My first book, Writing for Designers, was released by A Book Apart one year ago today.
Personally, much of the past year has been a blur. I experienced a profound loss in December in the death of my mother, a scant 68 days after the book was first released. Reflecting on a year since the release of Writing for Designers has been investigative for me, in a way. I barely remember being some of these places, and I’m sure I’ve forgotten others.
But the book has brought many wonderful people and experiences into my life, and I’m grateful to have had it as a bright spot, however dark the background.
Here’s what a year in life of the book looks like:
- October 16, 2018 – Release day. The ebook becomes available for purchase.
- October 16, 2018 – Content Strategy MPLS/St. Paul meetup webinar. Delivered my first iteration of How to Get the Writing Done, the talk I reverse-engineered out of the book (and previous workshops) to make the lessons appeal to an audience of more than just designers.
- October 16, 2018 – Release party. I bought some food and drinks and hosted friends and a few strangers at the Stray Dog restaurant in my neighborhood in Northeast Minneapolis.
- October 18, 2018 – A List Apart article goes live. They published the introduction chapter to Writing for Designers as a preview, and lots of nice folks tweeted links and quotes.
- November 13, 2018 – UX Book Club Chicago meetup. To my knowledge, this was the first book club to feature Writing for Designers. I popped down for an in-person presentation and Q&A at the very cool headquarters of Solstice.
- November 28, 2018 – Recorded User Defenders 059. Had a chat with Jason Ogle on a special edition of sorts of his excellent User Defenders podcast. It was released a few months later.
- November 29, 2018 – UMN Technical Writing presentation. Shared How to Get the Writing Done in a webinar with folks involved in the technical writing program at the University of Minnesota.
- January 29, 2019 – Print edition released. A Book Apart put together a way to order ebooks from the Briefs series as print-on-demand paperbacks. This was a lovely surprise not long after the ebook release.
- February 7, 2019 – IxDA presentation. Delivered a breakout session of How to Get the Writing Done in the Cinerama theatre at Interaction 19 in Seattle.
- February 19, 2019 – Gather Content webinar. Part book promo, part Confab promo. Lots of great Q&A after an updated presentation of How to Get the Writing Done.
- March 3, 2019 – AAF CRIC meetup. One of my first road trips after bringing the truck up from Arizona in January! Shared How to Get the Writing Done with a crowd of folks in marketing, advertising, PR, and tech. (And came home with a great bottle of Cedar Ridge whiskey!)
- May 5, 2019 – Prime Academy presentation. Been dropping in to visit the UX cohorts with some regularity at this educational bootcamp, and this time I brought in How to Get the Writing Done (and lots of free copies of the book in paperback).
- June 6, 2019 – Content Design NYC meetup. Shared How to Get the Writing Done and a few copies of the book with this rad and fairly new content design meetup at Kickstarter’s HQ in the Greenpoint area of Brooklyn.
And next week, I’m heading to PUSH UX in Munich to present a full-day workshop based on Writing for Designers and an updated version of the How to Get the Writing Done talk on the main stage.
The book has an acknowledgments section, to which I will now say “ditto!”. I also shared a thread (or tried to, anyway) of quotes and reviews and other nice things folks have shared since the release this morning on the @DesignersWrite account.
At the top of this article, I called Writing for Designers my first book. That’s on purpose. I don’t know what’s next for Writing for Designers, but I do know that another book is next for me. I was glad to learn that I could get something like this done, and I learned a lot from doing it (from various difficulties and failures as much as any successes).
On to the next one.