Hardcopy goodness

A close friend who is an author said "the book isn't finished until you have the hardcopy in your hot little hands". So I was very excited when I came home yesterday to find that there was a copy of the Year 11 Information Technology textbook that I contributed to sitting on my door step.

It really should have been wrapped in Christmas paper, because it really did feel like Christmas when I opened it. I love the effect with fibre optics that they have done on the front cover. Seeing the finished product takes a load of my shoulders as this project has been a long one.

I contributed to Chapter 5, the new area of the study on Data Visualisation. Looking back now at the sort of year I have had, I was crazy to put my hand up for the new area of the study design back in 2009, but I did enjoy the content and I am excited by the possibilities of teaching this unit when I return to teaching in 2012. The topic area has lots of implications for the way in which you communicate information.

This is the second school text book that I have contributed to, the third will be the Year 12 Information Technology Applications book due out in February where I have written two chapters.

If you ask many authors, most of them will say that they didn't do it for the money. And that is certainly true of text book writing. Yes I will get royalties, but there is not a lot of money to be made in writing school text books. You write for professional development, for the indepth knowledge and ultimately for the challenge. Professionally it will hold me in good stead and I might get some presentation work out of it next year when I am not formally working.

I want my next writing task to be something fun. Not sure if I can do fiction like some of my other friends, perhaps some technical writing about sewing might provide me with a challenge. But first I have to get my next big project delivered, it is due in February.