Agile Book Development
My wife is a writer. She considers herself the aspiring variety, but I disagree. Anyone who can actually sit down and puts words to paper (digital or otherwise) is certainly a bonafide writer in my eyes. Writing is hard - really hard, and I respect the hell out of anyone who tries their hand at it.
I consider myself a developer, which is a different kind of writing altogether. Both types of writing exercise the same creative and analytical parts of one’s brain, but each has its own distinctly different approach to fleshing out an idea.
Authors write in solitary, often in long winding stretches just to get words on the page; they focus on the bigger picture first and then come back to reorganize their thoughts; they keep their work to themselves until they deem the project complete.
Practitioners of a style of programming called agile development team up together to solve difficult problems and learn from each other; they break up larger tasks into smaller, more manageable ones; they work on pieces of the bigger picture one week at a time; they release early and release often, and in the process they gain feedback and meaningful insight that enables them to better their work earlier on.
Not all developers follow an Agile philosophy, but the ones that do are more focused, have less stress, and get better work done faster.
Writers could learn a lot from this.
