Gerald M. Weinberg
Dorset House, 2006
Gerald M. Weinberg
Dorset House, 2006
ISBN: 093263365X
paper.
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See also Weinberg on Requirements Engineering.
As the author of over 40 books, Gerry Weinberg should have a thing or two to say about writing. But is it something that can be shared, or is it just a black art that some people are good at, others not?
Weinberg believes that writing skill can, to some extent at least, be learnt. He does not claim that this extends to writing works of immortal artistic merit. But for more modest purposes - such as writing a technical article, chapter, or book on requirements - he has many practical suggestions.
The cover shows Weinberg sitting on a solid stone wall made with natural stones he found in the fields: hence, fieldstones. There is an old dry-stone waller's proverb: A hole for every stone; a stone for every hole. Perhaps that's a proverb for careers advisors and recruitment officers, not to mention dating agencies. But the fieldstones Weinberg has in mind are chunks of knowledge, ideas, or rather, interesting facts or stories that you come across in your reading, that you just fancy might turn out to be useful for something or other. So, you carry the fieldstone home and carefully clean it up and put it somewhere safe where you can find it again.
To make sure you don't lose your fieldstones, and your writing, Weinberg earnestly counsels you to back up your work regularly. Yes, I know, do it today. But how to use your fieldstones? What is the method? Well, there are many ways of arranging stones to make a wall. Look at good walls, good writings that you admire, that you "respond to" - things that attract you emotionally, things that in a word have power. Feel free to steal a few words here and there, suggests Weinberg cheerfully - everybody else does. Then, gradually, some of your fieldstones will start to fit together. You may have to reshape a stone here and there: that's ok. Or you may find you have a stone in the wrong place: move it, try somewhere else.
One of Weinberg's many maxims (he's a great source of fieldstones himself) is that a conference, like a book, is worthwhile if 5% of the papers or pages tell you something new and potentially valuable. One of his jokes is about how hurt he felt when a friend wrote that someone else's book was "a gold mine". Why don't you ever say that one of my books is a gold mine, complained Weinberg. Well, said his friend, a gold mine is a place where you shovel away tons of dirt to find a few nuggets. Your books are coal mines. Coal mines? inquired Weinberg. Yes, said his friend. A coal mine is a place where practically every shovelful is of value.
© Ian Alexander 2008