Writing books is hard. Collaborating without an effective plan can make it much harder. It’s okay to argue about ideas, structure, terminology, tone, case studies, or audience. Those arguments are productive. It’s not okay to argue about who’s editing which version when — that’s just a stupid waste of time. Even so, I see so…
Whether you’re writing in a corporate setting or as a freelancer, you’re likely to face this common issue: multiple “client” individuals that you must satisfy before the project is complete. How can a writer serve more than one master? In my experience, this is both extremely common and very tricky. In the business writer survey…
Google Docs is a pain for book collaboration. That was the general sentiment in a recent discussion I had with a bunch of writers, editors, and ghostwriters. If you’re going to use Google Docs, learn about access control. That’s the key to collaborating without driving each other bonkers. The challenge writers and editors face with…
I have a problem. I have too much talent. I’m good at math. I’m good at writing. I’m good at project management. I’m better at most of those things than the people I work with. (I’m not good at humility, as you may have noticed.) I took jobs that reinforced my arrogance. I had to…
The price of freelance work goes up as you involve more people from your company in their work. Call it the “collaboration tax.” The best analogy I can give is this: I once hired a carpenter to rebuild the porch on my house. I wanted to see if I could get a better price than…
We’ve optimized the heck out of cooking and shopping at my house. The key is a simple spreadsheet that my wife Kimberley built in Google Sheets — and it uses almost no math. We’ve improved it over more than a decade, and I can’t resist showing it off. Why this works for us This system…
Two or three researchers can do better than one. Here’s how to take advantage of that. For the purposes of this post, I’m talking about Web research that informs writing, whether that’s an article, a book, a white paper, or an internal document. Even if you’re doing actual primary research, such a survey or interviews,…
Collaboration on writing is hard enough. It can work only when there is a shared understanding of process and assumptions. Some rules and conventions regarding writing collaboration seem obvious to me — so obvious that I never mention them, because an experienced writer would find it insulting. Then a perfectly well-meaning collaborator will break such…
The most fundamental principle in writing is actually . . . version control? It’s an unwritten rule. Like changing your underwear every day. And if you violate it, you are a barbarian. This is the least sexy writing advice ever. But if you and your collaborators don’t share a common understanding of version control, you’re…