's a way to do comments with Hugo, but I don't know how, and I don't really care.
Brian:So I figure if you want I figure people, if you don't agree with me, yeah, I'm not hard to get a hold of. You can let me know. That's fine. But the the I did see occasionally people grandstanding and trying to, like, show up at that, like, they're the expert, which is fine. They might be an expert, but it's not your blog.
Brian:Just get your own blog. So
Johanna:Well, I actually I had to trash several people's comments just last week where they were trying to promote their books on my my my blog posts. And I I emailed one of them back because this person is a colleague, and I said,
Brian:That's that's very cool, man. No. Yeah.
Johanna:I'm not promoting your book. If you would even if if you give me a copy of it to read and you want me to review it, I might do that. But don't promote your book on my content.
Brian:Well, so I am I haven't read your book, but I'm now I'm really excited about it. So, it looks like I'm gonna just gonna go through some of the titles. You know, it's not that that many chapters. Yep. It's so first off, write to write to think and learn, and that's excellent.
Brian:I I I was not an expert on Pytest until I wrote a book on it. So, like, you can become an expert by doing a book to to act like you're an expert. And by the time you're done with the book, you will be an expert. Write fast to write well. Write for your ideal reader.
Brian:Edit just enough, choose your feedback you want choose the feedback you want, and publish your work, and help yourself succeed. That's your 7 chapters. This is sounds great. Yeah. Awesome.
Brian:So we'll link to it in the show notes. And, and then from the Pragmatic website, you can find you can find all of your other books and everything. And then we'll definitely have to have you on again, because I'd like to talk about Agilent lean. One of one of my book ideas is a lean idea, so I'll probably maybe it'd be cool to get your your thoughts on it as well. So well, thanks, Johanna Johanna for, coming on the show.
Brian:This has been really fun.
Johanna:Thank you for having me. I really enjoyed it.
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