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Resume Plus was a weird book to write. It takes a bit of explanation.
First, I began deciding to write more. The thing that struck me as a writer is that I could just do the occasional book or I could really dive into it. Diving into it meant I did more, could sell more books, and I dug the challenge.
But the question was what to write. I was still getting into this whole rythm of “writing all the time.”
(By the way, by now I have so many ideas for books that I’m fine. I’m always writing as you noticed.)
One idea came from my blog.
I’d done a series on really awesome resumes that stood out. Some were made of code. Others had neat formatting tricks. Yet others got wacky and outrageous like being printed on a candy bar. I called it 50 Shades of Resume because I figured It’d be funny and . . . well anyway, we can judge that later.
Those analyses were perfect for a book. Plus, let’s face it, you didn’t have to read a ton of blog posts, and got more than the summary I’d written up.
So I returned to my blog posts and began cataloguing the advice I could get out of them. Fortunately, I’d had written summaries and advice on each of the fifty posts, so I had a good starting point.
However, a book is a way different format than a bunch of blog posts. So I had to collate all the advice, extend some, cut out others, and in general fit as a book. I’d taken resumes, written blog posts about them, then turned it into a book.
Some of this meant I had to ask myself “hey just what matters here” and “what did I actually mean here.”
The result though, after much thought, was a pretty good book! It’s one I’m proud of, though I fear some of it hasn’t aged well. I’m happy I also managed to do more with the advice, because despite all the predictions, the resume hasn’t gone away . . .
Steven Savage