Should a technical communicator take part in estimating user stories?

For the convenience of writing in this blog, I need names for the two projects I'm working on. Let's call them Project Scissors and Project Stone.

It was time for a planning session on Project Scissors. I think this was an unusual case as the project was dealing with some new stuff that our team didn't fully understand. So, as part of this planning session the team wanted to estimate a series of user stories from the product backlog. To do this, they were going to use the planning poker technique. And they asked me to take part.

My question is:
Should a technical communicator be taking part in planning poker sessions?

A planning poker session would normally be used to estimate the product backlog and would happen before the sprints had started. In a planning poker session, everyone on the team listens to a description of the user story that needs to be estimated, and they all vote by using a pack of cards showing a number from the Fibonacci sequence.

Participants with high numbers or low numbers get the opportunity to discuss their reasoning with the team, and then another round is played. This carries on until a consensus is reached.

Developers get the chance to estimate testing tasks, and testers get the chance to estimate development tasks.

And then there was me. No one was estimating my user stories as I didn't have anything on the backlog - at that time.

So, was it OK for me to take part in the planning session?

My tactic (yes, I did have a tactic) was to never estimate lower than a 3 or higher than a 10. That left me with 3, 5, 8, and 10. My reasoning for this was I didn't want to have to justify my estimate to the team, and it made me 'fit in' with the team. Bit sad, but it worked.

But I clearly didn't contribute anything as I only understood about half of what was said in the room during the planning session, so in answer to my question - No, I shouldn't have taken part. I certainly didn't help the team reach an understanding of how large any user story was.

However, my inclusion did have a few benefits:

• I got the opportunity to listen to the user stories being explained. Yes, I might have had trouble understanding them, but then so did a lot of the team.
• I learnt more about the agile process.
• I got the opportunity to spend time with the team working towards a single goal. Some of the team are new to the business and up until that meeting, I really didn't feel like I knew them at all.

So, what do you think? Should technical authors take part in these estimating sessions?

End of first sprint

Last Wednesday marked the end of my first two week sprint on project A. What have I learnt?

• This isn't easy.
• I realised towards the end of the sprint, that I needed to get my work written as quickly as I was able so I could hand it over to the reviewer. It wasn't going to be acceptable to leave it until the last day.
• I have a good idea of what the team is working towards, and I haven't had to do any chasing to find this out; it's happened naturally by me being present in the daily stand-ups and planning meetings.
• I think the rest of the team have a greater understanding of the work that I do. For too long, there's been an expectation that user assistance will always be ready in time for the release. Now, the team can see my build this up over the course of the project.
• Not all project teams work in exactly the same way. Although the principles of Scrum are the same, how it's actually implemented is slightly different. There are different tools being used to track team progress, and even when the same tools are being used, they're using them in different ways.

TCUK - Beyond the comfort zone - Today you will not be writing a help file

In October, I was lucky enough to present at TCUK, the annual conference for technical communicators.

Here's the talk I gave about the need to step outside your comfort zone to help add value to your organisation.

Get the right people reviewing your work

Choose your reviewers carefully.

At the first sprint planning meeting, I was chuffed I had some User Assistance tasks added into the sprint backlog. It was a sign that we were integrating into the ways of the scrum. However, when it came to the reviewing task I'd asked to be added, I didn't pay enough attention to the purpose of the task, and therefore might have got it assigned to the wrong person.

The point of the reviewing task at this stage of content development, where the user assistance is very bitty, is to ensure its technical accuracy. I'm going to be looking after style and grammar, so what I need is for someone to tell me that the program works as I've described.

My instinct was to assign this piece of work to a business analyst, as I immediately consider them to be the subject matter experts. And that's true, when we're dealing with software written from specs, or full topics. But, when all I've got is five sentences outlining a rudimentary procedure, all I need is for the developer to tell me that I've got it right.

So, I might have got this wrong, for this task. But, the beauty of planning in these two week sprints is I can learn from this mistake and pay more attention next time.

Joining a second sprint team

I started with a second agile team today. This is a really exciting project and there's a lot to get my head around. So, joining the sprints has meant that although I've now got a lot more meetings in my calendar, I have also got daily access to the team putting this product together. That makes for a much easier experience when it comes to finding out what I need to enable me to write some user assistance.

And yes, my calendar is looking busier. With two sprint teams running concurrently (albeit a few days lag), there are now two days every ten working days that have the potential to get wiped out with meetings. And although there were gaps today, it was hard to get stuck into any of the high attentive tasks that I needed to get moving with. By default, the gaps got filled with easy stuff like answering emails, and filling in expense forms.

I don't envisage this remaining a problem, and even if it does, I'd sooner find myself with a bit less time, and with more information, than less information and oodles of time.

The tasks I got added were the three I added to the first sprint team's list.

• Write UA content
• Review UA content
• Update UA content

Although I only added them to one of the user stories.

There is definitely the potential for me to add a lot more to this project. There's still a lot I need to understand, and research on. I could have asked for a research task to be added, but I didn't see much need in it. If I'm doing a research task where I'm going to need input from the other sprint members then there's benefit in doing that, but otherwise, it felt like I was just clogging up the sprint backlog.

One thing I do need to sort out is my allocation spreadsheet. When you're working on one sprint team, it's easy to work out your capacity and plan accordingly. When working across teams, with different start and end dates for sprints, it's much harder.

So many meetings

Wow, so after getting agreement from the scrum teams, the meeting requests started to flood in.

For a while now, my calendar has been pretty quiet. I made the mistake of withdrawing from many meetings because whilst the Tech Comms team was working to a waterfall method, and everyone else was scrumming it, we were getting information we wouldn't be using for weeks. It all seemed rather pointless.

Now, of course, we need to be in the thick of it. So, I've received invitations for planning meetings, review meetings, retrospectives, daily stand-ups etc. My calendar suddenly looks a lot fuller. That's going to take some getting used to.

The first big day of meetings was yesterday. We had:

• Sprint review
• Sprint retrospective
• 2 planning meetings

That pretty much wiped out my calendar for the rest of the day. But how useful was it?

The sprint review highlighted stuff I'd missed out on by not working in the previous sprint. It gave me some detail, and I know the people I need to talk to about the work.

The retrospective was OK, and generally constructive. Rather than give everyone a load of post it notes and ask what worked well, we went through the teams' list of unwritten rules and asked whether we were doing these. I thought that provided a good framework for the meeting and kept it brief and good natured.

The planning meetings - well, never having been to a planning meeting I didn't know what to expect. I had a list of stories I wanted to get added into the sprint, and was doing my best to work out which of the existing stories might need some content adding. I had been worrying a bit about this, but there was no need. It was obvious which stories needed content writing. For each of those stories, I got these 3 tasks added:

• Write UA content
• Review UA content
• Update UA content

The Review UA content task was important as I now know who will be reviewing the content for this work, and it needs doing in order for the team to claim the storypoints.

Although yesterday felt like a bit of a slog, I feel like we've made some great first steps.

1. Tech Comms is now included within the sprint. This will help people see it as part of the product.
2. The team have some understanding of what I'll be doing for the project.
3. I know who to speak to about each piece of work. This used to be a bit of a problem.
4. Review tasks will need to happen before the story is done.

And another bonus is that I don't need to keep a separate task list for this work at the moment. I have a good idea of what I'm doing for the project for the next two weeks.

First steps towards Agile

Our entire Products & Services team (R&D) are working to an agile development method, following Scrum. Up until now, the Technical Communication team (two of us) have been working in the traditional waterfall approach. But, last week my colleague and I agreed to start working more like the rest of the department. This week sees the first steps in that change.

Why change? A question I've been asking a lot recently, but I guess the drive for the change has been building momentum over the last few months, leaving us in a position where working our own way, just doesn't seem sensible any more.

• The project teams have demonstrated that agile works for them.
• Spread across multiple projects, the Tech Comms team are always at risk of clashes for our time. Working outside of the process that everyone else follows only risks exacerbating that problem.
• Speaking to colleagues across the business, I discovered that other Tech Comms teams are working to an agile methodology, although not within specific project teams.
• At the TCUK conference, most people I spoke to, were working closely with their development teams within scrums, with no real problems.

So that's the why, now the how.

Although we had the feeling through casual conversations we'd had with the different development teams that they'd welcome us working with them in scrum, we wanted to ensure that they were all in agreement that this was the right thing to do. We also wanted to make sure that we were working with the teams in the same way. We're only a small Tech Comms team and we don't want to be working in different ways across four different projects.

We drafted our thoughts into a document (what else) and distributed it to the scrum masters for each team, and invited them to a meeting to discuss. The main process for each sprint was summarised in this diagram.

The teams were all happy to start working like this - we have agreement - and all in a half hour meeting.

Yes, the nitty gritty needs to be ironed out. I suspect that they are using TFS in subtly different ways to manage their development, so we need to spend time with each of them and understand that. We also have one team who aren't using TFS for sprint planning. So, we have to understand at least two different ways of managing projects.

But, I'm pleased that we're doing this.

TCUK: Information Design 101: My thoughts

I attended the Information Design 101 workshop run by Robert Hempsall.

Abstract

(from TCUK website)

In the spirit of the topics of usability and accessibility, Information Design 101 is an introduction to the principles of making information easy to understand. Taking a document collectively selected by potential workshop attendees, this workshop will guide attendees through a number of basic information design techniques, to end the session with a new improved (and easier to use) document. These techniques will include typography, plain language and document structure – all demonstrated using everyday software. This workshop will be a hands on session, with attendees encouraged to bring a laptop with Microsoft Word to try out some of the techniques themselves.

My thoughts

We looked at a form that voters would use to apply for postal voting.

Robert encouraged us to bring our laptops so we could work on a word document and go through the stages with him. This hands on approach was valuable as it made you pay attention to the advice being offered.

There was a lot of discussion about how you can make forms easier to understand and unsurprisingly in a room full of technical communicators, there was a lot of opinion.

Good design, good workflow, and plain English would seem to be key points of this.

I found myself questioning a form I had to fill in a couple of days ago. That very much needed a bit of attention.

I need to go and try some of what I picked up in this workshop.

Presented at TCUK 2012

This blog post is about how I presented at the TCUK conference in 2012. The TCUK conference 2015 takes place 29th September - 1st October 2015, Glasgow. See the conference website for details.

*********************************

It's over. I presented at the TCUK conference in Newcastle.

And survived....

The TCUK conference is an event for technical communication specialists. My colleague suggested it would be a good opportunity for me to present. Not sure if that was secret business code; "opportunities" are rarely fun.

So anyway, if you trawl through some of the past posts you'll see that I've ended up giving this presentation twice before the big TCUK event. These previous events were a good "opportunity" to practice my talk and get used to standing in front of a group of people. Both of those practice talks went well so I was relatively calm about doing this one.

Mine was on day three of the event. I was pleased about this as it gave me a chance to acclimatise to the venue. The books I'd read said that you need to have some control over your environment, so I was keen to see how the rooms were going to be laid out. Was I going to be able to move about a bit, or was I going to be tied to the lectern? After one of the sessions on day two, I had a sneaky stand at the front when no was about so I could see what it was like standing at the front of the room. Not so bad.

My session was in the second slot on day three. In each time slot, delegates have a choice of three sessions to attend. I think there was somewhere between 150 and 170 people at the conference, so I had the possibility of between 0 and 170 people attending mine. During the session before mine, I was finding it pretty hard to concentrate on what I was listening to, and then the audience wanted to ask a million questions. I thought I was going to get to my session late. But, I got there with 7 minutes to spare.

But, there were already people sitting down in the room. I hoped I was going to get the room to myself for at least a couple of minutes so I could practice my mike and maybe practice the opening lines a couple of times. Alas, that wasn't going to happen. I got to the lectern, and saw the mike, but no one to help me. Tiny moment of panic. Thought I'd best leave it alone. If I didn't have any help and no mike, I knew I could probably project across the room well enough. David Farbey arrived and put me at ease straight away. David chairs this conference and does a tremendous job of it. He is incredibly natural and confident when he speaks in front of an audience.

I decided when practising the night before, that I would listen to some music before I had to speak, hoping that would get rid of any last minute nerves. So, I listened to The Killers "Flesh and Bone" on my iPad (low level, didn't want to scare the audience), and that certainly helped; by the time came when I was introduced I was raring to go.

And what happened next?

The talk went much better than I could have hoped. The room was full (50+ people). They laughed in the right places, they listened attentively, and I managed to get a sneaky double applause out of them. Feedback after the session was humbling. A theme running through the presentation is that I hate presenting, so it was really nice to hear people tell me that I was a good presenter.

If anyone wants some good, solid advice about presenting, I recommend
The Presentation Coach: Bare Knuckle Brilliance For Every Presenter - by Graham Davies. It really is brilliant.

Would I put myself through this experience again and do another one?

Well, since my presentation was all about stepping out of the comfort zone, I'd have to say yes, or I'd be a massive hypocrite. I strongly believe that it's important to keep stretching yourself, and seeking out new challenging experiences. It's the only way we'll ever discover our potential for doing wonderful things.

Presenting at TCUK

In a couple of day's time I'll be presenting at TCUK, the annual conference for technical communicators. http://www.technicalcommunicationuk.com/

I'll be doing my talk: Beyond the comfort zone: today you will not be writing a help file.

I've presented this twice before, in different situations. This is most like the first, more formal, presentation, except this time, I suspect I'm going to be miked up. That should make me a bit less worried about projecting my voice, but I don't think I really have a problem with that.

Mine's not until Thursday which gives me tomorrow to see what the gig is with how long people are making their presentations, and whether we get miked or not. I was told 40 minutes, but then we need to leave time for plenty of questions, so does that mean I need to shorten it? It runs at 36 mins at the moment, but if I start talking very fast tomorrow, as I'm liable to do when I'm nervous, it will be shorter (obviously).

What's the worst that could happen?

Why is it so hard to give up books?

OK, I'm talking about giving up paperback collections that I've had for years, not giving up reading (that would be terrible).

Since I've had a kindle, and since my wife's been reading on our iPad, we're both very happy with reading digital versions of books. It's partly the ease of reading them on these devices, with their adjustable fonts, and partly the convenience of having your book collection with you on that device. I've also got very used to being able to dip into my collection at read.amazon.com. This has been especially useful when reading non-fiction related to work.

But, all this convenience has made us wonder why we're hanging onto boxes and boxes of books in the loft. These have been boxed into the following authors: Stephen King, Richard Layman, James Patterson, Terry Pratchett, Jeffrey Deaver, 3 boxes of Doctor Who novels, and about 6 boxes of miscellaneous authors. These take up a good amount of space. But why are we keeping hold of them?

Now that I have my kindle, with its dozens of unread books on there, I'm not going to say "hey, I really want to go and read that Rose Madder book Stephen King wrote. I'll just go and fetch it from the loft." The thought would just never enter my head. And I don't fancy bringing them all down into the house and buying a lot of expensive bookshelves, just to display them. I mean, a lot of them are tattered well-read paperbacks that aren't going to look good on a shelf no matter how fancy the shelves are. What I've realised is that despite owning these books, all I own is a load of paper with words printed on it. They're not my books in the sense that I created them; they're just books. The words are always going to be out there if I need them again. If I suddenly have a mad craving to read Rose Madder, I can go down the library, or buy it on Kindle, or buy a second hand copy from Amazon. To be honest, I've no idea what Rose Madder is about - I suspect it's not one of his classics.

It was time to get rid of them.

I hauled them out of the loft and stacked them in the garage. But, since it was coming up to our regular charity day at my work, I thought I'd take some of the better conditioned ones (plenty have never been read) and leave them on a bookcase in our kitchen. The idea has caught a bit of steam and with very little on my part, we've pulled in about £30 for the charity.

But, I can't take them all into work and wait for them to sell - I don't think work would thank me for taking over an office with my boxes of books, so tonight, we've been listing them as job lots on eBay. To be honest, I don't think they'll sell very well, but if they give some joy into someone's life, I'll be happy enough.

My 30 book collection of Stephen King was listed tonight.

My wife's Richard Layman, and James Patterson were also listed.

But when it came to listing my Terry Pratchetts, I hesitated.

I couldn't do it.

Now, I haven't read any of these for about five years. I like Pratchett, but the last time I tried to read one, I struggled. I just wasn't enjoying myself like I used to.

So, why not just get rid of them?

I don't honestly know. It's not really a very good collection as I'm missing plenty of them.

But, somewhere in this mix of pages, is an emotional attachment that pulled at me tonight. I bought my first Pratchett Novel in high school. I remember my friend Dean Pearson showed me his copy of The Colour of Magic in Biology class and telling me how fantastic it was. I remember reading them on caravan holidays. I remember how lost I used to get in them, reading them in less than a day.

Is it these simple memories that are getting in the way?

Anyway, the box of Terry Pratchett books is sitting behind me now, waiting for me to take it back to its home in the loft. They'll sit beside the boxes of Doctor Who novels that aren't going anywhere either.

Meet up with the North West Technical Communicators

I presented my talk at the North West Technical Communicators meet-up this week in Manchester at Madlab. What a fun night that turned out to be.

This was the same talk I gave at Newcastle in June, but the environment couldn't have been more different. Whereas Newcastle was all pretty formal in our Sage headquarters, this was in a charity funded multi-purpose meeting facility. At Newcastle I stood in a fairly large meeting room, with about 40 chairs facing me; at Madlab, I was stood at a large table with 6 others sat around. Looking across the room to the front of the space, I could see through the old shop windows across to the bar outside, where people were enjoying after work drinks - I'm sure they were in a good position to see my slides as well.

So, it felt very much more casual. People were coming and going into the building. Walking past us to get to the more techie area behind my presentation screen - at one point, someone asked if they could raise my presentation screen as it was in danger of falling off the roll.

But it was good. This time around, I wasn't so concerned with the expressions of the audience, and it was casual enough that a couple of people interrupted to make observations - I knew people were listening.

At the end, we all had stuff to talk about. Some of which was sparked off by presentation; some just from wanting to share experiences about life as a technical author.

I'm not sure what I might want to tweak for my final 'performance' in October. Hopefully, I'll get a bit of feedback from some of the attendees this week.

MadLabUK Manchester - Main presentation area

Updated my talk - a little

After listening to a couple of great talks about the future of technical authoring, I knew that I wanted to update my own talk a little. Nothing grand, as the whole point of practising over the last few weeks was to get familiar with the material, so small tweaks.

I did this last night and think I've made a few small improvements.

I was also reading yesterday, and stepping out of your comfort zone fits with the idea that people are sometimes too happy to live to the labels they give themselves. But what about the labels our employers give us? Isn't that constraining as well?

87

My task list at Remember the Milk has 87 tasks on it.
51 of those are marked as 'Projects', that is, more than one action is required to complete it.

I'm going to do something about this, and it doesn't involve completing all of them, nor prioritising them.

What would happen if I just deleted the entire list and started again?

Is productivity all it's cracked up to be?

I got home tonight thinking about all the things I want to do. Most are work related; lots have nothing to do with work.

How can I fit everything in? It's surely a matter of becoming more efficient; write faster, prioritise, get better organised. Except how can I do this and stay sane?

I should be writing something else right now; something that's important. Instead, I'm looking for advice on how to get more and more stuff done.

Then I remembered Leo's post on tossing productivity out, and I feel a whole lot better. No, I'm not going to follow all of this advice, but I'm going to weigh up some of the activities I've found myself doing in order to get more stuff done.

One down, two to go

So, that's the first presentation done. My overall impression was that it went quite well.

I got there early enough to do another rehearsal on my own and this was time well spent. It might even have been enough to just spend some time in the room, but having some extra time to practice again, was a bonus.

I was a bit nervous but followed some advice and began to think of my nerves as anticipation instead. That definitely helped. Concentrating on work was a bit tricky but I managed to move a topic along I'd been struggling with.

Next time, I'll need to make sure I've eaten properly. A couple of bananas at 4 o'clock wasn't enough, and during the first presentation, my stomach was starting to rumble. In the interval, when I should have been trying to remain calm and focussed, I was stuffing a sausage roll into my mouth while chatting with a delegate. Yeah, that wasn't cool.

Ankur, our presenter from Adobe, was great. He chatted to me before everyone started arriving and told me that he controls his nerves by reminding himself that during the presentation, he is SUPREME, and his audience WILL listen to him. He also said that if that doesn't work, just imagine them all in their underwear...

One curious thing I noticed was that the audience in the main didn't look that interested during my presentation. I found this a little off-putting but I don't know what I was expecting. I was incredibly grateful for two members of the audience who were making a deliberate show of smiling and nodding appreciatively. I spoke to a colleague the next day and as a former trainer, used to speaking in front of groups, we agreed that a neutral expression is most people's default setting when listening to talks. Only those who are used to presenting will make a conscious effort to put a smile on their face and show signs of interest. If I'd have known that beforehand, I would have been a bit more comfortable.

There are a few tweaks I'll look to make in the presentation, but I'm going to give myself a week off from looking at it.

So, the big question, did I conquer my fear?

Possibly, hell yeah, you know what, I bloody got up there and spoke in front of a bunch of strangers, even got them to laugh on a couple of occasions. That's a win in my book.

What I guess I should be just as pleased about was the networking I did, before and after the event. I'm not a natural networker but in the end I spoke to most people and acquired a couple of business cards. People were kind, and chatty. It was a good crowd.

Three weeks to the next one.

Getting ready to present

I've got my first presentation on Wednesday.

It's a work-related presentation to a group of my peers, most of whom I don't know.

A few weeks ago, I was terrified at the thought of doing this. Now, not so much.

The presentation is all about how Technical Writers can offer their businesses much more than writing a help file, and uses my own recent experience with a project to demonstrate this. So, naturally to a non-presenter, talking about myself for forty minutes was incredibly daunting but I found ways to make this less so.

1. I did quite a bit of reading. I thought the two books I read were both excellent and would be hard-pressed to recommend one over the other. These were Presentation skills for quivering wrecks by Bob Etherington, and The Presentation Coach: Bare Knuckle Brilliance For Every Presenter by Graham Davies.
   
   You need to give yourself some time to read these and follow the advice. I had a couple of months to prepare and that seemed a good amount of time.
2. I kept telling myself I had nothing to worry about. One of the messages from these books is that most presentations are so unbelievingly bad, that you don't actually have to do much to get to the level of a competent presenter. And that's what I've focussed on: I'm not aiming to be the best presenter, but merely a competent one.
3. I used a mind map to structure my thoughts. Freemind is a free and simple tool to use. With a mindmap in place, the actual writing process became very clear.
4. As a writer, it was much easier for me to write a complete script of the presentation. At this stage, I wasn't sure whether I was going to read the script verbatim (frowned upon in the books) or produce a set of note cards.
5. I read the whole script out aloud. This is an important step in listening for clunky language. I found a fair bit of clunkiness so edited accordingly. During this read through I timed the whole thing. I was a bit surprised that it came to the required forty minutes.
6. I prepared slides that supported the presentation. If you remember little else about making a good presentation, it's that you, the speaker, are the presentation, not your powerpoint slides. My slides were drawings I'd made using an iPad app and would help illustrate what I was saying. There is no chance I could turn my back to the audience and read the powerpoint slides to them. There simply isn't the information on them.
   
   Incidentally, I did use Google Docs to make the presentation and loved it. For me, it was a piece of cake to create the presentation using these. However, because I'm not confident the locations I'm presenting at are going to have web access for me, I've downloaded these as Powerpoint slides.
7. I did a full run through with slides and script in front of my line-manager. I got a lot of good feedback and incorporated this as soon as I could.
8. I recorded the script and put it onto my iPhone so I could listen to it a couple of times on the drive in to work. My hope was that familiarity with the material would help when it came to making note cards.
9. Note cards - I was wanting to produce a set of note cards that I could use as prompts to drive the presentation. But, I struggled with this. It was taking too long, and I just didn't feel comfortable. So, what I've done is a bit of a compromise. I've taken my script, and made the point size 18, so it's very clear to read. I've underlined all important words to help my emphasis, and I've inserted breaks to pause and show slides. I've PDFed this and have it on adobe reader on my iPad. And this is how I'm going to present - with iPad in hand.
   
   I've practised a couple of times and it works really well. I'm not a slave to the script because I know it pretty well. There are few places where I read directly from the script at all, most of it is paraphrased, which is what I'd intended to do with note cards anyway.
   
   And it's large enough that if I lose my place I can find it again easily. The manual breaks are great because they're forcing me to slow down.

On the day, I'm hoping to get into the room for the presentation an hour early so I can practice again in the room I'm presenting in.

I'm surprisingly calm about the whole thing. I trust this is a good sign. 

By single take-away from this is that if you need to do a decent presentation, you need to give yourself time. I think I've spent maybe thirty hours on this so far (and finding this time when you've a young family and a busy job is a challenge all of its own).

I'll report back and let you know how it went.

Molly

I had Molly put to sleep on Friday. She was the first cat we got and was probably about 16 years old.

For the last couple of years she's had a massive weight loss. The vets charged us about £900 (thank God for insurance) and we were still none the wiser as to what the matter was. For the first six months of her deterioration, we had to give her a pill every day. That in itself was traumatic for us and the cat. Cats are demons for spotting anything foreign in their food and we ended up learning how to drop the pill down her throat (typically with a dose of peanut butter to stop her spitting it straight back out).

But after six months of pills, and a change to special vet food pouches, there was no significant change so we carried on without pills waiting for her to die. The vet told us we'd have a few months, but in the end we had nearly another 18 months with her.

The vet said there was liver damage, but wasn't able to do anything about it. The likelihood was cancer but not sure if she'd have survived so long if that was the case. They did suggest further ultrasound tests at a not-insignificant cost, and the only reason we declined to have those tests, was that the vet said it would help diagnose what was wrong, but in all probability wouldn't change the cat's outlook.

Over the last two years we've got used to lots more toilet accidents - luckily all on a tiled floor; a ravenous appetite - she never seemed to want to stop eating; and a general withdraw from her playful activities.

We have kept asking ourselves when it would be a good time to put her down but the advice from the Internet added more confusion. A common theme seemed to be that if she was eating and wanted to spend time with you, then she was likely OK. Well, her appetite for most of those two years was ferocious, and she mostly slept on our bed with us like she always did. The Internet didn't help at all frankly.

But on Thursday she seemed more withdrawn than usual. She'd eaten but was sick twice in the night. On Thursday evening, she got into her litter tray and just sat down for a few minutes looking a bit confused.

So, on Friday I took her to the vets. On the way there, she lay down in her cat box, which was odd in itself. She was always on her feet, sniffing around. The vet picked her up, and realised after feeling her backbone that she'd lost more weight and 'yes, it was time'. When she was healthy, she was 5 kg. For most of the last 2 years she'd been half that at 2.5 kg. When she was weighed on Friday she was 1.9 kg.

The procedure was quick. The vet shaved her leg and injected. I was stood in the wrong place at first so the nurse moved me to where Molly could see me.

Molly blinked a few times, then was still.

The vet left me and Molly alone for a few minutes. I told her she was the best cat ever, stroked her, kissed her, then left.

In the morning, I find myself checking to where her food dish was, to see if she's got enough to eat. And when cooking, I keep expecting to hear her scampering up behind me to see what she could scavenge.

But of course, there's nothing.

Breaking the chain

Jerry Seinfeld offered some great productivity advice. Basically, if you want get better at something you need to practice every day. His craft was comedy and so he wrote jokes every day. His productivity system the simplest of tools: a large year wall planner. Every day he wrote, he crossed out the day on the planner. After a few days of watching the chain of days grow, your job becomes to 'not break the chain'. Simple.

So, as a writer, the natural thing for me is to not miss a day writing. I haven't got a wall planner but I've started using 42goals.com to achieve the same effect. But, you don't need to use wall planners to get this effect. If you're a blogger, you might want to blog every day about the skill you're developing. Chris Strom achieved mastery over new development languages by blogging about it every day. He even got books published off the back of this.

I'm also using 750words.com to write my morning pages, and that uses the motivation of 'not breaking the chain' to great effect.

I do like the idea of blogging about a subject to learn about it. I've so many things I want to learn in my job and personal life that I'm very much drawn to this idea. I'm going to go away and look to see which of these areas I could focus on.

Learnings from first novel

So, finally, I have a complete first draft of my novel. This has taken some time and the implications haven't really sunk in yet. So, I'm writing this in an effort to help me learn some lessons from the experience.

1. Don't take so long to get to the first draft stage. I've spent about (not sure for certain) 6 years to get to this stage. That has all sorts of harmful implications.

2. Love your characters. I suppose that's not necessarily a given. If you're writing about hurtful characters can you still truly love them? Maybe, maybe not. But, you must at least love writing them. If you don't, you're only going to do them a disservice. I'd like to kid myself that I haven't done that with my characters but I know that's not the case. At least two of my major characters are barely more than ciphers. I suspect you could switch dialogue around between some of my characters and you'd barely notice. I realise I'm not encouraging anyone to want to read it but, there you go - it's the truth.

In some dim and distance past, my characters had unique voices and I cared what happened to them. A couple of them were even pretty interesting and almost complex. This made them fun to write for. But as the years dragged on, and with gaps between my writing bursts, I started to lose touch with who these people were. I didn't know who I was writing for anymore. In fairness, they weren't exactly helping either but I can understand why they might have felt a bit neglected.

3. Have some idea of where your story is going. I appreciate you can, broadly speaking, categorise writers into those who like to plot and those that like to listen to their characters and develop the story as they go. I started my novel with the simplest of plot beginnings and no real idea of where it would go. I kept my fingers crossed and hoped that things would just work out.

I don't think they did really work out.

As I came across plot holes, new characters might get introduced, equally, characters might get erased. I don't think there's anything wrong with not plotting before you write, but my experience with this particular novel, was worse because I hadn't plotted.

A terrible side effect was the sheer amount of wastage. I've written about 200,000 words in the process of getting to a first draft of 120,000 words.  And, I know that if I'm to take this to a revised draft, I should be looking to shave a decent percentage of that (10% maybe). So, I've written the equivalent of two books worth and only have the first draft of one book to show for it.

4. Not all your ideas need to go in the mix. A side-effect of not knowing where the story was going, was that a lot of ideas got thrown in whether they contributed or not. In the early stages, when I was desperate to help boost my word count, I'd latch onto ideas that I thought would do that. This meant that sometimes things didn't make a whole load of sense. My plot was at the mercy of whatever new idea I'd come up with.

Characters started dancing to the best of this convoluted plot rather than stay true to themselves. I think if I'd kept a tight plot outline before starting to write, and maintained the courage to see that story through to completion, I wouldn't have had that problem. If an idea caught my attention, I should have made a note of it and kept it written somewhere else. There's every chance it would have come in useful somewhere.

In short, not keeping a tighter control on the ideas that I was throwing at the story, caused a lot of rewriting.

5. Keep to a writing schedule. Much as I love Douglas Adams's quote on deadlines making whooshing noises as they fly past, I realise that's not the approach I should be taking with writing a novel. In my day job, deadlines form an integral part of the calendar with at least six major deadlines each year. That's crucial to getting the work done. Why, then am I so flippant about any self-imposed deadlines I give myself in my writing?

A tighter schedule to getting to first draft would have solved many of the problems I've already iterated . I can type pretty fast. I can write my daily morning pages at 750words.com in 12 minutes. Bearing in mind that I might want to pay more attention to the words I'm writing in a novel, I could give myself an hour a day to write 750 words of a novel.

I'm not down about any of this. Getting this far has been a tremendous experience and has never made me want to give up writing.

Day 9 without Facebook

We spent a great weekend away in the lakes. In that time I caught myself flicking through my iPhone's screens a couple of times looking for my fix of information. Without the Facebook or Twitter icon I resorted to checking my email a couple of times. Surprise, surprise, there was nothing in there I was bothered about. It seems therefore, that I have a need to be constantly updated with some kind of information. There's a danger that that might happen with Google+ so I'm going to keep an eye on that and make sure that I contribute something meaningful and often and not just consume information.

I did realise in the lakes that I was getting all the status updates I needed from my kids all day long.

"I'm tired."

"I'm hungry."

"I love you."

Day 5 without Facebook

I haven't posted everyday since quitting Facebook as that would be really boring. But I wanted to catch up and say where I am on Day 5 (I did have to check it was day 5, I'm not mentally counting away the days since I last used the site).

On day 3, I did get a moment at work when I saw others checking out their Facebook pages and there was a slight feeling of being disconnected, so I did some work and the moment passed.

But yesterday, my sister told me it felt odd that there were traces of me on Facebook but I wasn't there. I'm guessing it's because they haven't deleted my account yet so stuff like comments are going to remain. I've no idea if they'll permanently go when my account is deleted or not. So, I felt a bit bad about not being around and  resolved to make sure that I still share important family stuff through Google+. Yes, it's not going to be as seamless an experience for them whilst they're not using the site, but maybe an email to them might feel more special than a new entry on my Facebook wall.

On the commute yesterday, I was reminded by how prevalent Facebook is. The different radio stations I was flicking between were all 'come and check out our Facebook page', or 'send us a tweet' blah blah. The national stations must be swamped with tweets and posts on Facebook. I know they want to feel like they're connecting with their audience but it's got to be a full time job sifting their way through all the chaff looking for the gem they want to read out. And doesn't it make like a bit too easy for the listeners? How much crafting is going into their messages to the radio stations? It used to be all about phone ins, and the occasional letter; then came email, and although that encouraged people to be a bit sloppier, at least the semblance to a letter made people take some effort. But now it's all about writing the pithiest comment in 140 chars, or 'Liking' someone else's comment. Bit of a shame that's all I'm saying.

Day 2 without Facebook

I might have got a bit carried away. Just deleted my Twitter account as well.

Day 1 without Facebook

For a while I've been considering dropping Facebook. About a year ago I realised I was spending a lot of time checking messages on Twitter and checking status updates on Facebook. It became a bit of a consuming habit and one that I recognised was not very productive. So, I went through a culling phase and stopped following a lot of people on Twitter, and removed everyone from my Facebook friends list apart from a handful of real friends and family members.

It was a great feeling. For the first time in ages, I felt free to write on Facebook about my family without worrying about how public I was making my life. On Twitter, I simply stopped posting and grew out of the habit of using the site.

For a time, all was well. I'd managed to reconnect with family members I hadn't seen for years, and was posting updates on my family. It was nice.

But then Google+ came along and I realised this was a social network that seemed to be doing things the right way. It made Facebook up its game and they started pushing out some of the features that might have made me think twice about my friend cull (the lists feature made it possible to limit posts to lists of people - think Google+ circles).

And for a time, all was still well. I was using twitter very rarely to get titbits from people associated with Doctor Who; I was using Facebook to speak to my family, and I was using my Google+ to speak to everyone else.

But recently I've grown disenchanted with this arrangement. It seems I've been hanging on to a Facebook account for no real reason other than to make it easier for my family to keep up to date with me. This is all in Google+ however, and the line between my thinking on both services was starting to grate.
So, I disabled by Facebook account yesterday. If you haven't done this already, you should try it. It's so funny. Deactivating your account does very little. When you click the link to deactivate, Facebook throws a few images of your friends on the screen telling you that 'John Smith will miss you', etc. Ha. How desperate are they?

Disabling your account does very little by the way. None of your data is removed and the next time you log back in, everything is as it was before. I knew this, but I figured it was a good mental exercise to see if I was truly bothered by not logging into Facebook.

I survived the day though, and by the end of it decided that I was going to go ahead and delete my Facebook account. Even this process isn't straight forward. Go ahead and try to find the link on Facebook...go and take a look...did you find it? I did a search on Google+ and some helpful souls posted the link you need. Steve Krause wrote this article about the process How to permanently delete your Facebook account (It's this if you're interested http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=delete_account.)

I clicked the link about an hour ago.

I then shared a Google+ post with my family so they'd know that I wasn't on Facebook anymore.

Deleting my Facebook account was something I should have done a long time ago.

Only 2 more to go

Finished another scene yesterday. I've only got 2 more to go!

Only 4 scenes to go

I've been busy with things recently and the novel has taken a back seat; still today I managed to get to grips with what work I have remaining on it before I can comfortably call it a completed first draft.

4 scenes.

What the hell am I playing at? Why aren't I just writing them and getting the bloody thing finished. I already have ideas floating around for my next one and I so so so desperately want to start something new.

OK. I'm going to get another scene started now.
Right
this
second.

Are 'morning pages' useful?

I first heard about morning pages from a friend who'd got hold of a new book to unleash her creative side. That book turned out to be The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. I know this because I came across that book myself in my local library a couple of years later and after checking with my friend found it to be the same

Julia advocates writing three pages of free flowing text every morning before you do anything else. This is to help tap into your creative energies whilst you're still presumably half asleep and not as inhibited by the constraints you put on yourself by your daily routines.

I tried this for one day - sorry Julia - and then never tried again. In my mind, I was equating the half an hour it was taking me to write the pages long hand, with the time I could have spent on my actual writing project. When you have two young children and a full time job, all time is precious and it's impossible for me to not look at time cost of any activity. Half an hour writing material I would have no further use for, just didn't make any sense.

But, I've recently come across 750words.com again. (I say again as I tried this site several years ago.) I had a go at writing 750 words in one session (750 words being about three pages worth) and was surprised at the results.

16 minutes is pretty fast isn't it! It's certainly not the massive drain on my time that I had assumed it to be. It's probably because I've developed into a much faster typer than I was a couple of years ago, and my typing is so much faster than my longhand writing.

Rather than consider this time lost, I used it as a warm-up exercise to working on my novel. Although, at first I didn't really notice much difference, after a few minutes, I was much more in the flow. Because I'd already started with some writing, it was much easier to pick up the work on my novel. I also felt much less pressure to hit my self-imposed word count of 1000 words a day on my novel as I'd already done a significant piece of writing on 750 Words. In the end, I wrote about 700 words on my novel as well, and that was mainly because I broke the cardinal rule of going back and editing what I'd just written, rather than ploughing through new material.

At the end of the evening, I was in a really positive mood.

So, I'm going to continue with 750 words for a few days and ignoring Julia's advice about doing it first thing in the morning, I'm going to use it as a warm-up exercise to working on my novel.

Have any of you tried this?

novel update

Novel updates are becoming quite a feature of this blog. I'm pretty sure that's not a good thing. I suspect I'm writing this more for my benefit than anyone elses. There's not a lot to learn about writing from me!

I've crossed the 100,000 word line and can see that I only need to write about five more scenes before the first draft is finished. Rather than beat myself up over it, I'm taking a more placid view. The thing will be finished soon. However, I am thinking about what to do next. The book is nowhere near good enough to get published. I see it as a purely learning experience. With that in mind, is is even worth pushing it beyond a first draft into a second, let alone all the other drafts it might need before it becomes anything approaching a publishable piece of work?

I'm thinking it's not. I've been working (and learning) on this novel for the last few years and it's way past time to put it to one side and move on to something new, something that I can energised about. There's a temptation to pick up the story at the end of the last one - the major players are conveniently going to live with a situation that can easily be continued. But, if I do that, I'm bothered that it will seem that I haven't moved on enough. Maybe a whole raft of new characters and situations is what's needed for my second attempt. If Ray Bradbury did say that the first million words don't count, then I've got another nine novels to write before I have anything of any value. I may as well spend that time playing around in different sandpits.

If I put this one to bed in the next couple of weeks, and pushed myself to finish another novel before Nanowrimo, and then did nanowrimo, that could be another two novels this year. I know these are lofty ambitions but it might be worth it.

What would you do?