Wow these questions are all so good. Thanks for stopping by Dylan.
Well, O'Reilly asked me if I wanted to create some learning materials for SVG Animations, particularly Meg Foley, who is an awesome person and awesome editor. I think I might not have thought of making something on my own at that point, but was really excited about the opportunity.
The biggest challenge I faced was that it takes an enormous amount of time and energy, and on top of my full-time job, wanting to contribute to CSS-Tricks, and still be active on codepen, not to mention my real-life human relationships, the balance for me was pretty tough. I'd have to carve out time to work on it, and I definitely had months where I didn't do as much as I wanted to on it so it felt a little like a monkey on my back, that I asked to jump on my back.
I also didn't realize that writing the book was only really a smaller fraction of the effort. Taking the time to incorporate the feedback of 4 technical editors, copyeditors, and the like, meant going through my book with a fine-toothed comb many times. It was a long process, but the book is so much better for it. I also had to promote it. That's a bit hard because it's difficult for me to tell where the line is between "hey I made this thing" and "hey I'm really annoying about this thing I made". I definitely stumbled on my way there. The last thing you want is to spend a few years full of sacrifice writing a thing and for people to be like "what? I didn't know you did that." But you also don't want to spam people either.
All in all, it was a really good experience for me and I learned a lot! If you're interested in writing a book, it's nice to work with other people that nudge you along when you start to lose steam, like Meg Foley did for me. Without her, the book wouldn't have been possible.