From the archives of The Atlantic Monthly, here is James Fallow’s review of the $4,000 Processor Technology SOL-20 from 1982:
These four machines, and the yards and yards of multi-strand cable that connected them, were the hardware of my system. The software consisted of a program called The Electric Pencil, with a manual explaining the mysteries of “block move,” “home cursor,” and “global search and replace.”
I skip past the day during which I thought the computer didn’t work at all (missing fuse) and the week or two it took me to understand all the moves The Electric Pencil could make. From that point on, I knew there was a heaven.
What was so exciting? Merely the elimination of all drudgery, except for the fundamental drudgery of figuring out what to say, from the business of writing. The process works this way.
When I sit down to write a letter or start the first draft of an article, I simply type on the keyboard and the words appear on the screen. For six months, I found it awkward to compose first drafts on the computer. Now I can hardly do it any other way. It is faster to type this way than with a normal typewriter, because you don’t need to stop at the end of the line for a carriage return (the computer automatically “wraps” the words onto the next line when you reach the right-hand margin), and you never come to the end of the page, because the material on the screen keeps sliding up to make room for each new line. It is also more satisfying to the soul, because each maimed and misconceived passage can be made to vanish instantly, by the word or by the paragraph, leaving a pristine green field on which to make the next attempt.
Absolutely fantastic.
I was just one year old when Fallows wrote his review of the SOL-20. In 30 years from now will our kids look back and read iPad and iPhone reviews with the same sense of antiquity and novelty that I felt as I read Fallow’s piece?
Oliver Reichenstein, in an interview with Dylan Love on Business Insider:
Better writing tools won’t make you a better writer, but they will make working more fun. They help you get into the flow if they are simple enough to not make you think about how to use them but for what to use them for.
Here is another site for writers. Well, this one is for anyone, actually. The Grammarist is jam packed with information about proper spelling, grammar, and usage (such as the Oxford comma). A great resource.
New project by Iain Broome:
An independent directory of online writing resources, from blogs, advice and news outlets to writing applications, bookshops and workspaces.
Subscribed. Though it’s hard to take serious the writing-related suggestions from someone who doesn’t use the Oxford comma.
If you’re still on the fence about which iOS writing application is best for you, Federico Viticci tried out 40 different ones and then picked his favorite 4 to do a side-by-side comparison of. His only criteria was that the apps had to be available on iPhone and iPad, have Markdown support, and sync with Dropbox.
Viticci’s top choice ended up being Writing Kit. Because of his recommendation I’ve been spending a bit of time in the app to see how it handles Markdown and syncing. I agree that it is a fine app. Though something I strongly dislike about it is the need to manually tap “Save” in order to sync/save your work to Dropbox.
However, something that I’ve instantly fallen in love with in Writing Kit is that on the iPad, the left and right margins act as left and right arrow keys. Tap the left margin to move the cursor one character to the left; tap the right margin to move the cursor one character to the right. This clever little feature is like Pull to Refresh — once you’ve used it it instantly feels natural and you miss it in every other app.
This is a great interview with one of my favorite writers in the biz, Andy Ihnatko. His answer to “Have you ever suffered from writer’s block?” is stellar:
No. There have been times when I haven’t been confident about what I was writing; times when I’ve had no clue about how to continue something; certainly there’ve been days when I haven’t felt like writing and even a few days when I’ve felt like I’d already written my last thing, ever.
These are all tangible problems with workable solutions. I can deal with tangible problems. If I were to believe in “Writer’s Block” I’d be taking a fear that I haven’t explored and I’d be amplifying its paralytic power by giving it a name.
I also like how Randy Murray puts it: “Give yourself permission to stink.”
For writers, business leaders, designers, developers, and anyone else who works primarily with their mind, taking time out to just think is so vital. No doubt, if you’re reading this, you know what I mean. And so Jacob Gorban’s post isn’t exactly a revelation. But it’s better than that. Because Jacob is actually doing it. He’s actually taking time out to think.
In the past 9 months since going full time with this site, taking time out of my week and/or day to be away from the computer and the RSS feeds and the hustle and bustle of the Internet has been one of the most difficult and yet important disciplines of my job. Like Jacob, I also try to take time out on Mondays.
It’s easy to forget that, as a writer, you don’t have to have your fingers on the keyboard to be doing your job. Sometimes your best work is only realized when you are away from the very place where that work will later be put onto the page.
Since going full time, one of the hardest writing disciplines for me has been to not publish an article as soon as I’ve finished that first edit. Stepping away from the article for an afternoon or even a day or two is hard work. But I almost always find significant ways to improve the piece when I come back after taking a break from it.
(There are exceptions, of course. Such as when a piece is extremely time sensitive, and the sooner it goes up the better.)
In the spirit of The Setup, John August shares his writing routine, hardware, software, etc. Oh my nerd. (Via Garrett Murray.)
In general, she doesn’t like camel case.
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A Quick Guide to Common Miscapitalizations of Tech Names
Below are listed the proper spellings and capitalizations of certain tech names which are commonly capitalized incorrectly.
One Word, Medial Capitals
- LaunchBar
- TextExpander
- MacBook (Air/Pro)
- TextEdit
- FaceTime
- TextMate
- MarsEdit
- WordPress
- AirPlay
- AirDrop
One Word, no Medial Capitals
- Launchpad
- Macworld
- Dropbox
- Xcode
- Typekit
- Thunderbolt
Two words, not Title Case
- iPod touch
- iPod nano
- iPod shuffle
- iPod classic
- Mac mini
- Home screen
- Retina display
Product Names That Don’t Even Exist
- iTouch
TextExpander Snippet Group
Download and import this TextExpander snippet group to help you properly capitalize these names for the times you accidentally miscapitalize them.
Today’s writing lesson. (Via Dan Frakes.)
Great answer thread on Quora about writer’s block. I very much agree with K.M. Weiland’s suggestions to ask yourself questions to answer and to show up every day are two big ones. Though I think Devin Friedman probably has the best answer of all:
Keep writing even though it sucks. In my experience, the most accute cause of writer’s block is cannibalizing your work. When you think it sucks too badly to keep going. Let it suck and move on, you can always go back and make it better.
My thanks to Kenneth Ballenegger for sponsoring the RSS feed this week to promote his Mac writing application, Macchiato.
Macchiato is a Lion-friendly, Markdown-loving, text editor with a caffeinated name.
I do all my writing in Markdown. It is writer friendly (keeping your prose free from HTML gibberish), and it is human friendly as well. I write my emails in Markdown even if I know the recipient isn’t privy to the syntax simply because it is easy enough to grasp even if you’re unfamiliar with it.
And so, as someone who does a lot of writing throughout my day, having a text editor that supports and stylizes my Markdown syntax is like gold. Macchiato is such an app. It’s not the only one of its kind, but it is one of the best.
There are 4 Markdown elements I use most often in my own writing: italics, links, headings, and bullet points. Assuming you are a plain text junkie like me, and if you write in TextEdit, then you have to manually type your Markdown as you are writing. Bullet points and headings are natural to type, and I have a global Keyboard Maestro Macro for creating Markdown links in any application.
Macchiato supports Plain Text and Markdown files. But it is more than just a plain text editor. For one, it has shortcuts for basic Markdown styling. Which means that hitting CMD+I in Macchiato will give you dual asterisks to wrap your text in. Or, if you’ve already selected some text, hitting CMD+I will add the asterisks to the front and back end of your selected text.
Moreover, Macchiato will stylize your text so that not only is it italicized in Markdown, it looks italic as well. As you can see in the below screenshot of the app:
In addition to italics, Macchiato has built-in stylization for bold, code, headings, and blockquotes. All while preserving the actual Markdown syntax that is in your prose. Which means you can write in Macchiato and then take your text to any other application and the Markdown is preserved as it should be. And this is how I work because I use this Markdown plugin for WordPress, I publish all my articles in Markdown, and they get parsed into HTML on the server side.
Macchiato comes with full OS X Lion support, and therefore has native full-screen mode (something TextEdit doesn’t even have!) and it has version control and auto-saving. Also it has a little word-counter up in the very top, right-hand corner.
I have become very fond of writing in full-screen mode. On my Air, apps that are built for full-screen look great. And even when writing long-form articles in front of my 23-inch cinema display, having a full-screen writing app has become a necessity for me.
There is a significant update to Macchiato in the pipe that will add preferences for typography style and color schemes. And this week only, Macchiato is 25% off in the Mac App Store.
Michael Agger on the challenges of writing:
“Serious writing is at once a thinking task, a language task, and a memory task,” [Ronald Kellogg] declares. It requires the same kind of mental effort as a high-level chess match or an expert musical performance. We are all aspiring Mozarts indeed. So what’s holding us back? How does one write faster? Kellogg terms the highest level of writing as “knowledge-crafting.” In that state, the writer’s brain is juggling three things: the actual text, what you plan to say next, and—most crucially—theories of how your imagined readership will interpret what’s being written. A highly skilled writer can simultaneously be a writer, editor, and audience.
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Answering Reader’s Questions About Writing shawnblanc.net Full Time
Thanks to the wonder of Twitter and email I’ve received quite a few questions from you guys inquiring about the site.
The most common question, by far, has been a semi-generic, “How’s it going?” Most of what I’ve written all this week (such as my ode to Software, a review of my day, writing challenges and observations) has been an attempt to answer that question as in-depth as possible.
Here is a final look at some of the more specific questions that didn’t make their way into the previous posts.
Do you write faster? Do you write more timely?
Admittedly, I am a very slow writer. Not a slow typer. But I do take a very long time to draft and edit my work. I was hoping that I would be able to pick up the pace of my writing and get more done in less time. So far, however, that does not seem to be the case.
I am finding better patterns of working and settling into a stride, but when I’m actually at the computer, typing, working on a long-form article, they still seem to take me as long as they ever did.
Hopefully a year from now the pace of my writing and my ability to put together informed, thought-through, and articulate articles and links will speed up. I think a combination of it is in part being able to write well at first pass, but also being clear about what I want to say at the onset.
Is it hard to come up with fresh content?
Not in the least. This was something I was worried about at the onset of taking the site full time, but I have had no trouble finding topics and ideas to write about. In fact, I’ve somewhat had the opposite problem. Many of the articles that I was planning to write once I took the site full time are still in the works. There is new stuff coming up every day.
How does the real life of your job compare to what you thought it would look like?
On the outside it looks exactly like I thought it would. I mean, I’m here at my desk every day typing and working on the computer. That was an easy thing to imagine.
Internally it is not only different but better. In part, I have grown to enjoy this job even more than I expected I would. I have always enjoyed writing and publishing this site over the years, and that’s why I took it full time in April. But each day I seem to love it and enjoy it a little bit more.
What I did not expect is that I am the toughest boss I’ve ever had. In reality there is no reason I can’t take a day or two off if I need to — the site would be fine. If I worked somewhere else, for someone else, I wouldn’t be allowed to just take a day off and help my wife around the house or do some chores that needed to be done, or run that errand I didn’t get to over the weekend. And so when situations like that arise, I am not yet comfortable with “giving myself the day off”.
This is good and bad. It’s good because there’s no way you can be self-employed without a strong work ethic and daily focus. You guys can rest assured that I am busting my butt over here. But it’s bad because what’s the point of working for yourself if you don’t take hold of the advantages that being self-employed entitles you to? There are a lot of things that stink about being self-employed as well, and those don’t go away. It seems only logical and fair that if I’m going to be stuck with the disadvantages of being self-employed I might as well take hold of the advantages that come with it.
What is your daily balance between reading, researching, and writing?
The trick to running a good link blog is to read more than just the things you have pre-supposed you’re going to link to even before you’ve read it. If so, you’ll only ever link to the obvious and expected stuff. And after a while it all starts to look and feel the same and there’s no more surprises on your site and it slowly becomes breathless.
We all know that to be a good writer you have to be a reader. And the same goes for being a good link blogger. You have to be a voracious reader. Don’t just read for the sake of hunting for what you may be able to link to, but read for the sake of learning and growing and discovering. Getting into a habit of hunting for link-worthy items will eventually lead to a very insipid link blog.
And with all that said, I admit that I need to read more.
It has been a slow journey for me to get comfortable with the fact that the vast majority of the work I put into the site is done “behind the scenes”. If I’m posting a lot of links it may look to you guys as if I’m having a very productive day, but in truth I may be totally aimlessly surfing and not actually getting any substantial work done. And so I am still learning to balance how much work I do keeping the site updated, how much time I spend reading and researching, and where all these things fit in with one another.
How are you balancing your work life and your personal life?
When the day is winding down I’m getting good at shutting the site off. Not literally, but “turning work off in my mind”. It has been a huge help to know that I’ll have 8 hours to work on it tomorrow and that I can pick back up where I left off.
That mindset is also a great way to not always be thinking about the site all the time. Before I began writing the site full-time I was always thinking about the site, and I had to squeeze every spare minute I had into it because I may not have had another chance for several days (or weeks).
But now when I’m not at work I’m not at work. I feel a noticeable change in my ability to be there, in the moment, instead of constantly thinking about work or stats or whatever. And I am extremely grateful for that.
Noreen Malone’s case — please hear her out — against the em dash:
What’s the matter with an em dash or two, you ask?—or so I like to imagine. What’s not to like about a sentence that explores in full all the punctuational options—sometimes a dash, sometimes an ellipsis, sometimes a nice semicolon at just the right moment—in order to seem more complex and syntactically interesting, to reach its full potential? Doesn’t a dash—if done right—let the writer maintain an elegant, sinewy flow to her sentences?
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Writing a Weblog Full-Time
When I began writing shawnblanc.net full-time I was worried that I’d run out of things to write about. There are only so many apps I use all the time which I find worthy of in-depth reviews, and I’m not really one for staying on top of posting commentary pieces about every bit of breaking news.
So far I have had no trouble finding topics to write about. In fact, most of what I’ve published since going full-time has not been on the list of what I was planning to write so far. Meaning, hardly any of the articles that I was planning to write when I began have been written yet. There is still much I want to write about and there are new things arising every day.
So I find myself with the opposite problem, in that there is not enough time in the day for me to write all that I want to, and that, my friends, is a very good conundrum.
However, I will say that it has been difficult choosing what to write about. I am good at writing about things I am involved with and have experience using — such as software and hardware reviews — but am not so confident writing about more abstract issues which I am not as intimately familiar with (such as business model and industry analysis). And while I certainly enjoy writing detailed reviews about software, I haven’t yet decided if that is all I ever want to write. Moreover, I have only ever written reviews about apps that I use and enjoy. But that list is somewhat finite, which means I will, at some point, need to begin writing about software that I am not completely sold on as user. Fortunately, since this job is my full-time gig, I can allow myself the time needed to truly live with an app and get acquainted with it — even if that I am only using it for the sake of reviewing it.
As far as links go, I try to only post links to the things I find interesting or entertaining — something that I found worthwhile in one way or another.
Unfortunately, I am finding just how easy it is to over-think what I choose or chose not to link to. Over thinking these nuanced details can strangle the life out of my work. And so I have been working to focus more on the feel of what I write about and link to rather than over thinking those items. Instead of logically deducing based on n number of factors if such-and-such is worthy of a link, I base it on emotion — do I want to link to it?
In a way, I have to pretend that I’m the only site out there. That if someone was interested in the things I’m interested in, how then would they find out about those things unless I wrote about them? I can’t pass by something I find exciting or interesting because I see that others are already talking about it. That would be a road to silence.
Of course, in another way, I have to pretend that I am not the only site out there. There is so much happening in the tech / design / writing / coffee-drinking community every day that there is simply no way I can stay on top of it all. Let alone write thoughtful and in-depth pieces about everything noteworthy. Harder than choosing what to write about has been choosing what not to write about. And then being okay with leaving certain notable topics left untouched.
At the end of the day, the best advice I can give myself is to: (a) put great care and thought into what I write about and how I write it; and (b) don’t take myself or my site too seriously.
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An Average Day at shawnblanc.net HQ
Most days I’m at my desk and starting the work day around 7:00 am. That sounds early when I write it down like that, but each morning I feel like I’m getting to work late. When I wake up at 5:30 or 6:00 my mind is usually buzzing about things to research, write about, or read. And by the time 7:00 comes around it’s likely that I’ve already been anticipating starting my work day for the past 90 minutes.
If I really just cannot wait to get working then I will allow myself to beeline it to my office and start work right away. However, I refuse to turn into one of those guys who work from home and forget to shower. A good way to avoid becoming one of those guys is by not starting a habit of jumping to work as soon as my feet are out of bed.
Chances are good that I’ve already checked email and Twitter for anything important before I get into the office though. I usually do this on my iPhone while waiting for the french press to brew.
When I get into my office I first record Shawn Today. Then, my day is somewhat wide open. There may be articles I read and loved in Instapaper the night before which I want to link to. There may be some emails I need to reply to. There may be an article I’m working on that I want to get back to writing. Or perhaps there is some research I need to do.
The two most productive times of the day for me are early in the morning and late in the night. With each time of day offering it’s own type of productivity. The mornings are when I am most excited about the day and most excited about what there is to plan and work on and link to. However, it’s in the evening that I seem to do my best writing.
Or, put another way, I’m finding that I am more creative in the mornings and more focused in the evenings.
I don’t know if this is a natural effect due to the time of day and the light in the room, or if it’s because I have been writing this site in the evenings for the past four years. Before April shawnblanc.net had always been an evening-time side gig, and so perhaps old habits die hard.
As far as specific times for specific things, I do not keep myself to a rigorous schedule. In part because I am still discovering the best times and patterns for working. Also, since my job is so centered around the web and what is taking place — each day has a life all its own — I enjoy being able to have total flexibility with each day’s schedule.
This is something John Gruber talked about during our interview a few years ago. When I asked John what his average day looked like, he responded:
I’m either writing or reading — or, occasionally, hacking on code for some new feature on the site — all day long.
Ernest Hemingway said this:
You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again.
He was talking about writing books, but I find his advice perfectly apt for what I’m doing with Daring Fireball. Without having a boss or editor, I could do anything at the start of the day. Leaving off the day before with something specific in mind for what to do next is an enormous aid to getting going.
John’s answer made a lot of sense at the time. But now that I find myself in a very similar boat I see not just how logical this is but also how vital it is.
Because there is no senior editor telling me what to write about, nor are there a half-dozen other writers available to cover the topics that I cannot, I have to pick and chose what to write about and what to link to.
Additionally, I have found that it can be quite easy to let the Internet dictate what my hours, topics, and priorities for the site should be. I have a list as long as my arm of articles I want to write — some lengthy, some shorter — but that list can easily get ignored in exchange for what is happening online today.
It is certainly important to stay somewhat on top of any interesting and important news, but it is far more important to keep my own agenda for the site. Today’s latest craze will be old news soon enough, and so the most important thing I can do for the long-term health and growth of this site is to stay focused on writing about the things that excite and interest me.
Aaron’s advice about how he wrote his 100,000-word novel and what hurdles he had to overcome sounds almost identical to how I write my long reviews and the hurdles I face when doing them.
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Voice
Words on a weblog live a very different life than those born to the printed page.
My weblog and I have a voice that is different than if I wrote a daily tech column for the local paper. Sure, my writing style would be the same, but my voice would be interpreted differently by my readers. When my words show up on this website my voice as a writer is influenced by more factors than just the words used.
Words printed onto a physical page are tactile. They can be held, dog-eared, and stuffed into your jacket pocket or backpack. But they are always on that piece of paper.
Whereas the words published onto a weblog are dynamic and living in a way all their own. There is always stuff moving and shifting around those words. Today there will be a different advertisement sitting next to them than there was yesterday. Tomorrow there will be a new post hanging out above them. Sometimes they’ll be read on a large display and sometimes on a cell phone.
Print is physical and tactile; digital is dynamic and moving. It’s one of the juxtapositions of publishing.
It’s fascinating how websites are, in their own way, living and breathing things. They’re dynamic, with a life and personality all their own. And this is why, on a website, it is more than just the text that contributes to the voice of the writer. There is also the structure of the articles and link posts; the topics written about; the items linked to; and even the author’s sense of entitlement to their work. All of these things add up to form the whole of what is a distinct and unique voice.
And so when you consider your design, consider also your voice. When you consider the structure of your links and articles, consider also your voice. When you consider your topics, consider also your voice. Let the design and the structure and the dynamics of your website underpin the words and style of your writing. Because all of it adds up to form the voice of you and your weblog.
If anything on your website is important then everything is.
Tim Carmody, who guest wrote for Jason Kottke last week, wrapped up his stint with a post about why he loves Kottke.org and, really, what makes for a great weblog.
These [link, pull, and response] are also the elements that help establish bloggers’ identity as readers in conversation with other readers: I have seen something that I feel strongly enough to think and write about, and what would make me happiest is if you look at it, then think and write about it too.
What I like about Tim’s post is how he relates the structure of a weblog to its voice. Especially for sites that post a high frequency of links to other sites, the structure of link posts can contribute greatly to the voice of the author. The words used are not the only elements which establish voice. Other key players include structure and site design.
And here’s another good piece by Surat Lozowick, this one about the tools we use for writing. Isn’t it funny how easily we get caught up in the what and the why of writing (or anything creative for that matter) in the hopes to improve our work, all the while knowing that what will most affect our work for the better is to simply do it. We love to philosophize about writing and to study it and to think on it and to search out new tools to make writing more enjoyable, but we hate to shut up, sit down, and do some writing.
Some great discussion on web publishing.
The SXSW panel where Jim Coudal, Michael Lopp, and John Gruber talk about writing:
Three different writers will walk through the same set of slides and explain their approaches to getting started, editing ideas, figuring out how to get unstuck, and understanding when they’re done. Part improv and part preparation, this presentation will give you three totally different and unexpected perspectives regarding the art of writing.
I love hearing the different perspectives and quirks of other writers. Especially when it is from guys whose writing I enjoy and learn from as much as these three’s.
Flash required. But there’s a direct link to the MP3 version of the talk, and here’s the PDF of the slides.
Michael Hyatt, CEO of Thomas Nelson, giving advice to writers:
If you are a true creative, the work won’t scare you. Embrace it. There really aren’t any shortcuts, despite what you may hear. The only thing standing between you and your dream is hard work and persistence.
Most of us “know” this already, but it’s nice to hear it again from time to time.
I love Wil’s writing and his perspective. His analogy goes far beyond just software development. For example, it goes for writing and publishing a website as well…
The mining equivalent in Wil’s analogy would be (ironically) an obnoxious content farm. One which scrapes from other sites, writes as many posts as possible, uses egregious headlines, and all for the sake of maximizing page views to get more revenue from their punch-the-monkey ads.
The farming equivalent in Wil’s analogy would be thoughtful, intentional writing done by people who care about their topic, their craft, and the time and attention of their readership.
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Great Expectations
What do you write as the very first post on the first day of your new job as a full-time writer? I have no idea.
Ever since I can remember I have wanted to be a writer. And now that I actually carry that title it doesn’t fully seem legitimate.
C.S. Lewis, Jane Austen, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ernest Hemingway — they were writers. I, on the other hand, feel like just a guy who writes. Of course a guy who writes is, by definition, a writer. But where the aforementioned greats were ones who had such a wonderful command of words, I on the other hand always feel like I’m guessing.
Alas, Clive, Jane, Robert, and Ernest are no longer with us to answer the question when you wrote, did you feel in control or were you just guessing?
But if you ponder it for a moment, you can’t help but think that maybe they were shooting in the dark, too. And when you think of it like that, well then, you start to realize that perhaps it’s not so much about being a Good Writer as it is about being a Passionate Writer.
Writing should be about standing behind your work and truly caring about what it is you have to say. If you happen to be good with words then congratulations. Dispassionate beautiful prose, however, is still dispassionate. Or, as Anatole France put it, “a tale without love is like beef without mustard: insipid.”
Emotion, honesty, truth, passion. These are the backbones of writing. And these are the very things that can be the hardest to put into our writing. I often find myself caring more about how I say things than what I am saying. The how and the what are certainly important, but not equally so.
I can get more concerned about using too many semicolons than I do about putting my heart into every sentence. Because I can’t get criticized over a semicolon. Well I can, but so what, right? There are rules and guidelines for style that I can refer to in order to justify or correct my semicolon usage.
But when we put our heart into something and get criticized for it, that hurts. And so, in a way, we shy back a bit and we put just enough of ourselves into our writing to give it a hint of breath and no more. Or we shy away from emotion altogether and focus solely on other factors to make our writing garner attention.
Passion and emotion have always been my motivation for writing. I am a passionate person — we all are — and writing is one of the ways I’ve found to express those emotions. I’d like to get better at it, and slowly I am learning a little bit more every day.
And then there are the moments when words utterly fail me. Such as now, when I try to express the gratitude and excitement and nervousness I feel as I begin this new journey of writing full time. This is something I never saw coming that morning in Colorado over six years ago when I started that Blogspot account and wrote that first blog post talking about my vacation.
Today, as I write this, I’m sitting in the same place I usually sit when I write an article for shawnblanc.net: my office. Writing this article feels no different than the hundreds of other articles I’ve written over the years. But now, in this moment, the expectations are greater…
There are my own expectations of what will I publish today? What will come tomorrow and the next day and the next day? These are not just expectations of what the site itself looks like and what gets published to it, but also how I spend my time on the back end. A few thousand words published to the site can represent dozens of hours of work.
Secondly are the expectations of the readers and the members. Now that my full-time job is to publish this website, what does that mean to you? Only you know. I have tried not to think about it too much, but that is easier said than done. For years I’ve always tried to keep just a couple people in mind when writing here. But now that the economic success of this site hinges in no small part on the continued growth of a strong membership base, there is that sudden pressure to write for all of you at once.
You and I both know that is not a recipe for success. My goal is to simply keep on doing what I have been doing for the past four years. I have no plans to reboot this site, change its focus, or change what I’ve been doing so far that got me to this point. Though the pressures and expectations are new and different I am intent on staying steady.
The only thing that has drastically changed is that I now have many more hours in the week to devote to publishing this site. Which means the only difference you should notice is an increase in consistency and quality. I have many ideas that I am looking forward to starting on over the next few weeks and months, and I am very much looking forward to iterating, improving, and generally upping the overall awesomeness of this site.
Some of you have been here since the very first post. Some of you are brand new. And I am grateful that you chose to show up, sign up, and go on this journey with me.
Thank you,
— Shawn
Frank Chimero:
Writing is chasing a question—an inquiry of the mind. Forward is better than every direction at once. It’s not really writing until you feel something; until you choke up at a thought, until you start fidgeting in your seat in excitement, until you feel the twinge of pain that happens when a thorn is pulled out of your side. Go back. Delete everything before you started fidgeting or crying or deflating like a balloon. Then, write some more.
Go write.
Mandy Brown:
And yet, people do read online. They read more than they ever did. They even read long articles, and straight to the end. They read one article after the other. They crave reading in the quiet moments of the day—waiting in line for coffee, riding the bus, enjoying a glass of wine before their date arrives at the bar. They read while walking down the street; they read at their desk in between tasks; they buy devices that permit them to carry more words than they ever could before—and with those devices in hand they read more and more.
Mandy’s whole article is just fantastic. She really sums up many great points regarding writing, reading, and advertising on the web today.
And, as a writer, you would do well to print out the above paragraph from Mandy and frame it on your wall just above your computer screen and read it every time you publish something to the web. There are people who read every word, and there are people who don’t like articles which were made to skim, and there are people who look for in-depth and genuine thoughts rather than insipid bullet points.
I’m a sucker for Hemingway quotes:
Interviewer: How much rewriting do you do?
Hemingway: It depends. I rewrote the ending of Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, 39 times before I was satisfied.
Interviewer: Was there some technical problem there? What was it that had stumped you?
Hemingway: Getting the words right.
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Henri Nouwen on Writing
“Writing is not just jotting down ideas. Often we say: ‘I don’t know what to write. I have no thoughts worth writing down.’ But much good writing emerges from the process of writing itself. As we simply sit down in front of a sheet of paper and start to express in words what is on our minds or in our hearts, new ideas emerge, ideas that can surprise us and lead us to inner places we hardly knew were there.
“One of the most satisfying aspects of writing is that it can open in us deep wells of hidden treasures that are beautiful for us as well as for others to see.”
— Henri Nouwen
And here’s another good Henri quote:
“The word is always a word for others. Words need to be heard. When we give words to what we are living, these words need to be received and responded to. A speaker needs a listener. A writer needs a reader.”
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More on Writing (or: A Case Against Editing)
Yesterday’s article on writing received quite a bit of feedback. Much of it in the form of great advice and stories from other writers about how they write. Thank you all for your feedback; this site has a lot of great readers.
Iain Broome responded with his attitude towards writing and editing:
Writing is relatively easy. Writing well is extremely tough. Without that extra, uncompromising attention to detail, you’ll find yourself writing without Writing.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a big fan of editing my work. All work should be edited. I certainly spend far more time editing the articles I post to shawnblanc.net than I do writing them. I even edit my emails before hitting send.
Let me try to reiterate the two things I was primarily harping against in my article yesterday: (a) my tendency to avoid writing when it doesn’t feel like I’m producing my best work to date; and (b) my tendency to edit my work in real-time as I’m writing it.
What these two tendencies mean for me is that I often write each word, one at a time, slowly, so as to get just the right word. There are a lot of people who write like that, but I don’t know if it’s the best habit for me. But more on that at the end.
Another bit of feedback came from reader Rory Marinich via email saying there is no such thing as bad or good writing as it relates to voice — there is simply honest writing: “Honest subjects, honest voice, and that’s all writing can ever be.” Moreover, Rory said how writing effortlessly does not necessarily mean that a writer has “arrived”, because every writer has their own, unique pace.
Thanks, Rory, for the sage advice. And in fact, this is what I was trying to communicate in my final paragraph yesterday when I wrote:
But suppose one day I do arrive at some level of skill where the ink flows like honey and the prose like fine wine. I wonder if I’d even realize it. It may very well feel just like it does right now…
My point is that my perception of what it’s like to write compared to what I imagine it may be like to Write is most likely an arbitrary perception. The process of growing as a writer — or any other creative profession — is a slow and iterative process. Today feels just like yesterday, and tomorrow will feel like today. But if we were to skip back 2 years or skip ahead, then we would notice the difference.
It is easy to compare the difference in our finished products. I can read an article I wrote two years ago and compare it to an article I wrote last week and see that the quality and flow is higher. I can see that I have better grammar and use of vocabulary. But what I can’t see is my process for writing that article two years ago compared to my process of last week’s. To me, I remember them as being the same.
Lastly, is Randy Murray who was able to sum up my entire point in a single tweet: “give yourself permission to suck, then get better.”
This is exactly the struggle I have recently found myself in. I’ve noticed that I will not publish or even write something simply because it doesn’t feel absolutely incredible at the time I’m trying to write it. It’s likely that I’ve been hindered by this fear of doing crappy work for years — who knows — but I’ve only recently become aware of it.
And though I prefer not to post gushing articles like this (especially two in as many days), I know that many of you are writers, designers, podcasters, and more. And so my hope is that by me expressing my recent discoveries and shortcomings as a writer they will help you find ways that you can grow in your craft as well. Because that’s the whole point, right? To learn and to grow?
But that’s not all…
I want to come back to the two tendencies I’m trying to pull out of: (a) my tendency to avoid writing when it doesn’t feel like I’m producing my best work to date; and (b) my tendency to edit my work in real-time as I’m writing it.
I don’t know if these are the best habits for me to grow. Which is to say that I have questions about the amount of time I spend editing my work. Mostly, I’m curious about what would happen if I spent slightly less time editing my writing and then slightly more time creating and writing the next thing?
As I said, I am a big fan of editing. But what if I edited less and wrote more? Is it possible that I would slowly become a better writer in need of less editing? Ray Bradbury seems to think so: “Quantity produces quality. If you only write a few things, you’re doomed.”
An article by Chris Brogan on writing that complements what I wrote this morning.
“Put your words into something so that you can look at them outside of your head.“
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Writing vs. Writing
This is me, thinking out loud about my writing.
There is writing, and then there is Writing. And I am amazed at how often I will shy away from the former because it doesn’t feel like the latter. There are times when I put far too much emphasis on the fine-tuned components of writing, and not nearly enough emphasis on simply getting the words down.
You know the difference I’m talking about. The latter is tangible — it’s the times when the words seem to write themselves. But then there are times when you feel like you’re back in the 2nd grade playing Oregon Trail and it’s all you can do to remember the Home Row. In fact, for me, writing rarely feels like Writing.
I may never be a capital “W” Writer. I may never win a Pulitzer, or write for the New Yorker, or even get pen to paper for what could be the next great American Novel. But I want to shoot for it. I want to be the best. I want my writing to be engaging, clever, and quotable. I want my articles to be insightful and memorable. But that will never happen if I only ever allow myself to write when it feels like Writing.
It’s suicide to stop before I start just because I’m not feeling it. I’ve got to settle the fact that sometimes it’s just plain writing and get over it already. Because wanting to write is not the same as writing.
And thinking about writing is not the same as writing.
Reading about writing is not the same as writing.
Tweeting about writing is not the same as writing.
Having a conversation about writing is not the same as writing.
Some of these help me grow into a better writer, but how often are they really just ways of procrastinating that don’t ever produce something written? If I’m not sitting here writing then I’m not writing.
If I’m not sitting here writing, I’m not writing.
Dorothy C. Fontana said: “You can’t say, I won’t write today because that excuse will extend into several days, then several months, then… you are not a writer anymore, just someone who dreams about being a writer.“
Do I want to be a capital “W” Writer? Yes. Do I want all my writing to feel like Writing? Yes. But I have to be okay with the fact that right now, I’m not and it doesn’t. I’m just a writer and most of the time writing is hard. It may never be otherwise.
But suppose one day I do arrive at some level of skill where the ink flows like honey and the prose like fine wine. I wonder if I’d even realize it. It may very well feel just like it does right now — like today — when it seems as if I can’t even put two words together using copy and paste.
Marcelo Somers just wrote what may be the most intelligent piece I’ve read all month regarding passionate independent writers, large news conglomerations, and the issue of passion and monetizing content.
Big publishers have had their blinders on so narrowly that they only have seen the internet and mobile devices as a new publishing medium, not a new business model.
And:
To be successful, people have to want to read what you write. Pure news is a commodity, I don’t care if I get it from The Daily, The New York Times, or Engadget, but it has to be great because it’s so easy to access anything. It’s hard to be great. It takes time to be great. But it doesn’t take a staff of hundreds to be great. People like Murdoch’s argument is that it takes hundreds of people to be great. He is wrong. It takes passion.
Pulizer Prize winning novelist Michael Chabon reflects about blogging after week of doing it for the Atlantic:
Blogging, I think, is largely about seizing opportunities, about pouncing, about grabbing hold of hours, events, days and nights as they are happening, sizing them up and putting them into play with language, like a juggler catching and working into his flow whatever the audience has in its pockets.
So blogging means you have to be thoughtful, quick, articulate, correct, and relevant, all in real time.
Since I don’t write shawnblanc.net full time I simply don’t have the time to pull all of those elements together simultaneously. I’ve chosen to focus on being thoughtful, articulate, and correct — hoping that what I what is thoughtful enough to make itself relevant. I usually let other sites worry about the real-time pouncing.
(Via DF.)
Introducing Read & Trust: a small band of top-notch writers who endorse one another’s work. Plus one scruffy looking nerf herder.
If you think design by committee is hard, imagine writing by committee. And then imagine that the committee is the government.
Another one from Jeffery Zeldman, this time on writing or really just doing any sort of work:
In writing four books and an unknown quantity of articles and blog posts, I’ve discovered the simple secret to maintaining quality. I share it with you here in mnemonic nursery rhyme fashion:
Write when inspired; rest when tired.
Another quality piece by Ian Broome. This one’s fun:
There are many writing stereotypes and the majority are what people turn to when they want to feel like a writer. Because being a writer is cool, you know? People are impressed by writers. Everyone wants to be one. [...] So yeah, this list is for writers-who-are-probably-not-writers-really. But I know that doesn’t apply to you, right? You’re a real writer. You write all the time.
Some great advice from Ian Broome on being a top-notch copywriter. But I’d say Ian’s advice is relevant for all writers, not just copywriters:
The key for every copywriter, whatever the subject matter, is to find the clearest, most appropriate way to speak to their audience. That means neither hamming up nor dumbing down, but simply finding the best way possible to transfer a message.
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Iain Broome’s Sweet Mac Setup
Who are you, what do you do, etc…?
I’m Iain Broome and I write fiction. My first novel is called A is for Angelica and is represented by Tibor Jones Associates. They’ll be sending the novel out to publishers soon and I’ll be keeping various things crossed, especially my fingers.
By day I’m a copywriter for The Workshop, a leading UK design company. It’s a little more than writing copy though. Yes, I can give you a tasty strapline or plain English paragraph, but I also work on usability, accessibility and wireframing clients’ websites.
I have a couple of blogs. Write for Your Life offers writing advice for all types of writers. It also has snazzy illustrations provided by the marvellous Matt Pearce. Broomeshtick is my personal blog where I talk about writing, design, technology and, well, more writing.
What is your current setup?
I bought my first Mac in March 2008. It’s a 20″ iMac which gets backed up wirelessly to a 500gb Time Machine, which in turn connects to an Xbox 360 in the lounge. Or at least it did before the 360′s second bout of RROD. Microsoft, eh? *spits*
I also have a 16gb iPhone 4 and, when my piggy bank is finally full, I’ll be getting a 16gb, wifi-only iPad. I intend to use the iPad for creation as much as consumption.
The idea that you can’t use an iPad to write anything of substance seems ridiculous to me. All you need is a keyboard and a blank screen. The iPad provides both and I can (will) take it anywhere (everywhere).
Finally, I have a Sony A200 Digital SLR camera. One day I will learn how to use it properly.
Why this rig?
The iMac provides all I need and more as a novelist and blogger — let’s face it, words are pretty easy to process. But I also use it to edit images, record podcasts and put together video blog entries for Write for Your Life. The iMac has all the power and storage I could ever want for those things too.
Sometimes I think I might have been better off with a MacBook or MacBook Pro, but the extra screen size comes in handy for watching movies, viewing pictures and having multiple windows open. Truth is, it’s become the hub of our home. CDs and DVDs? Long forgotten. This is streaming central.
My iPhone 4 stays with me throughout the day. I primarily use it for email, Twitter, my todo list and reading articles through Instapaper. We also use it to play music and podcasts wherever we are in the house.
Truth is, it’s the perfect techno-companion and unless something catastrophic happens, I can’t see me using anything other than an iPhone for quite some time.
Oh. I sometimes make phone calls.
What software do you use and for what do you use it?
Okay, this is the important bit. Having a Mac has changed the way I work, that’s for sure. But really, it’s down to the software.
I explained this in a recent post, which I might as well quote:
Drawn by the bright lights and Apple’s promise of all-the-cool-things-I-could-do, I expected dazzlement and wonder with every mouse-swish and keystroke.
But something strange happened. Instead of reveling in the glitz and relative glamour of iMovie, iPhoto and the multimedia posse, I found myself enjoying quiet nights in with my new best friends, strong and silent types like Finder, TextEdit and, more recently, Simplenote.
And the reason was this. I am simply a writer. I don’t need all that other stuff. Or at least, I don’t need it to do what I do best.
So once the dazzlement wore off, what I found was a computer – a word you hear less and less these days – that gave me tools to do things quicker, more efficiently, perhaps even better.
The technology disappeared and left me alone with my words. Just me and them.
That said, my novel was written in Microsoft Word. I know. But only because I had zillions of drafts and edits left over from my pre-Mac days. I use TextEdit for most other writing and have enjoyed WriteRoom on occasion.
In other news: it’s iTunes and Spotify for Music. Safari for browsing. Transmit for transmitting. Acorn for pretty pictures. Adium for chit chat. Simplenote for todo lists and ideas. Alfred for launching. Then 1Password, my trusty online bouncer.
Finally, there is DropBox. The key to it all.
How does this setup help you do your best creative work?
It’s a pretty time-consuming this writing novels, running two blogs while having a full-time job for a design agency business. It means I have to do things whenever and wherever I can. My setup is designed – well, it’s evolved, more accurately – to allow me to do that. It’s all about the sync.
With DropBox, Simplenote and an iPhone 4, I can access everything I need at all times. I can edit files on my work PC at lunch and know they’ll be there when I get home. I can approve comments, make notes or catch up on some reading on my phone while I’m waiting for the bus. And again, when I get home, my Mac is up-to-date.
Novel number one was written on no less than six different computers – a combination of desktop PCs, laptops and my iMac — in even more locations, using goodness knows how many USB drives for transferring and backing up.
Novel two will be written on just my future-iPad and my iMac. That says it all, really.
How would your ideal setup look and function?
It’s just the iPad, I think. Everything else works just as I need it to. I might be tempted, when the time comes, to replace the iMac with a MacBook, but it won’t change the way I work. And that’s the most important thing.
It takes a while to get a setup that you’re happy with, but after two years together, me, my Macs and a few third-party apps are getting on tremendously.
Frankly, we don’t need no one else.
More Sweet Setups
Iain’s setup is just one in a series of sweet Mac Setups.
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How I Write an Article
To start most articles I just brain dump into Notational Velocity or Simplenote. My location makes no difference (which is why I love Simplenote and Notational Velocity so).
I often times start an article by writing what I assume will be the introduction (though it’s likely to get changed dramatically before all is written and done with). This introduction is, to me, the heart of what I want to actually say.
Then I just start pecking away. I write in Markdown and in short, incomplete sentences. This first-draft writing stage is when I love my article the most. It’s full of bullet points, convictions, trains of thought, and, most importantly, delusions of grandeur.
If by chance the keyboard and I get into a flow I may write the whole piece all at once, but that is rarely the case. A lot of times I have a substantial amount of research and/or thinking to do in order to get a well rounded article. And so I start with my basic ideas and assumptions and then answer more questions to fill in the gaps with juicy details and desirous how-tos.
This is especially true of my reviews. I start typing and end up with a whole lot of very ugly text. Just lots and lots of chunks of text. It’s during that first draft that I try to write until I’m absolutely spent and have nothing left to type. It would be better to write 5,000 words and edit them down into a 2,000-word article than to write 500 words and force more in an attempt to build it up.
But that is not to imply that when writing a software review I write about every single feature. In fact it is the opposite; I make a point not to address every feature. I am not writing a laundry list, I’m telling a story. So instead of feature listing, I do my best to highlight what it is about the application which has most impacted me and why I enjoy it so much. Then I try to talk in detail about those features — sharing emotion, musings, and information about them.
Once I have nothing left to type I step away from the whole thing (usually by opening a separate text editor, such as TextEdit or TextMate) and write an outline for how I actually want the article to flow. This basic outline helps to bring some semblance of structure and organization to the article.
Then I copy and paste each sentence, one by one, from the original brain dump into the outline. This places the random chunks of text into their new home of organization, and is an exercise which helps me get out of the nitty-gritty details and look at the overall scope and flow of the article. Because once that has been defined it is much easier to see what needs addition and what needs subtraction.
Often at this stage I find fresh inspiration to write more. So I do.
After that secondary writing phase I am usually done with all that needs to be written. So now I start editing. Then re-writing. Re-editing. And repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
By now I’m sick and tired of the whole thing. I put it into MarsEdit ask my wife to read it via MarsEdit’s perfect preview. Or I just walk away from it for a day or seven.
I then edit one more time before finally just publishing and hoping for the best.
You would think that after writing this website for over three years I’d be able to sit down and just crank something out quickly and easily. But I can’t. And maybe I never will. But that’s okay, writing is a process and I dearly enjoy it.
And thank you, dear reader, for reading. It takes a lot of time to write here, and I appreciate that you show up to read it every now and then.
