That to This
I remember the moment I stopped writing in cursive. Second period World History with Mr. Hickman. My thought as I stared at my writing, “I hate looking at my cursive. I’ve always hated my cursive. Why must I hate my own writing?”
Monday, January 10th, 1984, 9:15am. Halfway though my inane essay on the Nazification of Germany…
These radical, personal, creative transformations rarely happen. We want them to happen, but there are mostly a lot of false starts because changing a creative habit is a long grind-it-out process.
This time of year hope springs eternal regarding change as we stare a bright and shiny new year full of potential. Your thought is: “Clean slate. Haven’t fucked this one up one yet. Ok. Ready? Go!” Resolutions appear in this soup of primal excitement encouraged by the presence of an endless, aggressive, and seductive set of Top 10, How To, and Best Of Lists.
The intent of these lists is honorable. Someone is trying to synthesize and prioritize the world for you, but these lists, combined with your fine set of resolutions, won’t magically make it easier for you to sleep or vastly improve your productivity. These nuggets of truth and intent will only point you in a direction. It’s up to you to start walking.
It’s in this spirit that I offer a brief list of ways I’ve learned to improve my writing over the past year. These ideas have been slowly collecting on a set of stickies on my second monitor for the past 12 months, which, not surprisingly, is the length of time since I last wrote this type of list.
My first impression is that this list is more appropriate for reasonable-sized weblog articles, but who knows, this may help your book:
#10 Steal. A lot. Passing a stolen thought through your fingers makes it yours.
#9 Love one idea, one word, or one paragraph of your article. If this hasn’t happened yet, ignore your article for a month. If it fights its way back into your consciousness, there’s something to love.
#8 Repeat your favorite idea throughout your article.
#7 Create compelling gaps in your thoughts where the reader is allowed to fill in the spaces and create their own experience. Writing is the art of choosing what not to say.
#6 Delete liberally. Anything important that is accidentally deleted will come back.
#5 Find an editor. Find an editor. Find an editor.
#4 Repeat your favorite idea throughout your article.
#3 Never publish what you haven’t slept on.
#2 If you can’t find an ending, repeat the beginning.
If you want to examine change, I invite you to glance over to the first few months of Rands in Repose. Scroll down to Spring of 2002, which is a scant five years ago. Most of those articles are barely readable to me. The ones I can read are those I either rewrote for the book or ones I rewrote for myself because I couldn’t stand to see my thoughts conveyed like I’d written them on the back of a napkin.
Perhaps the biggest change between then and now, between that and this, has to do with time and work. Clearly, I’m publishing less on a month-to-month basis, which is odd, because I’ve never written more. This fortunate contradiction is a result of the most important bullet item:
#1 The more you work on your writing, the more you’ll care.
There are eleven partial articles sitting in the “Latest Rands” folder on the desktop. My guess is you’ll see half of those. Five years ago, they’d already be published in all of their disjointed napkin-worthy glory. The difference isn’t a list of ten writing tips; the difference is constant, creative insistence to care more about what I write.
Cover Pessimism
As with all new ventures in my life, I viewed publishing my first book with a constant internal pessimism. This meant that for 10 months, I was fully expecting something to occur which would derail the process and kill the book. 10 months. Constant.
Now, I’m an optimistic guy. Try it. Walk into my office during a dire, screwed situation and you’ll see a grin on my face. I thrive in chaos and despair not because I love being screwed, I thrive on it because I’ve often been there before. When someone runs into my office yelling about how a VP is going to eat us for lunch at a meeting later in the day, I optimistically respond, “Relax. We taste horrible.”
So, why so internally pessimistic?
For me, a healthy dose of pessimism drives all new ventures. They require pessimism because I don’t know what I’m doing which means, yeah, I’m going to screw up. Pessimism — a belief that things are not only bad, but also tend to get worse — is the perfect mindset for staring at the unknown. It prepares you for disasters because is imparts the belief they are going to occur.
There are less comfortable definitions for pessimism, such as a belief that evil is going to win over good, but I’m not talking about that pessimism. I’m not talking about the passive pessimism employed by those morosely staring at the world thinking, “Well, at some point, I’m fucked.” I’m talking about pessimism where you are actively engaged in worse case scenario analysis. I’m not talking about pessimism based on fear (which is paranoia, by the way). I’m talking about constructive negativity.
Right. So, the book. 10 months of constant pessimism. This is why when the first batch of covers for the book showed up, I thought, “Ok, good. I knew they’d be awful.”
Worst Case Scenario
Here. Play along at home.
Not complete disasters, but clearly cliché. I mean, c’mom — cheese? Didn’t we move our cheese around back in 1998?
There were two reactions I could have had when these initial comps showed up. The first was getting lost in despair. Anyone who has ever been in a bookstore knows that you’re not browsing books; you’re browsing covers. To have a chance in a sea of covers, you’ve got to have a compelling visual that grabs people. These initial covers said nothing to me, and if I hadn’t known these meaningless covers were coming and that they’d be bad, I would’ve spent a couple of useless weeks mired in stunned silence. “Well, maybe the writing will carry the book…?”
Since I signed the contract, I’d pessimistically prepared myself for the fact that I had no idea how much work I was signing up for, I’d end up hating some of my favorite chapters via the editing process, and that the initial covers would suck. I knew they’d suck because I knew the cover had to be great. Knowing that nothing is great in its first iteration meant I didn’t think twice about moving on and calling in reinforcements.
I first sent the covers to trusted friends, and the reaction was swift and unanimous: “They suck and they don’t look like Rands.” Another friend provided a list of talented illustrators. Amongst that list was a gentleman named Kevin Cornell. A brief IM introduction later, Kevin and I were chewing on cover ideas, leaving pessimism for productivity. The elapsed time from sending out crappy covers to trusted friends to Kevin and I chewing on new concepts for the cover was a day. (Sidebar: my only complaint about working with Kevin is that I’ve yet to figure out another project where I can work with him again. Hire him.)
Kevin generated all of the illustrations on the cover, as well as the sidebar art you see cycling through the weblog, from my horrible sketches and his artistic impressions of chapter titles. My fine publisher, Apress, took these initial concepts and generated the final cover, which incorporated the handwritten, humorous, and relaxed design that hopefully compels people to pick up the book from the shelf at their local book store. I love it. When they sent the first draft that incorporated Kevin’s artwork, my reaction was instant: “It’s perfect. Don’t touch a thing.”
Productive Pessimism
Pessimism is a lot of work. Expecting the sky to fall at any moment means you spend a lot of time constructing sky-falling escape strategies that you may not need. The goal with all this pessimism is to transform these strategies into experience. Your job is to survive and you do that first by successfully traversing new projects and then learning from both how you screwed up and, hopefully, how you succeeded.
Conversely, you need to remember that new projects, great ideas, and outlandish proposals never ever start with pessimism. They start with optimism. They start with, “Of course I can do that.”
Shaking the Atoms
Acquiring video games prior to console domination and the modern Internet era went like this: I walked into Electonics Boutique or Egghead Software, went to the PC section, and began to physically pick up the games. I held them in my hand and I was looking for two things: did it have the right weight and did it have the right size?
Again, this is pre-Internet, so I can’t run off to GameSpot to see the community-based ranking of the game. It was me, Electronics Boutique, and instinct. I could tell from a quick shake whether the box contained just disks (or a CD) or whether it included the media, documentation, the map of Sosaria, and some useless mood-setting trinket. See, what I’d learned after many horrible purchases was that if the game maker chose to invest in accessorizing the game with useless crap, there was a high probability that the game was actually fun.
That’s right. Shaking the atoms to see if the bits are fun.
You Don’t Read
This is why, last week as I sat in the bar at the W Hotel, opening my box of author copies of Managing Humans, I was afraid of two things: did the book have the right weight and it did it have the right size?
I know what I think when a book sits limp in your hand, feeling pamphlet-like and unimportant. I know when the page size screams of a paperback, “Just rip the cover off and send it back!” I know that even though I’d spent the last 10 months writing, editing, and fretting about the words, I was still at the mercy of page layout, paper stock quality, and however the hell they measure the glossiness of the cover.
They nailed it. You want to hold this book in your hands, which increases the chance that you’ll want to read it. Here are three other reasons.
- Yes, Managing Humans is predominantly content that you can scrape together from the weblog. But there are brand new chapters. These are articles that have been sitting in the To Be Written folder, so I wrote them. Note: not publishing a completed article on the weblog is surprisingly hard.
- All of the existing chapters have been rewritten. There are two classifications for these rewrites, either “Tidying” or “Total Rewrite”. Some classic Rands chapters fell under the total rewrite knife, including N.A.D.D., which was a nerve-wracking process that involved alcohol. Other chapters simply needed a touch-up. And, yeah, everyone is still wondering what Malcolm Events is actually about.
- You can’t read on the web.
Did you catch that? I’ll type it again because there’s a good chance you’re scanning this article, which, incidentally, proves my point. You can’t read on the web.
Whether you believe that the 10 months of work constructing this book is worth it or not, you need to understand that reading these chapters on your couch is an entirely different experience from reading them on the weblog. Try it right now. Go pick your favorite Rands article and print it out. Now, read that article somewhere far away from your computer and then come back and tell me what you learned.
The absence of temptation, the lack of distractions, the comfort of that lounge chair on your deck, sitting in the sun, drinking that coffee, and reading a book. This is advanced relaxation and the manner in which your brain consumes information in this setting is different than when you’re reading this article whilst dodging the incessant Twitter flood of iPhone updates.
The Pitch
I haven’t worked out the elevator pitch for the book. When a random person asks, “What’s it about?” I still stupidly answer, “Uh, management?” One of the points of the book is to get you thinking about you and management. It’s a narrative, not a set of rules. There are very few charts ‘n’ graphs. My hope is that by reading these stories, you’ll think about how you deal with managers and think up your own management strategy.
Strategy doesn’t happen in front of the computer. It happens in the shower, on the couch, or during the drive to work. Strategy happens when you take time to think and my thought is that you’ll strategize better with atoms than with bits.
Managing Humans
Woke up writing this morning, which is a big deal because I’ve hated writing for two months. See, Rands and I wrote a book. And yes, I said Rands and I because after 30+ chapters of writing, rewriting, and editing, it’s absolutely clear to me what part of my head is this clever, witty, bitter Rands-guy. He’s got a voice, a style. He likes alliteration, there are words he favors, and there is subject matter he can write about.
He’s essential to my writing and there is no way I could write a book without him.
The question has always been, “If I ever write a book, what to do about Rands?” Weblog readers are used to strange names adorning the pieces of writing. I said it four years ago and it’s still true: “weblogs are net people”, and through our writing, we create strange versions of ourselves to share with whoever stumbles across our virtual doorsteps. It’s liberating. You can accentuate whatever part of yourself that you want AND YOU CAN FUCKING TYPE IN ALL CAPS PEOPLE.
Rands works here in the weblog, but does Rands work when you pick the book up in your local bookstore?
There’s a mystique to publishing a book. Perhaps the only universal knowledge regarding publishing a book is “it’s hard”. I can now confirm that “yes, it’s hard”. It’s hard not only because the writing is hard; it’s hard because of the sheer volume of the writing; it’s hard because you must stare at your words over and over again. That clever turn of phrase you love in chapter 12? You’ll hate it by the time the copy editing starts.
As I started the writing and rewriting process, I nearly killed Rands. “It’s a book. No one is going to get the all caps on the printed page. And he swears. A lot.” It was time to tame the words, tidy the thoughts, and remove fictional characters from a book about the serious topic of managing people.
Fuck that.
It took one rewrite of one chapter to figure out that removing Rands from the work was removing most of what made the content interesting, memorable, and fun. Rands stayed, so did all the swearing. Apress talked me out of ALL CAPS, but ALL CAPS really does look like crap on the printed page. The rest is all there… and a lot more.
Rands also made for a great preface, part of which reads:
The icing on this semi-fictional cake is Rands. This is the name I began using in the mid-90s for my virtual presence; when I began weblogging about management, the name stuck. Think of Rands as your semi-fictional guide walking you through the fake stories of the fake people that have had incredibly relevant (yet fake) experiences.
Rands has a bit of attitude, but, then again, so do I.
There is more to be said about the book writing process. Based on the questions I’ve gotten so far, it’s clear that what most people consider to be the hard parts are not. It’s a game of endurance where you force feed yourself your own writing for longer than you can stand, and when you’re done, it’s a blessing that it takes someone else a relatively long time to publish the physical book.
When you’re done, you can hold your words in your hands, and yeah, I highly recommend that experience. It will remind you what it’s like to wake up in the morning… writing.
Writers and Editors
I’ve had two compliments on my shoes today. They’re black and white sneakers and unless I’d asked a friend for help I would’ve never bought them
Key Rands deficiency: I’m fashion impaired. Always have been. It’s not that I don’t care what I look like, it’s that I have no basic fashion sense. I don’t know what pants go with what shirts. I know that one color in my tie should match some other color in my outfit, but I couldn’t tell you why that’s important. I think a sweater and a sweatshirt are the same thing. Really.
My clothing impairment has followed me into my writing. Stuffed into a tired cardboard box in the garage are two books that you’re unlikely to ever read. One is called to To God and Back Again and the other is called The Culpeper Switch. A consistent piece of feedback from female friends who read chapters of these books was, “So, is your protagonist’s girlfriend a stripper?”
“No.”
“Well, she dresses like one.”
Fashion escapes me and after more than thirty years of confusion, I know I need help.
Fashion Impaired
I’m writing a book. Third time is, apparently, the charm.
I should be saying that I’m editing a book because a good chunk of “Managing Humans” comes from this very weblog, but therein lies the point of this article. If you write, you need to understand three things:
- the difference between the role of the writer and the editor
- why an editor is essential to your writing, and
- how it’s the editor’s responsibility to prevent the world from know you’re fashion impaired
How do I know this? Well, as I mentioned, there are two books gathering dust in the garage right now. When I say “book”, I do mean 100+ page efforts with a beginning, middle, and end. Yes, with each book I fully intended to find a publisher and inflict my poorly garbed stripper girlfriends on the world. But, here I am, five years after I scribed the last chapter of Culpeper and it never saw a single publisher. This is because neither of these books ever saw an editor.
Writing is a solitary act. Writers’ jobs are to sit in front of our computers late at night and struggle to tell a story to someone who is not there. This is a quiet, insular task, which temporarily removes us from the planet. That’s what the act of creation is; a silent belief that what you have to say is relevant when you’re mostly just throwing your ideas out there and praying.
If your goal is to write for yourself, you can stop right here. Keep on journaling; taking time to write down your thoughts forces you to take another look at the crap in your head and I can’t see how that isn’t mentally healthy.
If your goal is to create and write for others, you need to understand that once the initial creative act of writing is complete, you need to ask someone for help.
You need an editor.
Here’s Why
They are distinctly not you. Writers operate under the assumption that these words we string together silently while sitting in the coffee shop are relevant. We need this assumption, otherwise nothing would ever be written down. But the simple fact is: our writing might be crap.
Your editor has no such addiction to your words and your ideas. They are a neutral party.
They remind you that your writing is not fragile. Perhaps my biggest early psychological hang-up regarding my writing was the idea that the words that came out of my fingers were perfect. There was a reason they showed up in the way that they did and messing with the original structure was tantamount to saying, “If you can’t get it right the first time, why write at all?” I’d like to think this was an attitude of youth, but looking back at early Rands articles it’s clear I was still under the impression that the first draft was the only draft.
A good editor will perform major reconstructive surgery on your writing. The first time you experience this, you’ll freak because, like me, you’ll be unable to separate yourself from the writing and it will feel like mental surgery. Breath deeply. Keep the first draft of your piece and constantly compare it to the current draft. See how your idea is becoming clearer? That’s your editor doing two things. First, they can throw away greatness because they don’t get hung up on a word or a phrase. Second, they can reveal greatness by throwing away all the crap and extraneous detail that’s burying it.
Your editor’s neutral perspective regarding your entire piece allows them to see the greatness of the whole.
They see your intent. This neutral perspective allows them to ignore what you think are essential parts of your writing. There’s your three-page preamble where you explain to the reader why you’re qualified to write on whatever topic you’re writing about. There’s your four-page irrelevant background, which you think helps make your point, but really just says the same thing twice. This article has two beginnings, by the way, and I can hear my editor telling me, “When are you going to get to the point?”
Editors can’t hear your inner dialog, but they can see when your dialog is spilling all over the pages and getting in the way of what you’re trying to say.
They inform you of the rules, but allow you to enforce them. There was a lot of experimentation going on in the early Rands pieces, what with the endless… ellipses… and FunkyUpperCamelCasing. As I’ve edited pieces into the book, my editor has provided insight into when creativity is art and when creativity is just plain annoying. The end result has been chapters that, I believe, stay true to the Rands tone, but will appeal to a broader set of people.
I’m a fan of riffing on language, grammar, and punctuation, but my advice is that of my editor: is your bleeding edge creativity getting in the way of what you’re saying? The rules were developed for a reason. An editor can teach you the art of a semicolon and the bliss of a properly applied em dash because breaking rules when you know them is more elegant and readable.
It Begins with a Hard Request
I don’t know how you’re impaired.
What I need out of an editor is likely different than what you need, but I’ll say the same thing I say to my engineering teams. Each set of eyeballs that stare at an idea increase the value of the idea. Finding someone who is willing to impartially read your writing, discern your intent, provide constructive information, and remind you of the rules is hard, but finding this person means you’ve chosen not to write for yourself, but for everyone else.
Finding an editor and figuring out whether sneakers go with slacks starts the same way as a request of someone you trust, and the request is, “I need help”. These people are few and far between. You’re going to need to try many different editors on to see which one fits, because I believe the relationship between a writer and an editor is as important as the relationship between a writer and his words.
Swear A Bit
In 2006, I ‘ll be entering the fifth year of this blog. It’s my habit to spend some time each New Year scanning the previous years entries to see what the hell has been on my mind. I tackled a lot of different topics last year and that’s a great idea for another article.
As I reread this year’s articles, I’ve been thinking about what makes for successful content on the web. This is still a vigorously evolving medium. Every age group and every type of person is represented and they’re equally accessible which means whatever the bleeding edge is… it’s being pushed because everyone is stealing from everyone else. That rules.
For me, there are certain things I look for in successful content. You could translate that sentence into “what makes a successful weblogger”, but I think the observations I make below apply to anyone actively talking on the web. That includes all forms of weblogs, wikis, forums, and chat rooms.
Let’s first talk about the two basic sources of content on the web. First, there’s medium creators. These are the folks who aggregate other’s content and do something interesting to it. Think BoingBoing, MemePool, Del.icio.us, or Digg. Medium creators are doing their job when they organize other’s bits into interesting configurations. While this is an invaluable service, I want to talk about the folks who are actually creating original atomic content, message creators.
Message creators are the folks who take the time to construct a coherent chain of original thought. In my mind, there are two classes of message creators, the first which I’ll call journalers. These are the folks who’ve taken to spilling their personal thoughts onto the web. As writing exercises go, there’s nothing better than taking the time to translate the mess in your head into words. I’ve been spilling into various forms of journals for twenty years and while I’m sure it improved my writing ability, folks, there’s no way any of you are seeing that garbage.
Perhaps it’s generational thing and I’m dating myself, but journaling is personal therapy. Writing it down somehow makes whatever crap is going down in your life more bearable. That is it’s purpose. There are bazillions of folks out there write now who are journaling and if that’s making your life better, I’m a fan, but I want to talk about taking your writing to the next level and that involves our second class of writers, those who are creating a message.
There are two fundamental differences between journaling and creating a message. First, you’re writing for an audience, not yourself, and, second, you need to spend more time refining your idea.
Two important things to remember about your audience:
- They are sitting at their desk, not their couch
- They are likely to vanish at any moment because they have infinite choice
The key message here is that you don’t have their attention. You can get their attention, but it’s work and there are a thousand other temptations on a desktop and the moment they lose interest, they’re gone…
In order to keep their attention, you need to refine your idea. I’ve found I react stronger to writing which contains the following elements… styles… content. Your mileage may vary.
The Hook. I love when someone leads with a compelling short story as an introduction to what they’re going to write. It sets the context by pre-qualifying the story. If your reader scans your intro and immediately relates, they’re going to hang out. Also, I find that when you borrow a story from your life, the words just come out authentic which leads me to…
Be A Human. This is hard. I don’t think there is a class at your local university that teaches this. Personally, I attribute the tone I use in my writing to spending the past two decades of my life attempting to communicate via my keyboard. It started with BBSes and turned into the Web. It is a constant awareness that the people who are reading what you write are just like you. It’s a tone that reminds your readers that you are just another human being. You need to remind your readers this is YOU talking, it’s not your job or your company.
Swear a Bit. Probably a controversial piece of advice, but fuck it, I love swearing. This is likely a sub-point to sounding like a human, but it’s worth talking about. If you’re sitting at the bar with your friends, you swear. If you’re writing for the web, you’re writing for your extended friends… who cares if you know them? Keep it familiar.
Don’t Waste My Time. Remember, your audience will vanish at any point.. Their email is going to chime, their IM is going beg for attention, their phone is going to ring. Even if you hooked them, you can lose them if you don’t keep moving along. Remember, not only do I have infinite choice, I’m sitting upright staring at my monitor not lazily spread over my couch. The web is an active experience, not a sit down experience like TV. If you’re spending four paragraphs to get a point, I’m gone.
Give Me Something I Can Use. Great, you hooked me. We’re four paragraphs into your blurb and it’s now clear you have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re writing about some topic where you have no expertise and while it’s fun to wax poetic, I’m always on the search for the appearance of expertise. I’m not saying you’ve got to be a manager to write about management, but you do have to have some relevant experience in your topic in order to convey something of value.
Timing Matters. This is also hard. How do you time a joke when the pace of the tale is being is set by whoever is reading your stuff? Eloquence aside, you have precious few tools to craft timing that are available via your keyboard, but I have two favorites:
The Carriage Return
Really.
It’s funny.
The Shift Key
I SAID IT’S FUNNY PEOPLE
A Quick Fix
I’ve got NADD and what I’m looking for in your weblog entry is a quick fix. I want to invest two minutes in your stuff and I want to grow and the only way it happens is when I consume information. All you need to do is nail a single sentence that resonates with me and I’m sold. You’re bookmarked because once I know you’ve got the potential to feed my NADD, I’ll keep coming back.
Happy New Year.
Rands on Joel
The writing career to date. I’ve got 30 journals dating back to the early 80s where I believe, at one time, I lied IN MY PERSONAL JOURNAL that I’d figured out the Rubix cube. The high school years were productive. There were girls about and, for some reason, I thought a semi-fictional story was a great pick-up line. I was right. I started my first unfinished book at this time, it was about God as a high school student. It was as trite as it sounds, but it did lead to the discovery that I enjoyed long periods of sustained writing. This was a surprise because I was dealing with the early stages of NADD brought on by endless redialing of local BBSes.
College. Ok, time to get serious. Wait, there are actually things you need to learn about being a good writer? Shit. Now, I’m depressed and staring at my words too much. This intense introspection led to a significant loss of voice. I’m try to sound like the lessons I’m following and my writing is unfamiliar. Good thing I’ve got the nerd thing as a fall-back plan.
Break-through. Last year of college. I’m firmly entrenched as a QA engineer at Borland and the nerd work is mentally moving faster than the college lessons. Inflection point. I take a throwaway class on the American detective novel and discover Robert B. Parker’s Spenser novels. Wait, you mean a purely conversation book can be entertaining? And intelligent? Hell, that’s how I write! Time to start another book. This time, we’ll combine conversation characters with my nerdery. It’ll be a hit.
Wham. Internet boom. The second book continues to form, but slowly because of the weblog. Not this one, that one. That’s right. 1996 people and I’m weblogging. Well, I am until the start-up and then I’m busy. Really busy. It takes a good three years to remember the joy of writing and it partly has to do with Joel Spolsky.
It was during the insane years of the start-up that I found Joel. My thought at the time, “Yeah, that’s what I was trying to say three years ago, but I blew it. I was writing too little about too much rather than taking time to really hammer out one idea.” Joel wasn’t the reason I started writing for the web again, but he’s certainly one of the inspirations.
This makes the inclusion of my What To Do When You’re Screwed essay as part of his collection a particularly joyful event. A piece of my work is formally published by a guy whose work I respect. You can wax on about how the web is revolutionizing personal publishing and I’m a fan, but holding a published book with your work in it… is just… real. Being in the business of bits, it is a pleasant change to see my work in atoms.
Thanks, Joel.
Oh yeah, buy the book.
Chaos Complete
The new design is officially live and in the wild. Whew.
Briefly, I had four design goals going into this redesign.
First, I wanted to remove the sense of linear time from the site. While this is certainly a weblog, I want to give visitors every chance to find entries/essays which were published awhile ago, but are still relevant. The new toolbar makes sections of quality content very accessible. It’s also orange… which rocks.
Second, I wanted to remind everyone that words are paramount on this site. I really wanted to include Flickr integration or any number of other visual elements in the design, but I write words. If I’m going to be successful, it’ll be in words. The new BIG FAT headline (which is only used on the first article of the front page) is a tip of the hat to both words and to newspaper headlines… which I also love.
Third, I wanted to give visitors more reasons to return to the front page. I’ve added a Popular section which lists what I consider to be the ten best articles on the site. I’ve added a links section which uses my del.icio.us as a back end — it’s updated hourly. I’ve also added a recently commented section which lists articles that are currently generating buzz on the site.
Fourth, and lastly, I want to fix a pet peeve of mine… the archives page. In three prior designs, I’ve done the absolute minimum with this page, so I spent a good amount of time thinking about what was actually useful about an archive page and tried to design to that idea. The result isn’t fancy, but it’s nice and clean. Oh yeah, it’s also a linear timeline which, yes, is a direct contradiction to goal #1. Oh well.
I’ve got more to say about the tools I used for this redesign, I also have some thoughts on what doesn’t work in the design… and design ideas I had to abandon for various reasons. For now, I’d like to hear your feedback as well as any problems you see. I’ve tested this design on good many browsers/platforms… I’ve also bowed repeatedly before the validation gods and they’ve let me live… so far.
Thanks for reading.
Use Your Misery
When you’re suddenly inspired, there’s a sound.
Pop.
If I’m sitting next you when this happens, I won’t hear anything, but I’m going to see it in your face.
Pop.
What was… is now more.
It’s the “a-ha” moment. It’s the clouds parting. It’s insight. It’s the spark. There are endless ways to describe it, yet… it doesn’t happen as much as it should.
I’m just about done with the fourth major revision to the Rands in Repose weblog. At the moment, I think I’m about a day away from rolling the site out. A majority of the work has been defined… I don’t believe that I need more inspiration to complete the site which, being an engineer, means I’m likely three curse-word laden weeks away from actually being done.
The Pop which started Version 4 of the site had nothing to do with an entire site redesign. Driving home from work, I realized I wanted to I was add portions of my del.icio.us links to the sidebar of the site. I figured someone had already done the hard work and, I was right, it was trivial to do. Still, in mock-ups, typical headlines didn’t look right in my side bar. Wrong font… and the lists looked wrong. An itch which must be scratched.
So, I started tinkering with the CSS… then I was redoing headline font sizes… then I threw my hands up and yelled, “Hey, I’m touching everything ANYWAY… why not re-do the site?”
Creativity is a virus. As a small creative thought matures, it begins to infect all surrounding thought. What started out as a del.icio.us experiment resulted in three months of part time work. Endless editing. Additional swearing. Misery. Completion. For now.
Being Version 4 of the site, I’ve had three previous site redesigns and I’m becoming familiar with the process. I’ve already told you about how it begins, but let’s talk about the whole thing because there is useful stuff tucked in there.
Starting is the hardest moment because the rest is harder.
The single biggest delay to getting the new version of the site is my procrastination. Any creative process has to contend procrastination. In the case of the site redesign, the reason I often stand three feet behind my chair staring at the monitor and touching nothing is because I know how much work is left.
The internal dialog goes like this, “The prototype looks great, but I’ve still haven’t figured out the headline sizes and I want to revisit the font in the logo and DON’T GET MY STARTED ABOUT VALIDATION. You know, I could just play Halo and think about this later…”
It is suddenly one week later. No progress. Same pile. Weeks are lost considering what needs to be considered.
I now trick myself into progress. When I sit down at my desktop, I think, “No way I can get anything done, but I can fix that one graphic. Color isn’t quite right.” Tackling a small inconsequential task keeps the pile of work demons quiet because they don’t have a problem with a single graphic. They don’t know that once I finish that graphic, I’m going to have enough mental momentum to tackle another task… and another. Two hours later, I’m made legitimate progress.
Yes.
Let go of the idea that everything you do must be original. It’s our collective theft that is the bulk of creativity.
I always steal. I love it. If you’re a weblog nerd, you’ll might see visual design borrowed from other sources in the new design. My process is this. If I’m stumped by a visual element, I have twenty weblogs I surf. I look, I saturate, and I steal. What eventually ends up in the final product is usually not direct theft because later creative iterations mutate look and feel, but, yeah, I’m a thief. It’s the best.
Similar to getting starting procrastination, “I’m a unique voice” procrastination can be deal killer. If you believe that you must be completely original in whatever your creative endeavor is, you will never ever finish. Like it or not, you’re going to steal.
Know when to transform creativity into construction.
Great, so now I’m cranking. Idea pop all over the place and the weblog is coming together… except I have, well, one more thing to design. When that’s done… I’ll be good to go.
The design process is a blast, but at some point you’ve got to produce. It’s easy to hang out in design land because there is no right or wrong, it’s just raw creation and it’s fun to god, right? Problem is that your design intoxication is keeping you from finishing because you’re never going to get to the actual construction. This article is an excellent example of my inability to actually get the site done. I’m drinking coffee and writing about being done rather than actually being done. Why? The article is original work whereas the two hours of XHTML validation in my future is dullsville.
I’m always looking for the inflection point when I’m done. It’s the a moment in time when I look at a prototype or design and know that it’s complete. All the work which comes after that point will borrow from the base design. Yeah, there’s tons more work to do, but it’s work headed downhill… picking up momentum towards being done, it’s not the creative uphill push.
Use your misery.
This is the hardest to describe because it’s the trickiest to use.
Up until a week ago, the weblog design borrowed heavily from a wool hat I own. I love it. It’s got a great shape and a terrific shade of orange. I took close-up photographs of the texture and made it a background. I sampled the orange and slapped it all over the place. I used the texture again as part of the logo.
Hat everywhere.
I don’t need to show you a screenshot of this for you to understand it didn’t work. Weblogs are meant to be read. It’s the words that are paramount, not an annoying wool texture all over the place. Problem is, I love this hat. Rather than realizing you didn’t want to stare at my hat, I went to work on other layout issues.
A month later and the wool hat design is still festering. I’m done with other design issues and I’m officially creatively blocked on the final design because I can’t conceive of removing my beloved wool hat design elements. A weekend is spent staring at the design and I quickly move from concern to despair. I begin to think, well, I could just throw the whole thing away and start over.
Misery. Stress. Insomnia. I wish none of these on you… unless you really need to be inspired. These states of mind show up during any prolonged creative endeavor and they’re intent on stopping you. They do this by twisting your brain into interesting new shapes and it’s this altered perspective which is useful.
As I sat there staring at my wool hat weblog, I realized there were probably good design ideas on the page… I just couldn’t see them because I was BLINDED BY THE WOOL. So, I got a second opinion. Grabbed someone who had never seen the page before and, as expected, they barfed all my wool hat, but they also noticed the parts that worked. Turns out with a new logo and background, the site looks great and I still get my orange. Thanks Mike!
Misery is an obstacle. It doesn’t feel like that at the time, but it is. These obstacles are merely problems to be solved and the adversity they create is the mother of inspiration… of innovation.
Weblog Writing
I’m not a huge fan of defining process for writing because I believe that once you start defining a writing process, you create unnecessary barriers for your writing. For example, I’m certain that I am incapable of writing well when I’m drunk. Why is this? Well, back in college, I got hammered on a case of Heinekin and wrote the definitive critical analysis of college and it’s impact on humanity. Come morning, the column was incoherent. Banging my head against the keyboard would’ve been more informative. So, I created a rule. A barrier. “I can not write and drink.”
Now, fact of the matter is, the rule should be “I can not write and drink heavily”, but the damage is done. If there’s booze nearby, I freeze-up. No writing. I’m certain there some Hemingway-esque inspired wordage wandering around my head when I’ve been boozing, but now I’m more focused on the rule than the writing.
Rules bad. Writing good.
With that in mind, I give you my weblog writing process. This is the semi-formal process by which an idea pops in my head, is deemed worthy to be translated into text, and ends up on the weblog. Again, your mileage may vary.
Idea Pop
The crucial step. Something popping into my head that I feel is relevant. This happens to me many times during the day… no particular clustering around morning, afternoon, or evening, but coffee is often nearby. Maniacal idea poppers write every single pop down, I don’t because, yes, it’s a rule. The rule is “if you don’t write it down, it never happened”. I believe in this rule in other situations, but I don’t let it hinder me when it comes to the Idea Pop. The main reason being that just because it popped once doesn’t mean it’s worth my time. I usually wait for a multiple pop-situation before I write it down.
Writing It Down
I’ve popped. Two or three times. The idea has evolved from “Hmmmmm” to “A-ha!” and it needs a treatment. There are two approaches I take to writing it down. I either take a stab at the entire damned thought (a process I’m doing for this entry, by the way) or I just write a few paragraphs to capture the essence of the thought (or thoughts) and leave it in a warm place I can consider it further.
Which process I choose depends entirely in how the translation of thought to keyboard is going. If I’m rolling, if the article is just showing up, then I go until I’m done. If I’m translating and the idea is half-baked or I’m in a hurry, I just get the heart of the piece and move on.
More often than not, fully drafted pieces make their way to the weblog whereas snippets may not. Still, if the idea has made it out of my head, it’s more likely than not going to, at least, get another draft.
Letting It Evolve
Once I’m actually writing the idea down, there’s another state of mind I need to invoke at the same time. Letting the idea evolve. This is letting myself just roll with whatever comes out of my fingers as I’m telling the story. Perhaps the most recognizable example of this is the N.A.D.D. article… go read it right now. It starts out as a book review and ends up with observations of nerd life. I didn’t start that entry thinking I’d document such a hot button for the nerd community, but I did… I started rolling and wham… welcome to N.A.D.D..
If there is a part of this process which must be utterly devoid of rules, this is it. Interrupting the evolution process with rules or interruptions or anything which screws with the flow can have catastrophic results on my writing.
Stitch It Together
When I’m working with a half-baked idea, I often get stuck tying fragment ideas together. Rather than working on the flow of the entire thought, I’m lost in a simple transition or the choice of a single word. As soon as I feel this frustration, I just throw in a place holder… looks something like :
[ TIE THIS TOGETHER SOMEHOW ] or,
[ WRONG WORD HERE — FIX THIS ]
Just writing down what I need to do often frees me to work on some other part of the piece.
For me, the creative part of writing is about constant forward movement (See below: “Shut Up, It’s Done”). Frustration, confusion… whatever… these emotions just stop the process. I’m no longer creating, I’m fretting about some irrelevant detail. Don’t waste time on this inner critic, change context, and let your brain work freely elsewhere.
Going Old School
At some point, my piece feels done. It’s not REALLY done, but it feels done. When I feel this, I do something which I find strange. I print the article out, grab my favorite pen (Pilot Gel Roller), and read it somewhere else than where I wrote it.
This is a recent change of process for me. I used to do all my editing on the computer, but it never felt quite right. When I go old school, I read my article elsewhere… with a different perspective… it gives me permission to really edit. Until I was reading printed articles, I was unable to nuke full paragraphs or pages of text. When I see the offending text on paper, it’s clearly a travesty and crossing them out just feels good.
Since I changed my editing style, I feel like the quality of my entries has improved. They’re more balanced… they tell the story more coherently, more completely. One of these days, I’ll go back and read some of my older entries and see if this true.
Grammer, Speeling
Yeah, I suck at this. I really do. It bugs me, but I’m in a hurry people. My advice is to find someone without N.A.D.D. to read your later drafts. They’ll find obvious stuff that you’ve been staring at for days. If you can’t find a second opinion, I’d suggest getting in the habit of searching for common grammar errors (it’s, your, you’re, etc.) as part of your process. I try to, I really do, but once a piece feels done, I just can’t help myself from posting it immediately.
Shut up, It’s Done
I don’t have this particular problem, but I watch other writers struggle with it. For whatever reason, their “it’s done” muscle is underdeveloped and they enter the terrifying state of almost doneness where they tweak… touch-up… spell check… tweak… touch-up… rinse… repeat.
The moment I see myself in an almost done state, I just post it. Yes, this means I often end up with embarrassing errors that could have been caught by one more complete rereading of the entry, but folks, wake up, it’s never done. Done is another rule that came from an era where being done meant you printed it out and never touched it again. Weblog publishing means you can edit as much as you like. I don’t often change major themes after I’ve published, but I almost always go back and touch-up minor errors.
Lifecycle
The time it takes to complete the process above varies wildly depending on circumstances mostly outside of my control. For instance, I started writing this piece 40 minutes ago and I’m pretty sure it’s 80% of the way there. I’ll stick it somewhere obvious, rewrite a bit here and there tomorrow, and likely publish the piece either tomorrow or the next day. Probably the next day since Referral Rant just came out a day ago.
To contrast, the Agenda Detection languished on my to do list in a semi-written form for over two months before I got around to publishing it. Why? No clue. Loved the idea, never found the time to knock it together.
Weblogs as Publishing
I’ve written two (and a half) books. You’ll be happy to know I can count how many people have read them on my hands and toes. At the time, I loved writing them, but now I grit my teeth as I flip through the pages of these books. They read like I’m writing in my journal; blithering and blathering about whatever happened to me that day haphazardly wrapped in some loose fictional framework.
The continuity of Weblogging has given me a writing process because the commitment fits into my short attention span lifestyle. I can fully devote myself to writing, editing, and publishing a bite sized thought and still save space for my day job. Perhaps this process helps my ability to write a novel or maybe I’ve finally hooked up with my ideal medium in weblogs. Who cares? I love writing. Next topic.
Referral Rant
Back in the day, Pants wrote a silly piece of Perl to watch the Jerkcity logs in real time. In a terminal window, you could watch who was reading Jerkcity, where they came from, and how many strips they read. Yes, it’s ego_ware, but it demonstrated a couple of interesting points.
First, at the time, Rotten.com would occasionally throw some free PR our way with a front page link. We sometimes knew when these links were coming and it was fascinating to see the flood of hits appear. Lesson: You may think you get a lot of hits. You don’t.
Second, I could see where hits where coming from and see what type of community Jerkcity was resonating with. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE.
Through a couple of server moves and continued code hackery on the Jerkcity engine, the Perl developed bitrot. I started to use webalizer for traffic analysis… it wasn’t real time… or maybe it was and I didn’t throw the switch, but who cares, I’d moved on.
I stumbled on Textism’s Refer utility whilst surfing my NetNewsWire feeds and immediately throw it on the RinR server. In a nutshell, the script:
- Analyzes all hits to your HTML pages
- Throws them in a database (mmmMmMMM database)
- Provides real time analysis of what they’re looking at and where they’re coming from
- Provides filtered aggregate views which gives you referral counts for the past 24/72/week as well as lists of which queries were landing at your site
Hardly a holy shit, barely a gee whiz, but worth talking about.
As mentioned above, referral surfing is ego_ware, but then again, so is a weblog, so let’s stop getting all giggly when we publicly discuss referrals. Say it loud, say it proud, I CARE WHETHER OR NOT PEOPLE READ MY STUFF.
The #2 reason on why you should weblog is: “Shrink the world, Meet people you may not hate”. That’s right, you’re surfing weblogs to find interesting points of views… these views are attached to people. Don’t tell me you’re not community building because I know you are.
A recent example. I sat down this evening to scan the logs and found this gentlemen had referred to the N.A.D.D. article. Turns out, he’s based in Las Vegas and plays a lot of poker. What’d I do? I fired up iChat, dropped him a line and got the skinny on poker rooms in Vegas because I’m headed there next week. What that’d cost me? Well, the cost was taking the time to write down observations that everyone else sees, but hadn’t bothered to record.
The real question: What’s the benefit? What’s in it for me? I got paid in information. I now know which poker room suits my needs… probably saved me a couple hundred bucks in drunkenly bumbling around Vegas.
Let’s stop thinking we’re weblogging for free. Information is the currency here and your weblog makes you either a broker or a bank. You’re either passing on carefully selected information to others or printing your own for consumption. Probably. Your success in doing this will not be rewarded in cold hard cash, it will be rewarded in… wait for it… more information. The kicker is this information “should” be prefiltered to be relevant to you because folks hang with people they relate to. Like attracts like. I’m sure there’s fancy math here which proves this, but I’m not a math guy and, if I’m right, neither are you.
Choosing to ignore this information, these referrals, just doesn’t make sense. If you didn’t care to see your impact on the network, why are you weblogging? Why are you learning XHTML and CSS2 when you could be simply writing in that leather bound journal sitting next to your bed?
Why You Should Weblog
I used the word “bitsifter” in a recent article. It’s a term the Dad coined in the middle of the 90’s to describe the process by which we were handling the flood of bits that were increasingly heading in our direction. I liked the name so much that I registered the domain name back in 1996 and started what can only be described as a early weblog called the Bitsifter Digest.
I’m in the process of cleaning up the site for posting at a later date, but the specific conte for the Digest isn’t what I want to talk about; what I want to talk about is its existence… as well as the existence of Rands in Repose.
I published the Digest from 1996 until 1999. The end date was roughly the same time that I left Netscape to join a start-up. Go figure.
Rands in Repose began on April 4, 2002, roughly three years after Bitsifter slowly died. Strangely enough, this was just a few short months before I left the aforementioned start-up for my current gig. So, lesson #1 for today is, start-ups suck all creative energy out of your soul and are, therefore, not conducive to weblogs. Better said: Your start-up is your weblog.
Add it up; I’ve got six years experience in the weblog space. I’ve created two, abandoned one, and continue actively maintain the second. I can’t claim either is successful as my definition of success would be getting paid big bucks weblog which just ain’t going to happen. Still, I weblog all the time. When I’m not at the keyboard, I’m sitting in the car bouncing ideas around. When I’m stuck in a meeting, I’m taking the primal commute ideas and crafting them into outlines of articles. I weblog all damned day. You should to.
I can think of three good reasons why you should weblog:
Exercise your ability to express yourself in words.
If you’re reading this, you’ve chosen to use the web as a means of gathering new ideas. It is a non-trivial ability to take that drunken thought you had last Thursday and translate it a compelling argument that folks should talk about. Writing takes time and practice and time and practice.
When you create a space in your life for a weblog, you’re saying, “Writing matters.” You may not give a shit about writing, you may want to tell the world how much you think are physics is really cool, but to do so, you will need to write coherently.
Shrink the world, Meet people you may not hate.
Once you’ve ably conquered the whole writing thing and your ideas are floating around the weblog-o-sphere, people are going to find you. These people are going to want to talk about what you wrote and, oddly enough, their voice is going to sound familiar. This is because they’ve found something familiar in your voice.
Weblogs match people together regardless of geography thus making the world a pleasantly smaller place.
We’re all looking to fill that painfully long silent pause that exists when we’re waiting to interact with someone that we share a common experience with. This is why Tribe.net is destined to be much more successful than Friendster. Tribe.net leads with the question, “Whom do you want to hang with?” rather than the question “Whom do you want to have sex with?” Sure, Tribe.net users are going to end up having a lot of sex, but they’re going to be doing it with people they’re more likely to have something in common with. Finding people to have sex with is easy, finding people you like is hard. A weblog can help.
In the few three months, I’ve been introduced to two sets of folks that there is no way in hell I would’ve interacted with if it wasn’t for Rands in Repose. Alex King of Tasks (and other fine products) fame and I grabbed lunched a few months back and debated the pros and cons of task management. This week at MacWorld, the gentlemen from Panic and I hit a sushi bar where we compared and contrasted development practices of large companies with independent development teams. (Tip: not much difference)
These relationships exist because of the work I’ve put into this weblog… it’s not the layout, it’s the ideas… which gets me to my last and most important point:
Your opinion matters.
No matter how correct/incorrect/poorly informed it is, it’s more interesting than the front page of the news because it has a unqiue voice. Chances are someone on the planet with a web browser will recognize and favor your particular flavor of insight.
Yes, it’s going to take some courage to throw it out there.
Yes, you are going to find people that are going to hate you for these opinions.
Yes, there are bullies out there. There are trolls. There are twits. They are ignoring you now because you haven’t said anything. The moment you do say something relevant you run the risk of incurring their wrath. The louder you get, the higher probability they’ll descend.
Don’t sweat it, the only reason they pick on you is because they have nothing to say for themselves and you do.
Call For Writers
Do you like to write more than you like to read? I sure do.
I’m looking for two or three creative individuals who are interested in volunteering for collaborative writing experiment. There is no planned monetary remuneration for this, again, very experimental effort. Participants must be willing to work under a non-disclosure agreement for the duration of the project.
This effort will run for approximately six months, possibly longer depending on its success. Contributors will be expected to submit work on a to-be-determined schedule. Pieces will be of varying length and complexity. Background research may be necessary. Full attribution will be given to all contributors at the end of the project.
This effort is unrelated to both Rands in Repose and Jerkcity.
Ideal participants are:
- Creative
- Immensely comfortable with various forms of online communication
- Strongly familiar with weblogs and the weblog community. Ideally, participants are actively maintaining a weblog/photolog/etc
- Comfortable editing and providing constructive feedback on other’s work, vice versa
- Able to devote roughly five to ten hours a month to the project
- Willing to edit others work and be edited by others
If this doesn’t sound like lunacy to you, please drop me a line at rands@jerkcity.com on why this vague proposition sounds interesting to you. If you’ve got a friend with a writing style you just love or who just loves to write, I’d appreciate if you’d forward this entry to them.
[Update 8/2/03]: The window for submissions is closed. To everyone who responded, I’ll be following up via email by 8/3/03.
OneWord
For writing types, this exercise is a great simple reminder that writers write… always.
Conversational Characters
I’ve attempted to read the Lord of the Rings on three different occasions and on all three occasions I have not made it through. The reason why dawned on me during a recent night on the town when Gretchen asked, “What keeps you engaged in a book?”
The answer was immediate and definitive: “a conversation tone which moves the story along.” This means I’m not huge fan of complex description or wandering plots because HEY I’M IN HURRY HERE AND MY TIME IS VALUABLE. I’m impatient with my reads and this means there are huge categories of books which poor the socks off me.
For example, Lord of the Rings. What if I told you a story in the following fashion: “I’m a regular guy with a regular job. My parents took good care of me and I have a dog named Ralph who loves me as well. Except, one day, everything changed. But, first, let me tell you how I built my house for the next two hundred pages. You’ll notice this really doesn’t have much to do with the actual book, but, boy can I build a house. Let’s start with the roof…”
Such deviation from forward momentum in books frustrates the hell out of me. One of my favorite authors, Connie Willis, did just that in a very painful read called The Doomsday Book When I realized she’d succumbed to the art of talking about nothing in particular, I walked out of my house and threw the book in the lake. Bitch.
Now, Gretchen’s answer was vastly different. She’s about character development and if plot happens to tie things together reasonably well, great, but the characters had better leap off the page. For myself, as long as the character is talking and moving things along without pages of introspective, that works. A perfect example of this type of character is Spenser from Robert B. Parker. These books are defined by conversation characters and, oh yeah, there’s probably some type of mystery, but, who cares, Spenser is fucking funny.
Conversational character driven plot may not be your bag of tea. You might really like reading those one hundred pages on house building because, chances are, they actually do matter to the message being delivered by the author who really spent a lot of timing picking just the right kind of nails because they reflect on the socio-economic status of the character blah blah blah… next book.
ASKING GREAT QUESTIONS
In all fiction that I write, my characters are great at asking questions. Their questions drive the essential tension of the plot. The reasons they are good at asking questions is because I’m good at asking questions, I am what “they” call ASK ASSERTIVE.
ASK ASSERTIVE means that I am not going to communicate by TELLING you anything, it means I’m going to telling you information about myself by ASKING.
More to say here, but here are some rough guidelines for asking great questions:
Why Ask Questions
1. Search for truth
2. Show that you listened / Show that you care / Show that you understand
3. It’s an transaction where soul is the currency
Asking Great Questions
1. There are no rules
2. Listen before you ask
3. Learn before you ask
4. Don’t wait to ask
5. If you already know the answer, ask anyway.
6. If you don’t like the answer, ask again
7. The more it scares you to ask, the better the question
8. Who, what, when, where are good. Why and how are best.
Answering Great Questions
1. There are no rules
2. A great question may not have an answer
3. ‘I don’t know’ is not an acceptable answer
GRETCHEN ASKS...
Ever had a character pop up out of nowhere? Amanda has taken up residence in my head. She first appeared last week in a flash - a name and the number 17. She came back yesterday in much stronger form. I can see her sitting on the beach, with the breeze blowing her hair loose from its clip. Apparently she’s telling a story to someone (the omniscient “I” right now). There’s a great deal of pain in her eyes as she starts to tell the story, and the listener both wants to hear and is afraid of the answer. There’s tension on both sides, but for different reasons - I can’t wait to hear what happened!
So the interesting question is: Where did Amanda come from? Has she always been there, or has she just appeared? Or is it maybe that she chose to show herself to me, because I’m ready to tell her story now?
There are two kinds of writing constructs which just pop into my head: characters and plots.
I believe they come from the same place.
Your brain is broken into three different parts of remarkably different responsibility. There’s your primal brain which takes care of eating, breathing, and moving around. From a writer’s perspective, this part of the brain is pretty stupid and a non-factor unless you’re hungry, horny, or stoned. (Note: some will argue this is the source of all things great and small)
Your second brain, the obvious brain or consciousness, is the one which you use to get through the day. This is the one that makes sure your socks match and it makes sure you drive on the right side of the road. The brain is great at simple tasks and it does them efficiently, but, again, it does not add much to the writer’s inspiration.
Your last brain, the hidden brain, is writer’s pay dirt. This is the brain which is always sifting through data. This brain is a big fat magnet for information - it’s always sorting and organizing information into interesting shapes and colors, and every once in awhile, it finds a truly fascinating construction and it pushes it out into your consciousness usually when the last thing your shooting for is inspiration.
For me, it’s usually just a taste of a character or a half-formed thought, but it often is much bigger than that. I find myself standing in the shower staring straight into a three dimensional character. WHAT ARE THEY DOING THERE?
What is generated by the hidden brain is not random because you have intimate control over the information which is sent into this non-stop sifting machine. You’re constantly silently telling it what you need in terms of inspiration when you decide to call an old friend, when you watch a building collapse, when you miss a loved one… all of these activities are taken in, sifted, and sorted.
I’ve had two such discoveries in the past month.
MCKENNA: This is a woman who lives in the desert. She’s into yoga and she’s a terrific flirt. She’s lousy with technology and has some incomprehensible secret that I have yet to uncover. Also, great hair.
PLOT/STORY: A book divided in half. The first half is about some regular Joe who is having a boring old life. Something drastic happens and then we begin the second half of the book where we’ve moved to a completely different part of the world/universe with an entirely new plot. It’s unclear whether we’ve moved backwards or forwards in time, but we slowly discover our protagonist (or possibly at the very end of the story) who has become an entirely new character. The essential question being, in the second half of the book, what does take to completely drive you out of your life?
THE BEGINNING OF THE END
I was rotting my brain last night watching STAR TREK - VOYAGER when I had a significant literary insight. I used to be a marginal NEXT GENERATION fan thanks to the Mom watching the original series many years ago, but UPN wasn’t on DirectTV until recently, so pretty much missed all of the VOYAGER series. No big loss.
Thanks to the wonder of TIVO, I completed the VOYAGER series a few months back and now I’m filling in some holes that I missed with the occasional episode.
BUT THIS ISN’T ABOUT MY STAR TREK GEEKERY, THIS IS ABOUT WRITING.
In last night’s episode, there were two significant hints at potential future relationships. This person flirted with that person, that person extended an olive branch to so’n’so, etc. I happen to know, as I’ve already watched the series finale that the development of these relationships is crucial to the final season as they help tie up loose ends, provide interesting plot twists, and, ultimately, give these fictional characters life after the series has completed. What is fascinating is seeing the introduction of these final relationships and knowing, three seasons in advance, that the writers have begun the ending.
The beginning of the end. (Note to self: I wrote a short story called that in junior high. How odd). For the writer, discovering that he/she has actually begun the ending is an intoxicating experience. It is the moment when the writer sees how they’re going to tie things up… often happens to me on the drive to work… sometimes happens in the shower, but it’s an epiphany of staggering proportion because of the satisfying sense of closure.
This does not mean that the hard work is done. I’ve been in the third paragraph of a ten page essay when I’ve discovered the ending which means I’ve got another nine pages of filler before I really get to set the hook and yank on my reader.
This also does not mean you’ve actually discovered the ending. Often the filler between page one and page nine directs you unexpectedly and suddenly you’re integrating an ending which makes no sense. The experience of retrofitting an ending, while valuable, can be emotionally draining because HEY DIDN’T I ALREADY HAVE MY EPIPHANY?
