<18 months later>
I'm still writing more than I did before reading Weinberg's book. I should have a few chapters published in Robert Martin's next book Clean Code.

Part of the writing is from my new jobs, which requires it a bit more. Even so, I had a full year after reading that book where my work did not require it and I did so anyway. So something stuck. Way to go Jerry.


I was asked to write a proposal for JBoss World by my company. The request also included suggestions on what to propose, which I did not really like. I had read far enough into this book to have the first rule about; only write stuff in which you are interested.

I took that rule to heart, took what I could of the suggestions, formed it in to something in which I was interested, and wrote the proposal. My boss took my general outline and approach and wrote a second proposal. He was accepted as a presenter, I was not.

However, I took the work forward and then presented it at the Oklahoma City Java Users Group and the Dallas/Forth Worth JBoss Users Group.

The book discusses Jerry's metaphor for his writing approach, which is suggested in the subtitle: The Fieldstone Method.

You collect fieldstones or little gems. You then use these little gems by organizing them, shaping them and forming them into comprehensive works. Since you have so many gems (you collect them all the time), you never have writer's block because if you get stuck in one place, you work somewhere else.

This is important. You don't just work on one thing. You work on many different things and there are many different kinds of activities you can do when you "slow down." Those other activities might be collecting or reducing your current active field stones, organizing those field stones, refining other fields stones, etc.

You never have to stop writing, you just stop writing on the one thing that is blocked, let your subconscious deal with it and go on to some other, possibly mundane, but important, activity.

I've taken much of his book to heart and now that first presentation has blossomed into several different things, some finished, some not.

Let this book work its magic on you. The changes seem obvious and subtle. However, they've seemed to work well for me.

I've been a big fan of Jerry Weinbergs writing (and he wrote a lot). A book about writing is exactly what I needed, so my expectations were high. However, I ended up slightly disappointed. I almost feel guilty about giving this just four stars out of five with all the other people writing reviews about how excellent this book is.

Weinberg on writing: the fieldstone method is a book about writing books. The whole book is build around the analogy between writing a book and building a fieldstone wall. Building a fieldstone wall takes practice and you have to find the right stones (ideas) and put them in the right place to make a great wall. Not all the stones fit, some need to be shaped and not all walls will be great.

For me, personally, the analogy didn't work well. I felt it was more confusion than beneficial. It's created very clever, nothing wrong there. It's just hard to see, plus normally an analogy is made from an easier domain to understand. I found the domain of building fieldstone walls not much easier than book writing. I'd preferred more direct writing and talking about e.g. ideas instead of stones.

The book consists of 20 chapter about writing. Most chapters contain really really useful tips. Weinberg (with 40 books) has lots of experience and, as always, has done his research. The book is written in a similar style as most of his books. Easy to read and full of stories. (a coal mine...)

To mention some of the ideas in the book. Don't write when you have to. Use your energy. Play solitaire with idea. How to gather ideas. How to store ideas. How to use outliners. And the list goes on and on. Many ideas, some conceptual, some very concrete.

Near the end of the book, Gerry very smartly explains the techniques he introduces on this book. He talks about writing, while writing. Though done very well, I found it somewhat confusing.

Overall, Gerald Weinberg did a great job writing yet another book. It's worth reading and contains a huge amount of advise. I'm sure this book is useful for every writer. Recommended.