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Interview with Lora Delwiche and Susan Slaughter

Authorline chats with Lora Delwiche and Susan Slaughter authors of The Little SAS Book, A Primer; The Little SAS Book: A Primer, Second Edition; The Little SAS Book A Primer, Revised Second Edition about the third edition of their popular book.

Authorline (AL): What was your motivation for writing your book?
Lora Delwiche (LD): The second edition of our book was written using SAS 7. Since SAS has evolved a great deal since then, we wanted to give our readers more up-to-date information. This new edition covers many of the new features of SAS that were added between SAS 7 and SAS 8.2, most notably the Output Delivery System. In addition, we included a few features which are new to SAS 9 that we felt were important to include in an introductory book.
Susan Slaughter (SS): We wanted to bring The Little SAS Book up to date. When we wrote the Second Edition using SAS 7, the basic structure of the Output Delivery System was in place, but you couldn't actually do much with it yet. Now ODS has a long list of destinations and options. We've also expanded a number of topics such as permanent SAS data sets, reporting, and the SAS windowing environment. I think readers will find these sections more informative and easy to use.
AL: What features of the book are you especially pleased with?
LD: Since the second edition, we have added two new chapters to our book: one on the Output Delivery System, and one on exporting data. In the process, we did some rearranging of topics in the book and I am very pleased with the result. In earlier editions we had a few stray sections which were important, but didn't really fit. Now every section has a proper home.
SS: I'm really pleased with the way our new ODS chapter turned out. ODS is a big topic, but I think we've done a really good job of explaining the concepts and showing how with a few statements or options you can make big changes in your output.
AL: What advice would you give to potential authors?
SS: To potential authors I say "Go for it." If you have a vision for a book that no one else has written and that you think would be useful to others, then you should write it.
AL: What were some of the joys of writing this book?
LD: The real joy in writing the book comes after the writing process when people we don't know tell us how helpful our book has been for them.
AL: How were you able to balance your time between your career and writing this book?
LD: While I am in the writing phase, I need blocks of time that I can devote to writing. I was fortunate that my employer was willing to give me some time off to work on this project. We agreed on one day a week for about two to three months. After the writing phase I was able to fit bits and pieces of the project into my life as I had time.
SS: Writing is an act of faith. If you wait until you have free time, it will never happen. You just start writing and somehow the time comes. The hardest part is getting started because the creative process can't be scheduled. At the beginning I needed large chunks of time, three or four hours, to get anything accomplished. By the end of the book, 10 minutes was enough to make progress.
AL: How did you decide to coauthor the book? How did you divide your responsibilities?
LD: I can't tell you how fortunate Susan and I are to have each other. Having a coauthor that you can bounce ideas off of, and to review your work, makes all the difference. We divide our responsibilities in half as much as possible. We come up with ideas for new sections together, then we split up the writing of the sections according to who has the most experience or interest in the topic.
SS: Having a coauthor, of course, makes it a lot easier because you don't have to write as much. But a much bigger advantage of having a coauthor is having someone to review your work, not just once or twice, but over and over again from the first outline to the final draft. Two things are critical to writing with a coauthor: First, you have to communicate constantly keeping each other fully informed. Lora says that it's like going to the grocery store: almost every day we need something at the grocery store, and almost every day we need to talk with each other. Second, you need a complete plan before you start writing. We make a detailed outline of every new section. Usually one of us has either greater expertise or greater interest in a particular topic. Our book is written in two page sections so that gives us a clear organization. Then we each take primary responsibility for half the sections.
AL: When you aren't writing or consulting, how do you like to spend your free time?
LD: Like most people I like to spend time with my family. We go camping every summer, and while we have visited many different beautiful and interesting places such as Yosemite and Yellowstone, we always find ourselves at the beach at least for a few days a year. Here in the central valley of California, it is very hot in the summer, and the Northern California and Oregon beaches are a nice escape from the heat. There is nothing quite like laying on warm sand and listening to the waves crash on the rocks.
SS: Free time, what's that? Like most people I always have more things to do than I have time so I don't feel like I have much "free time," but just like everyone else I make choices everyday about how I use my time. Few people know that every year with the help of my family I make about a dozen different varieties of jams and marmalades, mostly from fruit that we grow. Right now the limes are ripe so I'm trying to find time to make a batch of lime marmalade.

Lora D. Delwiche	Lora D. Delwiche brings over 20 years of expertise in working with SAS software to this edition. Lora enjoys teaching people about SAS software and likes solving challenging problems using SAS. Her experience in working with users from many different disciplines prompted her to write a book proving that SAS is "not hard to learn."
Susan Slaughter	Susan J. Slaughter discovered SAS software in graduate school, over 20 years ago. Since then she has used SAS in a variety of business and academic settings. She now works as a consultant through her company, Avocet Solutions. Her experience managing large databases, teaching SAS software classes, and writing about SAS inspired her to write a book that is both informative and fun to read.

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Interview with Lora Delwiche and Susan Slaughter