Yesterday I sent the examples from Practical Subversion off to my publisher, which was the last remaining task I had before I could call the book officially done. Sometime yesterday (or perhaps today, I'm not entirely sure) the final PDFs were sent to the printer, and I'm told that in about a month we should have actual dead tree versions of the book. It's taken far longer than I'd originally thought it would, and a lot more work than I had anticipated, but I'm glad I did it. I've learned a lot, improved as a writer, and at some point soon I'll be able to walk into a brick and mortar book store and see something with my name on it sitting up on the shelf. That's so much cooler than seeing things I wrote up on a website, and I'm glad I have been given the chance to do it.
Before you ask, no, I'm not planning on writing another book anytime soon. Instead I think I'm going to stick to actually writing code, which I've missed over the past year or so, and while I will continue to write it'll probably be limited to much smaller pieces. This whole process has truly made me appreciate the value of a quick return on investment. Taking an entire year worth of hard work before you actually see the result in a bookstore is not nearly as much fun as a few hours over the course of a week or two before you can see an article up on a website somewhere ;-)
In any event, for everyone out there who is tired of hearing me pull out the "I've got to work on the book" excuse way too often, I'm no longer going to be able to use that one, so I'll have to work on an all new set of excuses for not being all that much fun...
