November 1996, Los Angeles. I’d had this video editing book idea in my head for four months now. Oddly enough, while talking to a product manager for Ulead Systems, he said to me, “We were thinking it would be good if you wrote a MediaStudio Pro book.” Well whaddaya know: I was thinking the very same thing.
That was all I needed to immediately set to work on it late 1996. Then again in 1997. And then again in 1998. (Yeah, I’m like greased lightning.) Granted, most of that time was spent actually doing the video editing jobs and not necessarily writing about it. But as I realized my future in video editing was limited, my thoughts turned back to the book.
In June 1999, I self-published the first edition of Getting Results with MediaStudio Pro. Just a year later, a new version of the software was out so I extended the book and sold two editions simultaneously: one for version 5 and one for version 6. In 2001, the book was further extended. Then in 2003, a new version of the software came out. *sigh* After that, for some crazy reason, I decided to adapt the material for VideoStudio (their entry level video editing product). And after that, I revised the entire MediaStudio Pro book again, based on the new VideoStudio book. At which point a new version of VideoStudio came out and … well, you get the picture.
In what seemed like just a few short years, I’d somehow written eight editions of the two books. Writing technical books was an absolute treadmill. So when MediaStudio Pro 8 came out, I decided that was the end. I was going to write the bestest version ever and call it done. And I did. In 2006, after 10 years, I felt like I’d actually written the book I’d set out to write in the first place. Here it is:
Did I say ten years? Where the heck did ten years go? Holy moly. I mean, sure, it was nice having this done, but had I done the right thing? Shouldn’t I have been working on that epic fantasy novel this whole time instead? Yes. Yes, I should have. And so, with this out of my system, I immediately set to work on … well, a diet book.
Next in the series: A diet book?
