Ben Brooks on Negativity

Speaking of Spoken (hmm), I have to give Ben Brooks kudos for sharing this story about the impact of negativity on his life and work, and how he's still recovering from it. It's one of the best things I've heard on Spoken yet.

I've transcribed my favorite bit (it's about ¾ the way in):

There might be different people reading my site now. I'm sure there are, and I hope there always will be. But those people simply replaced the people who left because the negativity left, and that, I am fine with because I'm happier now, and I think that shows in my writing.

The Note

Shawn Blanc shares a handy writing productivity tip, amongst other insights into his process:

500 words ago, I lied to you. I said my writing begins at 7:30 every morning.

The truth is that my writing for this morning began yesterday when I put that note on my desk. That note is my topic for the day. That note is the single most important element of my personal productivity system. Because that note is the single most important thing I have to do today.

In a sense I'm reminded of Ernest Hemingway's method (scroll to page 6 of that PDF) of keeping the writing momentum going from day to day:

The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. [...] Always stop when you are going good and donʼt think about it or worry about it until you start to write the next day. That way your subconscious will work on it all the time. But if you think about it consciously or worry about it you will kill it and your brain will be tired before you start.

Typography in Ten Minutes

Matthew Butterick, in his online book Butterick's Practical Typography:

This is a bold claim, but I stand behind it: If you learn and fol­low these five ty­pog­ra­phy rules, you will be a bet­ter ty­pog­ra­pher than 95% of pro­fes­sional writ­ers and 70% of pro­fes­sional de­sign­ers. (The rest of this book will raise you to the 99th per­centile in both categories.)

All it takes is ten min­utes—five min­utes to read these rules once, then five min­utes to read them again.

A short, concise ruleset that can make any website look more professional. So often I come across blogs that would be 10x more readable if they accounted for rules #3 and #4 alone.

If you end up reading through Mr. Butterick's typography guide in its entirety, consider paying him a few bucks (or more) in thanks. He did a wonderful job with it. (Tip: hyperlinks throughout the guide are indicated by prepended diamond symbols.)

Federico Viticci's Review of the iPad Air 2

Federico's review of the iPad Air 2 is far more than a breakdown of its specs and features. It's a credo for why the iPad has become his primary computing device.

“The iPad’s screen and body are glued together physically and conceptually. [...] as a computer [it] truly disappears in your hands, feeling like a display that you grab and touch and swipe and throw away when you’re done.

[...]

Three years ago, when I was stuck in a hospital bed and I wanted to continue my work, I started using the iPad out of curiosity, challenging myself to get more done on iOS in spite of its limitations and differences from OS X. Today, some of those limitations still remain, but the iPad and new versions of iOS have solved most of my problems in new and unexpected ways.

The iPad is the best thing that happened to my professional life.”

Like Federico, the iPad—mine is the 4th-gen model—is my primary device. In fact, I don't even own a traditional computer anymore (unless you count my wife's Windows 7 laptop, which I avoid using at all costs).

I'm in a better position than most to find any holes in Federico's argument, but I can't disagree with a single word of his review, or more importantly his philosophy concerning the iPad. It truly is an incredibly versatile device. Most shortcomings with it I've ever come across have been due to lack of developer interest, but even that problem is getting less and less prevalent by the year.

Just to give an example, here are some of the apps that help me get my writing work done:

• I write in Editorial, with a bevy of workflows and TextExpander snippets that make my life at least 10x easier.
• I publish in Squarespace Blog.
• I capture ideas in Drafts and often move my more long-term personal notes over to Simplenote.
• As I come across interesting links in Twitter and RSS, I save them in Instapaper and archive the best stuff in Pinboard (which I often access using Pinner).
• My teammates and I at Tools & Toys and The Sweet Setup use Slack and Basecamp to communicate and stay on top of upcoming projects.
• I use a mixture of apps for managing blog photos: VSCO Cam for editing, Pixelmator for creating and/or combining images, Reduce for resizing images to appropriate widths and file sizes (with EXIF Wizard Pro to double-check EXIF data), and Droplr for hosting Spark Journal images.

And this list is just the tip of the iceberg. The iPad has limitations, sure, but those are more and more becoming edge cases. Nearly all my needs are covered by the iPad, and I have almost no desire for anything more.

* * *

Further reading: Josh Ginter's review + gorgeous photos of the iPad Air 2 on Tools & Toys.

Structure

John McPhee, writing for The New Yorker about the evolution of his approach to (and preoccupation with) writing structure over the years:

“In some twenty months, I had submitted half a dozen pieces, short and long, and the editor, William Shawn, had bought them all. You would think that by then I would have developed some confidence in writing a new story, but I hadn’t, and never would. To lack confidence at the outset seems rational to me. It doesn’t matter that something you’ve done before worked out well. Your last piece is never going to write your next one for you. Square 1 does not become Square 2, just Square 1 squared and cubed.”

I enjoyed this little nugget about knowing where to end a piece:

“Look back upstream. If you have come to your planned ending and it doesn’t seem to be working, run your eye up the page and the page before that. You may see that your best ending is somewhere in there, that you were finished before you thought you were.”

One Month with the Hobonichi Techo

Jenny Mason of The Finer Point writes of her experience journaling with the 2015 Hobonichi planner thus far:

“Every day when you turn over a new leaf of paper you get this great used look. The ink on the page almost creates this rippling effect and when you have gone through a few pages the Hobo takes on a worn feel. I really like this, it feels like I have recorded something worthwhile and interesting. At the end of the year this book is going to look amazing.”

Working for the Man Should Be a Last Resort

David Cain:

“According to my critics, even if you find your standard weekday boring, painful or unfulfilling, you ought to embrace it, simply because a third-world coal miner would kill for your benefits package. When so many have so little, attempting to escape a situation in which you can reliably feed yourself and fund a retirement could only be an act of the utmost ingratitude.

A minority of us believe the opposite is true — that escaping from an unfulfilling mainstream lifestyle isn’t a moral failing, but rather a moral imperative. It’s precisely because we have all the necessary freedoms at our fingertips (and because others don’t) that spending our lives in the stable isn’t just foolish, but wrong. To remain, voluntarily, in a life where your talents are wasted and your weekdays are obstacles is to be humble in all the wrong ways.”

I discovered this article and its author thanks to my friend Álvaro Serrano, and it resonated with me in so many ways.

When I was fired from my awful corporate stooge job, the temptation at the time to rush out and apply for other full-time desk jobs was enormous. There was a mortgage to think about and a family to support, not to mention our dreams of traveling the world together.

Thankfully I had enough support from friends and my wife, who all encouraged me to try making this writing gig work out. And here I am now, more than a year later, still putting words on the internet.

Does it make me a ton of money, you ask? Hahaha...no. That's cute. You're cute.

But! That's a tradeoff I'm perfectly willing to make, given the benefits:

• I get to do work I actually care about, and collaborate with a group of people I respect and admire.

• I get to spend every single day with my wife and son. Whenever I'm not writing and she's not teaching dance class we're free, as a family, to do things that used to be reserved for evenings and weekends—visiting the library, zoo, or science museum; playing at the park; going for walks or bike rides; grabbing lunch and/or coffee together; I could go on.

  I often think about how much of my son's childhood I would have missed thus far, how many experiences we wouldn't have shared as a family, had I continued doing the "normal" 9-5 job thing. It's a constant reminder that I never want to go back to that life, even if it meant making more money.

• Despite our relatively low income, we still manage to travel two or three times a year (and more than that, if you count my wife's dance school's trips to competitions in other states). We usually even manage to squeeze in a Disney trip once a year, whether it's to one of the parks or a cruise ship. It takes a lot of careful budgeting and planning to pull off, but it's so worth it.

• I can wear pajamas all day if I want. I might be wearing some as I type this. You'll never know.
• Last but not least, I no longer have to wake up early every morning to commute to a job I hate.

So yeah, I agree with Mr. Cain up there: escaping the unfulfilling mainstream lifestyle (even if it wasn't of my own accord) was one of the best things that ever happened to me.

What Doesn't Seem Like Work?

Paul Graham:

“If something that seems like work to other people doesn’t seem like work to you, that’s something you’re well suited for. […]

The stranger your tastes seem to other people, the stronger evidence they probably are of what you should do.”

I totally agree, though I didn't realize this for myself until relatively recently. I hated writing and editing as a kid, only to discover how enjoyable they were after dropping out of college. Now I'm lucky enough to have a paid writing gig, and I'm tossing around the idea of starting a small editing business on the side.¹

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1. High school me would have shuddered at the thought; 2015 me thinks it sounds fun. Already got the name and domain picked out too. ↩

Where Ideas Come From

When asked where he gets his ideas, Neil Gaiman often gives the pithy answer, “I make them up. Out of my head.” When a seven-year-old asked the same, he felt compelled to expound a bit (or rather a lot, really, but for my purposes here I've edited out most of it):

“You get ideas from daydreaming. You get ideas from being bored. You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we're doing it.

[...]

All fiction is a process of imagining: whatever you write, in whatever genre or medium, your task is to make things up convincingly and interestingly and new.

And when you've an idea - which is, after all, merely something to hold on to as you begin - what then?

Well, then you write. You put one word after another until it's finished - whatever it is.”

Daydreaming is a huge part of the creative process. You don't have to stare at a blank page until ideas come—in fact I would advise against it. Gaze blankly out of a window once in a while. Go for walks and stare at clouds. Get lost in your thoughts. Let your inner child wander.

If ever anyone remarks that you look like you're doing nothing, don't be ashamed. Treat it as a badge of honor.