I wrote a textbook for my lectures, actually this is the first book I have ever written! For two years, I have spent painful days to complete a book writing.
Before writing a sentence for this book, I was pretty confident that I could finish writing a book after six months or so. Theoretically it should be possible, but human brain is not designed to function in a multi-tasking fashion. I understand now that my brain is not an exception in this aspect. If your lecture course starts, your mind will be occupied by the thoughts of lecture preparations. If a physical society meeting nears, your mind will be occupied by the thoughts how to make a good presentation in the meeting. As a result, there is no room in your brain for writing a book during these busy days.
Of course, you can write something anyway in these busy days, but the contents you write might not be very interesting to readers, or even to yourself. There are sometimes cases that you feel bad about what you wrote, say, a week ago. After a week, you can read back your writing from an objective point of view, and found that your writing is quite dull and non-interesting, although you have believed that your writing must be the best in the world while you were writing sentences.
To avoid such a bitter experience, "slow writing" may be helpful, that is, write, a short break, then read what you wrote, and modifications. If you repeat this sort of painstaking processes, then you may be more satisfied in the end. I would like to try this way of "slow writing" in the next occasion.
