The editor presses:
Teacher Gao Lei, everyone is familiar with it. Mr. Gao Lei once published a 100-page cloud-native ppt exclusively in "Technical Talk", with over 10,000 views. For a more specific personal introduction of Mr. Gao Lei, see the end of the article. Below is the text.
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At first I wanted to finish writing the tome "Cloud Native Landing", which really gave me a headache! For me, who has no writing experience, it is an interesting adventure.
As for the purpose of writing, my initial understanding was relatively superficial, and I just thought it was to gain fame.
But walking down, I have a new understanding:
Writing a book is a matter of two roles, not only to express yourself well, but also to understand the readers' minds well.
In the past cognition, it is not enough to write just for the readers, because the author must tell him properly what the reader does not know is useful to him but himself does not know! The meaning of the word "proper" is: too many surprises, the book is too difficult to read, just like the game is too difficult to continue playing; too few surprises, the book is boring to read, just like the game is too easy , is not challenging and will not continue to play. What is the degree, almost 15.87% surprise, this is the most suitable "study area", while being useful to readers, you can also know that this book is in line with the trend and familiar to everyone. The ratio of 15.87% comes from brain science, which is wonderful and practical.
For the author himself, it is necessary to write according to this content ratio. In addition to those familiar things, the author also needs to express his unique thoughts and new things well, which really requires skill. A technical book like this needs to be written from actual projects or experience. Form always serves content. When I write it specifically, I use colloquial language, because most of the people who read this kind of technical book do not have a good literary background, and they are all science students. In addition, it doesn't mean that colloquialism can't be brilliant, in fact it will be very brilliant, as you can see by reading Hu Shi's vernacular.
"Building the ability to understand others and express oneself" is one of the benefits of writing to the author himself; at the same time, reading a lot of literature and knowledge is also conducive to improving my knowledge reserve. The most important thing is that I have done a lot of thinking and even put Questions that I hadn't thought about before were also exposed.
In short, from a selfish point of view, writing has really helped me improve my cognition a lot.
Writing methods, almost all technical books emphasize "succinctness".
When I was writing the first part, I thought the same way, and it was no different from others. But after finishing the first part, I will go back and read it again, thinking about the reader's mentality.
One day, a friend of mine said to read the "Tao Te Ching". He said that there are thousands of explanatory books in this ancient book. This reminded me that although I agree that the readers are basically technical people who will pay great attention to the directness of opinions, my book is facing a wide range of readers at the beginning, and we are thousands of miles apart. The author doesn't understand, especially the details of the author's thinking. Do different readers have many interpretations for the same sentence? This is troublesome. If a book, especially a technical book, has so many errors, what is the significance of this book? Don't I just hope to help readers clear up their doubts? With so many explanations, which one should readers believe?
So, I reflected on it and got an idea: when it is simple, it is simple, and when it is complicated, it is complicated. For the complicated part, I didn't deliberately make it complicated. I read a lot of foreign books, especially classic books, such as "Utopia", "Scale", "Biological Thinking", "Biography of the Brain", "World History" Wait, you will find that these books are very complicated. According to our standards, they are "long-winded". There is a saying that resonates with me, that is, "To solve puzzles is not to memorize the question type, otherwise you will be confused if the question type changes."
In order to test my ideas, I found many friends to read my book, and finally I was firm in the strategy of "keep it simple when it is simple, and make it complicated when it is complicated".
Regarding the method of writing, there are three last important things that need to be said.
The first thing is to figure out what to write and what not to write before starting to write every day. This is more important than how to write. In my books, I often make this kind of trade-off. For example, the topic of Metaverse, which is very popular now, is too big to be written; People scold and so on, so I won’t write these. Ensuring the overall quality is more important than following the fashion.
The second thing is that you have to find a way to lead the readers forward, for example, put some questions or suspense in the right place, it will be more interesting!
The third thing is to learn how to relax. Don’t be dry. Readers are prone to fatigue. You can place some relaxing topics in the right place.
Well, finally, let me talk about how my "heart" feels about writing.
In the beginning, I only wrote a few hundred words in a month, and I felt that I couldn't write, and I was so uncomfortable that I was going crazy! I thought in my heart, "Anyway, the contract is signed, and I have to work hard." Anyway, I have nothing to do now, so I tied myself to a chair and forced myself to write. I don’t care if he is good or bad, just write it first. There is a feeling that it is getting smoother.
So the first feeling of writing a book is "shameless, completion is more important than perfection", and the second is "not afraid". Slowly entering that state of flow, I was able to write an article of 18,000 words a day.
Because it was very shameless, I even learned basic grammar.
Finally, I have a feeling that at first I couldn’t grasp the needs of readers. I gradually found inspiration in Douyin’s live broadcast. Don’t regard readers as a group of people. You can regard them as a person and make a portrait of readers. When I wrote it, it was like having a conversation with him alone, and I wrote the content quickly! At this time, this content is aimed at a certain type of people.
"Pain and happiness", this is what a teacher said during the training of the editorial department when I first wrote the book. I experienced it personally, and it is true! And let me tell you, I'm addicted and will keep writing until the end of my life.
about the author:
Gao Lei:
Former Microsoft Research, Alibaba, Huawei architect, graduated from Northeastern University. With 20 years of professional experience, in middle age, I feel a lot of humanity and the warmth and warmth of the world! I have thought a lot and seen a lot clearly, and now I have firmly established my path.
I started writing in the fall of 2021. The book "Cloud Native Landing: Products, Technical Architecture and Business Model" seems to be a summary book of my career. In addition, I also hope to contribute some strength to the community. After all, it is the first time to write, and I encountered many difficulties in the process, but I still tried my best to persevere.
For the 390,000-word book, I completed the 360,000-word content by myself, and the remaining part was not familiar to me, so I handed it over to another colleague of Ali. The contract was signed by Machinery Industry Press, and the editors of the publishing house are very kind and have given a lot of help! This book was completed in September this year. It was originally planned to be published by the end of this year, but the publishing house has a lot of books to publish this year, and they are all going through the publishing process. My book is also in the queue. It is estimated that it will be available in early 2023. At the request of publishers and editors, I wrote about my thoughts on writing, and now I also contribute to the community. I hope that more and more friends will be interested in writing. Writing is a good investment in life and is very beneficial to personal growth.
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