The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil (Penguin Portfolio); available on Amazon

In the home stretch. Phew. Very intense.

It’s like childbirth. (Apologies if this metaphor doesn’t work for you.) Scary, exhilarating and, yes, painful. To be precise, it feels like the last stage of giving birth. Suddenly it’s going faster, there’s an unstoppable momentum and you know there will be a result that will make it all worthwhile.

And yes, I’ve been through it three times (childbirth, not writing a book) with two remarkable daughters (see Amanda running the Boston Marathon here) and a remarkable son to show for it.

I’ve still got a lot to write and wrestle with… onward.

Oh, if only it were this easy to write a book.

I just "exported" the contents of my BlogWrite For CEOs blog into a text file; then turned it into a Word doc.

404 pages. 82,097 words.

That covers the almost one year I’ve been blogging at BlogWrite (November 2004 to date). I’ve also got a blog at www.DebbieWeil.com that I began in June 2003.

Now if I could just press "publish" and send it on up to Adrian Zackheim, Will Weisser, Adrienne Schultz and the rest of the team at Penguin Porfolio. Though they’ve asked me for approximately 200 pages and 50,000 words. Well, we’ll just do a quick edit and cut it down. No sweat. (I’m kidding if that isn’t obvious.)

So blooking sounds cool. (Definition here and here.) I’m interpreting the term loosely, of course. But it’s just not the same as writing a real book. And really, would you want to read my unorganized musings instead of an organized narrative (which will have more stuff in it too)?

BTW, here’s a blook-in-progress: Hackoff.com. It’s a murder mystery by Tom Evslin set in the dot com bubble. Unfolding blog-like on a blog. And have you heard about the new Lulu Blooker Prize for Blooks?

Just stumbled across Google Answers. It looks cool. You type in your question, post a "bid" (i.e. pay a small fee), and then sit back and wait for one of Google’s independent researchers to give you an answer. Obviously, the more you pay the quicker you get an answer. I just posted a question: What are the specific lawsuits filed thus far against bloggers? I know about two cases but don’t want to miss any others.

Oh, and if you’re reading this and have information about lawsuits and blogging, please leave it in the Comments below!

Posted earlier to my BlogWrite for CEOs blog: Lawsuits against bloggers are starting to pop up.

How cool to meet and chat with Shel Israel* in the hallway outside the Blog Business Summit here in San Francisco. Shel is the co-author with (the famous) Robert Scoble of Naked Conversations (their book about business blogging). He’s just finished writing the first draft of the book for Wiley and is now working on revisions. Can’t wait til I get to that point… although he says it’s tedious.

In the meantime, here’s his advice for writing a book. He starts at about 5 AM and writes till 11:30 AM. "Make it fun," Shel says. He moves around with his laptop… under the umbrella, on the couch, at his desk. And of course at the local Starbucks.

*Shel tells me he was sitting next to me in the 2nd row at this morning’s sessions… but I didn’t respond when he said hi. Huge apologies for being blind as well as deaf. He says I was engrossed in blogging the event. See here and here.

Seems like it took forever to close the deal with Penguin Portfolio to write a book about corporate blogging. Although my wonderful agent, Elizabeth Wales, tells me that two months from start to finish is fast. So… sigh of relief.

Now comes the hard part: writing the book! I’ve been conferring with colleagues, friends and recently-published authors. And I’ve come up with a few tips to get organized and get the ball rolling. Here they are:

1. Speak the book into a tape recorder for 30 minutes every day for two weeks. Then get it transcribed and you’ll have the beginnings of a manuscript (courtesy of Seth Godin).

2. Create a hanging folder for every chapter. Dump into each folder scribbled notes, previously published articles, clippings of articles from newspapers and magazines; print-outs of blog posts, etc.

3. Set up my first draft in Word so that it mimics a printed page in a book: 1.8" margin at the top; 2.3" at the bottom; 2.5" on the left; 1.9" on the right. Single-space in a font like Book Antigua or New Century Schoolbook. Don’t use Courier.

Note: I hate single spacing when I write so I probably won’t do that.

(Thanks to Jill Konrath of SellingToBigCompanies for the last two tips. She got them from publishing guru Dan Poynter. Jill has just finished writing an eponymous book to be published by Dearborn in December 2005. Go Jill!)

I’m sure there are a dozen other tips I can employ as a first-time book author. I’m kinda messy when it comes to organizing information so I could really  use some help. Click that Comments link below and tell me what you know. I’d love to hear your ideas.