Change of ebook plans

Caution! This article was published over a year ago, and hasn't been updated since. Situation, software and support of the topic below could have changed in the meantime.

Just a month ago I wrote in my 2019 retrospective for the first time in this blog about my plans to release an ebook. The idea is actually six months old and my intention back then was to do the following:

  • Writing an ebook about web accessibility in German
  • Covering what makes web apps special, common misunderstandings, patterns and pitfalls
  • While I find Vue.js the most exciting and approachable, I planned that the code examples and explanations would be framework-agnostic

Since I started planning and outlining this endeavour, two things happened.

  • I had the opportunity to call the company ownCloud a customer of mine, and in particular help them with the accessibility of their new web user interface, built with Vue.js. Part of my job was to educate the development team, and since the team is international and the project open-source, the communication was in English and in public. Writing both in English and in public about accessibility in Vue.js felt really familiar (😇)
  • At the same time, I had a really hard time with motivating myself to make progress in my German manuscript. In part this had something to do with a little bit of workload in the second half of 2019. But the other part was, that even when I had time to sit down, this particular book idea somehow felt not right. The reasoning behind it writing in my native language was that it could be easier and faster. Interestingly, this was not the case. Instead of just sitting down and write a shitty first draft, without letting the inner critic take over too soon, I was over-thinking and changed the book's outline. And then again, and again. I thought publicly "announcing" the book the first time in my blog would change that. Alas, it didn't.

Then 2020 began and with it a fun spree of adding content to this very blog (and also to the half-dormant accessible-app.com). Then, about two weeks ago I had another shower-thought: What if I put the German book project on hold for a bit and instead try to write only about Vue.js, and only in English? I did this before - with this very blog, and even as a paid job for ownCloud last year. So I started an experiment: changing tracks and for a limited amount of time, writing about Vue's accessibility and in English only. I was already so far behind (my inner) schedule with the book in German that I didn't think that one week more or less would make any difference.

Now an interesting thing happened: I made more progress in the new manuscript (working title: "Accessible Vue") in 2 weeks than in the old project during a 6-months period. Although this pace will most likely slow down and although I will have to add extra consideration to the (outside?) editing progress when dealing with a book in your second language, the last 14 days felt fun and productive. It seems that when working on that book, my sub-conciousness perceives the similarities of writing for either my blog, accessible-app or ownCloud. Also, the decision to limit the topic to one particular framework, Vue.js, freed me even more (although I admit that "accessibility in Vue.js" is still a vast topic).

Long (self-respective) story short: if you are interested in the further progress "Accessible Vue", please sign up for my newsletter (hey, I seem to also have found a new purpose for this tool as well – so, two birds with one stone 😉). And if you are interested in supporting me with this project in form of proofreading (regarding the nitty-gritty of Vue – and the English language!), paid of course, contact me using the familiar channels: Twitter, Mastodon and e-mail.