The book writing nightmare

Learning new skills

I always thought that writing a book meant being an expert on the topic one was set to write about. Novels and poetry apart, non-fiction required expertise. But what I have learned from my own adventures as a book writer is that one actually grows into it, becomes an expert, not the other way around. At what I now recognize as the beginning of my book-writing odyssey, I was simply working on a series of articles that I would either publish on my blog or send to international magazine. Usually I published them in at least two languages. These articles required some dialogue with editors but that was never much of a concern -just a few changes here and there at that was it. I used to write these articles in Word, 5-10 pages, sometimes published in two parts.

But this time, the small topic I was inquiring about, simply grew bigger and bigger. It was about an apparently small detail in horary astrology mentioned by William Lilly regarding latitude.

When the article reached about thirty pages and I realized how much time I was spending scrolling up and down, I decided I needed different software. That marked the end of phase one of my book-writing adventures. The main reason my troubled relationship with Word ended was that I usually work in a puzzle-like fashion: I pick one topic and develop it, then move to another piece of the project as new ideas arise. In essence, I add material from different angles, and it became difficult to keep track of everything in Word.

Then I discovered Scrivener—a paradise for the creative writing process. The best thing was that it seemed to be made exactly for people like me: patchwork authors. Whenever I started a new chapter, I opened a new document, which I could then split and move around easily. I could glue independent chapters together and rearrange everything with little effort. It was heaven. Another point in its favour was how Scrivener handles references. I have (what feels like) thousands of them, but the software allows you to see them in a right-hand panel. This makes editing much easier, without constant scrolling. You can also take snapshots when you want to change a chapter but later realize the original version was better—Scrivener lets you “roll the film back.” It happened to me several times. A true lifesaver.

This software had a learning curve but was still manageable, and I became proficient in it simply by using it consistently. It also offers corkboard and outline options, as well as specific tools for novelists, though I never used those. The program was excellent while I was in the heart of the material-gathering and core writing phase—phase two. However, Scrivener is primarily a writing tool. It might even be all that’s needed for novelists who plan to publish a text-only e-book, but my book is filled with images, tables, and charts. Scrivener is not an editing program. While it can display all of these elements, it treats them more like placeholders, meaning the image quality is low and there are few editing options. It’s a writing program—and for that purpose, it is just great.

So I had to change programs again when it came to phase three. This was the part I was most worried about. I had to create images—and many of them. I couldn’t simply ask someone else to do it for me, cost aside, because I would only know exactly what I needed after seeing them. And what I needed were images that explained astronomy—no easy task. I chose to work with the Affinity Suite. At that time, Affinity offered Publisher, Designer, and Photo. I started from literally zero. It was a steep learning curve and very time-consuming. Objects floated around—God knows where—the text frames seemed inhabited by naughty ghosts doing whatever they pleased, and designing graphic images was a nightmare. Not because of the program itself, but because I began with no prior knowledge, apart from some experience with PageMaker twenty (or more) years ago. Who even still remembers pageMaker?!

Now I know the basic rules.

1) Define the fonts

2) Prepare the Master pages

2) Insert the text

3) Insert the images into frames and add a text frame with a font that numbers them

4) 1000 other things.

Of course I did none of those things in the right order. Let’s just say BEWARE.

Well, by now I am becoming an Affinity expert too -the hard way, I’d say!- which seems to be my chosen path.

Of course, I took classes, but although they were good, for some reason—which I still ignore!—they never addressed the problems I was actually facing at the time. I posted on forums, got some answers, learned new tricks, and still tore my hair out on a daily basis

I should add that my book is pretty long.

Of course not all was “my fault”. There were also a few software bugs. That’s higher power, so I could only learn to work around it. Like numbering in the right sequence. Sounds easy enough. Well. It wasn’t. I discovered Affinity numbers the images in the sequence I entered them. Hey, I am a puzzle worker, “sequence” is not in my vocabulary!

Also, between editing in Publisher and illustrating in Designer, I had to switch pages. This is now different after Canvas bought the entire package and the three tools are now just one. But this happened like 10 days ago when my book was already in a very late state! Thanks, universe. So kind of you.

My book is full of hard core research and data. Well, one might think, chatGPT is your best friend. Think again. When I started the book, the nasty robot basically didn’t exist yet but then, when I started to use it (late, as always) I usually got the answer: I have no clue. Maybe the robot (as I call it) used a more elegant phrasing but that was it. Or, even worse, it would provide info but it was completely unreliable. Again my topic is astronomy related, so I was never searching for Wikipedia-like entries. I needed astronomical data from periods of 3000 BCE onwards. If data was provided, it was often just completely wrong. Sometimes I even made screen-shots of the absurdities it came up with. So, no help with that. ChatGPT was a joke then. I used it in the last stage of writing though, to find references, check on grammar and all kinds of other things that I needed to round things up. Sometimes it was useful to rephrase a sentence that would sound odd. But I never used it to write stuff in the first place. Not only does it feel like cheating, but writing is some kind of not only creative but also sacred process.

The entire book writing project also made me reflect on something that somebody told me years ago: you do not really fully understand anything unless you try to teach it to somebody else. How many times things were completely clear in my head, easy-peasy, but when I was asked to explain them, the words on my tongue (or rather, in my pen!) got twisted and only gibberish came out? Then I had to go over the material again (and again), write notes, open new books and only then the gibberish would translate into something more tangible.

But then something else happened. After I started to give workshops on some of the material I was dealing with in my book, I realized I had to extend the chapters, give more examples or images. I had to make it easier. And then, finally the book content would flow in the outside world.

But the reverse happened, too. For example, I had to give one particular workshop which would be translated simultaneously. This meant I had to make sure the translators would understand everything easily. I prepared tons of material for this event. While the event went well, months later, while editing the chapter I had drawn material from for the workshop, I realized that I had never included all this extra material in my book. But it actually made the chapter better and easier to read. This meant I had to edit the entire book chapter thing heavily. In this way, the workshop-material flew back into my book.

Again, more hair was torn from my poor head. Hopefully I will not end up bold once the book is on the shelves.

So, now I am in the final sprint, which to be honest causes the next panic attack. Getting the baby out into the real world. But not here, not now. There is still the glossary to write, the first full-book print, final editing and then-hit publish.

© Tania Daniels 2025