Observations

Stop. Take a deep breath and think about some of the most meaningful concepts learned in your life. Organize them and share them with others. Just empty a section of the brain and find out what's in there. Experiences. Feelings. Beliefs.

This is how a book, at least in my case, is born. Writing it for McGraw-Hill was a more-than-a-year adventure. The fun part was to write its concept and devise its structure. It took me about four months to write it. At the end of this period I contacted McGraw-Hill to have their feedback about my style and approach. The answer was very positive and encouraging. There was only a "small" problem, they said. It looked like I wrote 46,000 words and they needed 115,000.

I felt lost. It meant that I had to write more than what I already did. I felt "dry" because I wrote everything I wanted to say on the subject -- from my viewpoint, of course. Not from the reader's perspective.

But this was the time when my irreplaceable assistant gave me the encouragement I needed. She went through the whole manuscript, line by line, and where it was needed she wrote: "explain", "why", "example", "define". We worked another four months to expand the material and make it accessible to all types of investors.

After this phase we thought we were finished. To our surprise, and dismay I should add, the word count was only 90,000. We looked again at the whole book and we asked ourselves what was missing, what was really needed for the reader to implement the investment approach I was proposing.

We decided we needed to write three new chapters and make the chapter "Conclusions" more challenging by introducing a concept that would place my main ideas in perspective. After this phase, including all the charts and graphs, the word count was above 115,000. At this point we were almost done. We edited the text several times and by the end of June, almost one and a half years after I started, the manuscript was in the hands of McGraw-Hill.

There is no doubt in my mind I could not have done it without the marvelous cooperation of my assistants Susan and Jan. It was a great adventure. Worth living it.

(This Observations appeared in the issue of 7/10/2000 of The Peter Dag Portfolio)

George Dagnino, PhD
Editor, The Peter Dag Portfolio. Since 1977
Ranked best market timer in the 12 and 6 months ending 8/20/10 by Timer Digest

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