Topic: Writing

Lets put this in the category of “tycho writing about software development in an attempt to draw a conclusion beyond software development.” Often I find this to be an annoying impulse as, software can be meaningful in and of itself and it’s practices aren’t always incredibly relevant. On the other hand, most of my work is (at least theoretically) not software, so I find myself doing this kind of thing more than I’d really like. So be it.

Agile Development refers to a set of practices that encourages developers to review their progress regularly, to write code in testable units, to consult with the client regularly to allow the client to lead the design process to reflect the reality that requirements, contexts, and possibilities change as a result of the ongoing development process. Extreme Programing (XP), is probably the most famous subset of Agile Development, and I think both are interesting (and popular) because they promote a kind of flexibility and respond to (and draws from) the creative impulse. XP takes the iterative/test driven Agile philosophy and does “wacky” things like “pair programming” where two developers take turns typing and monitoring the coding process. I’ve of course, not really, worked in these situations, but I am fascinated by the possibilities.

I often think about the implications of these kinds of methodologies on the work I do (writing). I have yet to be convinced that this is an entirely productive impulse, but that never stops me.

The key feature of Agile development--to my mind--is that it’s built around multiple iterations. Rather than concentrating on getting all of the details right, the goal is to get something working, and then expand/refactor/revise and get review on all these iterations, so that through successive iteration you have a solid, relevant, and sturdy result. Once you have iterations, getting customer review is easier (because there’s something to evaluate), testing is easier, collaboration is easier.

Writers already have a sense of drafts, and as such this is the way we always work. In another sense, we don’t seek feedback on most drafts, and so while we might revise in a couple of “lumps” we editorial collaboration is pretty minimal during the writing process. That’s not a bad thing, just a commentary on the analogy. Writing collaboratively is also damned hard, and so collaborations are more often based on structural divisions (eg. “you write parts one, four, five, and seven; and I’ll write two, three, six, and eight,") or in larger groups, require dedicated editorial nodes/contributors to organize logistics.

True story: I wrote an academic paper with someones (we lived next door to each other at the time) and as I remember, we tended to do something very much like “pair programming,” I’d drive (type) and she’d navigate (read over my shoulder,) or she’d type and I’d pace, though I think I tended toward the typing roll for any number of reasons. It worked, but we had (and have) such different approaches to writing, thinking about that sort of boggles.

In another sense, posting rough drafts of works on the Internet (critical futures; Cory Doctorow’s Podcast; sam starbuck’s projects; etc.) is another way to get the kind of on going feedback that features so prominently in the Agile/XP methodologies.

The truth is that I had expected to talk about how programming and writing are fundamentally different, and how while Agile and XP are really powerful ways to think about the creation of programs, the creation of novels, stories, and essays can’t work that way.

While I was able to find some parallels, and examples to the contrary, there are so many features of the way that I write, the way that I create, that run quite counter to the “agile way:”

• I don’t do iterative drafting very well. I write something, I run through it twice, someone else gives feedback, I run through it once more, and it’s either good enough to do something with at that point, or I abandon it.
• We mysticsize the creative process, particularly for “artistic” creation. I don’t particularly think of myself as an artist, but I think regardless, because we’re not very good at articulating our creative process (and generally unwilling to change the way we work, much), there isn’t a lot of willingness to change how we write.
• Collaboration is a challenge because of the aforementioned mysticism, and because individuals are capable of (in most cases) writing the long-forms by themselves (novels, screenplays) collaboration isn’t a vital necessity. The counter-example would be what happens in the writing rooms of television shows, I suppose, though I haven’t worked in these situations. Not that I’d be opposed, if someone wanted to hire me to do that ;).
• Writers make their money (at least as we’re taught to think) by selling publication rights. Iterative work requires frequent publication, which discourages working in this way. Obviously there are some other business models, and other kinds of writing, but generally speaking…

Writing this has inspired me to move more in the direction of posting to Critical Futures again, and to work harder on collaboration projects. I’ve been stuck in my own writing, as life and an iterative hump have combined to really take me out of the game for a while. While I doubt any change in methodology could really make me slightly less linear, it is helpful to think about process in new and different ways. In point of fact, everyone works eclectically anyway, but just thinking about how we/I work has some worth. That much I’m sure.

Onward and Upward!

During my middle year of college, I took a class on gender and literature where we had to write a series (10? 12?) of “journal” entries. The assignment was to write 250-300 (hard boundaries) words due by midnight on Friday during most of the weeks of the semester. And there were other rules regarding the speed or frequency you could turn them in that I don’t remember, but there were notably few restrictions on what they could be about.

A few interesting things happened. One is, that though we could write all of them in a weekend, we never did. My roommate(s) and I would write them while everyone was drinking on Friday night. We got pretty heroic about how close we’d cut these to the deadline. There was even a night when I was driving a friend to the airport (3-4 hours in the car) and I argued for an extension through an intermediary whilst driving quite assertively on I-90. Another is that we all got very good at editing our writing to a limited number of words, and it’s a good skill to have. But the most important thing is that all my classmates wrote about the texts we were reading. I wrote about, g-d knows what. Not the things we were reading, except in loose tangential ways.

A roommate asked about if this was, an acceptable thing to do, and I wrote the professor somewhat worried that maybe my journal entries had strayed too far afield. In fairness, the professor’s lectures had a similar tendency to stray, as near as I could tell, but it seemed like the thing to do.

The response was something along the lines of “Don’t worry [tycho,] I quite enjoy your widely synthetic entries. You’ve received credit for all that you’ve submitted.”

Needless to say “widely synthetic,” became my new slogan.¹

I think my blagging style developed in that class, such as it is, which is all sorts of scary.

I started writing this post with the intention of discussing the Sapir-Worf and programing languages. Which I think certainly qualifies as being “widely synthetic,” hence the story, but I think I’ll have to save that for next time.

Take care of yourselves, dearest readers.

I’m a big fan of outlines. I wrote this post about tightening outlines about my approach to making outlines better that I’ve been using most recently. This post, in turn is more about execution.

The issue, that I think causes a lot of people to be less into outlines, is the fact that outlines sort of dreary to write from. Which is to say, that the cool thing about writing (for me at least) is the feeling I get when I immerse myself in a world and characters' and I’m able to record the feeling of that experience. When it works that’s really satisfying, and while I don’t think it’s required for “being a writer,” it is certainly nice when it happens.

I suspect I’m not alone in finding this aspect of writing to be pleasurable and the thing about it is, of course, that it’s hard to both “slipstream” into the writing world and also follow your outline. The end result is that while I’m pretty rigorous about creating my outlines I’m not particularly rigorous about following my outlines.

This isn’t, as far as I’m concerned, a bad thing. For a couple of reasons.

1. The act of creating an outline is useful onto itself. It walks you through the story once so you know what’s going on, and you can figure out or avoid writing yourself into corners. Also the more familiar you are with the whole story when you start writing at the beginning, the less likely you are to have a story that takes a few chapters to “get off the ground.”

2. If you review your outline sporadically while you’re writing, you’ll probably be able to recall the important memories of “what you were thinking when you wrote that part of the outline, and then and be able to get to that part of the story, and write from there. You needed follow what you said in the outline very closely--lots of great ideas come up when you write, but having a road map makes it harder to get lost.

Ok, that’s what I keep telling myself. The truth is that I’ve been toiling in chapters 4 and 5 of this novel for a few weeks now, and my outline isn’t doing me a lot of good. And at least on number two above, I’ve not been very good at keeping up with my outline.

I’m not even sure how to articulate my issue with the story at this point. Part of the issue, is that I juggled some scenes around in chapter three that required pushing a few other things back, and having been thrown off the rails, it’s hard to figure out the pacing of what I’m trying to do right now. I think that gets it pretty closely.

So I’m going to spend some time this week, taking a bit of a breather from working on the actual text, and working on doing a little more outlining, and work on other projects, so I feel a little bit less like I’m grasping around in the dark.

Because I’m nothing if not reasonable.

Onward and Upward!

My post about information buckets got me thinking, thanks to some other things that have filtered through my awareness in the last few weeks, about integrated development environments.

See, a couple years ago, I used everything buckets like mad, they were the application of the future, the software that seemed to just scratch every itch. I don’t know that I used them as general databases for everything but I did all of my writing and research-related tasks in them, and it was great.

The articles I read where there, along with the notes that I made, along with citation information, along with the final paper. Along with all of my previous papers and articles. I never had to go look for things again, it was all there.

This is similar to an IDE, or integrated development environment, which is a class of applications that have some measure of popularity amongst computer programmers. IDE’s generally (and I’m not clear on this, as I’ve never used one) provide tools for managing large projects and integrate with code-compilers, debugging tools, version control tools, multi-file project managers, and code browsers which allow you to find related parts of code across an entire project without scrolling through a lot of files. I think there’s probably some debate on weather these are good things for programmers (objections would include that they make for lazy/poor practices, and that IDE components do lots of things poorly) but generally I suspect they are good things. And as it turns out most of our beloved text-editors have a lot of IDE-like functionality anyway.

In a way, the information bucket provides an IDE-like environment for the information worker or writer. And that’s sort of a cool way of looking at this. Indeed, I think writers need better integrated environments, there are a lot of tools that I think we could benefit from. While I’ve been working on these posts, I’ve also been working on posts about the emacs org-mode, and while they’re ultimately not directly connected, I think something like org-mode is a great boon to writers and information workers. Integrated systems that manage citations, references, and notes are essential, as well as other helpful features that might include managing output, structure, and version control.

I hack most of these features together in emacs with some help from LaTeX, git, and BibTeX, but I recognize that this isn’t ideal or for everyone. There are other applications that aren’t “information buckets,” but provide writing environments that aren’t hacked from programing tools (emacs) or desktop publishing tools (MS Word). For example: Scrivener that provides a clever way to write longer form documents with structure, and Celtex that provides all sorts of screenplay writing tools (outlines, storyboards, character databases) and script management tools. Celtex even calls itself an “Integrated Media Pre-production” tool.

I’m not sure that these are the ideal tools for this task. Any of them. I’m partial to my solution, but I end up having to do a lot of informal organization to make it all stick together. So I wonder, what kind of software do other writers to keep all their ducks in a row?

More later. Of course.

So soon, probably during the end of this post or somewhere in tomorrow’s post, I’m going to pass the half-million word mark on tychoish.com. This is a bit inflated because I incorporated the posts from tealart a couple of years ago, and some of that material includes quotes and links that I don’t think should count toward the site’s word count odometer. But there you have it, and in any case this is a milestone, that’s worth commemorating.

There’s a quote out there along the lines of “everyone has a million words of crap in them before they get to the good stuff.” If we count the writing I do here, this means I’m getting close. If we count blog posts and academic writing, I think I’m probably well into the “good stuff.” I suppose some of that is up to you.

I wrote a “journal”-type post about myself and what I was up to beyond what I blog about here (and a few of my posts since then have veered in that direction, alas). While these used to be the “easy posts” that I would just sort of blather out a year ago,¹ I don’t feel like I miss them.

I’m doing well. I have a lot on my plate, and a lot of “loose ends” floating around that are causing some stress, but I really can’t complain. Just for grins the things I’m working on right now:

• Fiction Writing

• Station Keeping, Season 2 (about 5 thousand more words to go).

• The Novel, (half done, 4-5 more months till first draft; leaving 3 months for rewrites, and a podcast launch in August.)

• Trailing Edge. (Hibernating. 3k more words, and then scores of edits).

• Open Source Research

  I’m working on turning the research project that’s been sort of sputtering along into something more coherent on a number of different levels. I’m not ready to announce this exactly but it involves:

  • Writing lots of emails. Lots of emails.
  • Turn a fairly linear paper into a wiki.
  • Collect a more complete bibliography file.

  • Website things
  • Get Critical Futures back on track.

• Tychoish.com Redesign project. Not to mention writing for the site like I do.

• Something for the open source project described above.

• Life things

• I probably have half a dozen small/midsized trips this year. Knitting things, dancing things, work things, science fiction things. That’s a lot of stress there.

• I’m going to be moving this summer.

• For someone who views himself as being a shut-in mostly, I do a lot of stuff “out:” dancing 3 times a week, singing from time to time, and so forth.

• Knitting things

• The grandmother shawl, plus two other lace shawls in progress.

• My Starmore cable sweater. I’m 20% done with it. That’s not very much.

• The color-work sweater that just needs another sleeve.

So that’s what’s on my plate. I really need to start knocking this stuff out.

Will this blog be around in another half million words? I figure that that means that I’d have to keep up doing this for another three or three and a half years, at my current rate. It could happen. It could definitely happen.

I’ll see you on the other side.

I’ve always been a really big fan of outlining and structured writing, particularly for long form stuff. I suspect anyone who has ever argued with me about writing, or written in collaboration with me is probably nodding in understanding (or yelling “that’s an understatement” and flipping the bird to the monitor). This probably explains my interest in things like LaTeX and Markdown, and the reason that wiki’s have been frustrating for me, and the reason that I can pull my distractable attention span together enough to be able write long form projects. I mean, I even managed that as a teenager, which continues to impress me at least.

I like outlining because it allows me the opportunity to separate conceptual activity from implementation activity to a great extent. I can write an outline, figure out what’s going to happen, what I need to tell, where I’m headed in an argument/plot, and then when I go to write, I don’t have to figure out really core/low-level aspects of the story/essay as I’m trying to figure out how to move the characters around. Writing diologue and “people,” in their world is a very different task from, figuring out the fate of that world, and a character’s thoroughly. Or an illustrative motif in an essay. Outlining helps me to isolate and deal with these problems in different contexts, as well as provide continuity between writing sessions for particularly long work.

One of the biggest challenges (and successes) of the project that I’m working on at the moment was “making enough happen” in the story. I got an outline, that told a story that was too big for a short story, and yet didn’t provide the “body,” and rich environment that makes novels so enjoyable. So I wrote this draft of an outline, and then I spent the better part of a week thinking about “ok, now what can I add?” and “If I add this B-plot how will it triangulate and complicate the lives of the other characters.” And I kept adding scenes, details, and turns that would make life hell for the characters.

In previous attempts (to varying degree’s) I’ve said something like “I need to tell a story about “Telepaths who immigrating to Mars,” and then I write the outline, and as I wrote the stories there was never enough there, characters distraught-ness was out of phase with what was happening (my criticism, other people don’t seem to have this response, as much). So this time--so far--I’ve been really pleased with the way that the “tighter, more packed” outline has really helped the way that the writing of the story has progressed. You’ll be able to judge for yourself in time, but it’s sort of cool. What follows are a collection of the lesson’s learned from this outlining process:

• Write a full outline, before you go back and add stuff. The initial concept, and layout of the story is valuable, even if you should probably be resistant to just “going with it.”
• Even if you feel the “burring impulse of creation,” outline anyway. For novels and long works, sustaining that impulse over many months is difficult. There are lots of different ways to outline (free writing, various levels of structured lists, note cards, etc.) something is bound to suit your style.
• While conventional wisdom holds that you shouldn’t edit works in process (as this breaks flow and rhythm), once you have an outline completed. Edit a lot. Not for polish, but imagine the story, and play around with the order of chapters/key scenes. Push as much of the action into the shortest amount of space you can. See what you can do to pump up the action in other parts of the book.
• Add stuff. Add a lot of stuff. You’ll be able cut later, tighten things up later, having material of “things that could happen,” and having gone through the experience of playing with your story will help you, even if you say “nah, I don’t want to write that scene,” when you’re writing, or you feel that a scene you had in your outline won’t really work anymore. Cutting is easier later than adding more material
• Three is a really great number for stories. We’re all used to “good guy” versus “bad guy” plot dynamics, and the “bi-polar” approach to story telling, while familiar becomes boring really quick. Adding “thirds” to stories makes things much more complex, and much more dynamic. Third plotlines, third characters, third-major settings, and so forth. Or at least play with the idea.

Onward and Upward!

When I took a break from Critical Futures near the end of last year, I had intended to begin with the new year with renewed energy and vigor, but when the new year rolled around, I found myself somewhat lacking in vigor. So I’ve waited, and I kept waiting. And now, its the end of January, and I still haven’t restarted, and I think it’ll be good to talk for a moment about that.

A big part of this is the fact that holiday vacations (such as they are post school) are never quite as long as you ever expect them to be. So I didn’t get that massive fiction writing binge that I was expecting and hoping for. And I also didn’t get that website redesign binge that I was hoping for. Alas. So I’ve needed more time, if not to do things, then to let projects breath. So my one or two week vacation turned into a month or more.

Secondly, my “write more resolution” (such as it is) that I talked about in this post, is a practice that’s a little more than a week old at this point. that’s not a problem, but preparing content for posting when I’m not actively writing on a project very much feels draining. Also, I’m aware that my “supply” of fiction is going to run out, well. Sooner than I’ll be ready to resupply it, particularly since the novel I’m working on now, isn’t really a Critical Futures project. Well, it is, kind of.

So with that in mind, what lies in wait for Critical Futures?

Well…

Recently I’ve started working more on the ending to Station Keeping’s second “season” I’m not keeping a special eye on it, but I’m probably half way done with the second season (which is all new). That’s helped my morale a good deal. Also, I’m beginning to see some real progress on the new novel project (yay for being less stuck), which is a help. While it’s a long way off still, knowing that this is going to end up as a podcast (and that this podcast will be a part of Critical Futures) that’s been inspiring for my feelings of writerliness. Putting my “job” as a writer above my “job” as an editor/publisher was something that I really had to do in order to make it worthwhile.

So the plan? I’m going to post fiction less regularly. The pieces might be slightly longer (but probably not much). I’ll probably alternate Tuesday/Thursday weeks with Monday/Wednesday weeks. When the podcast starts, I’ll probably do a pod-cast episode and a piece of fiction a week. I’m not going to change the design of the site, much, but I think some tweaks are in order, and I need to add/update some of the static pages on the site.

If anyone has suggestions, quirky science fiction that they’d like to submit to Critical Futures, or wants to help out (with designs or the like), I’d love to hear from you.

Onward and Upward!

(Editor’s note: Despite the fact that I don’t particularly like this post, or find that its relavant, or think that its particularly well done, I need another entry to post for testing reasons so here goes nothing. Enjoy it, or not.)

For various reason I’ve been referred to as a geek, and I’d agree with this assessment most of the time: I’m really good with computers, I have lots of mobile technology equipment and experience, and I use technology to assist my productivity as much as possible. The odd thing is that in many senses I’m incredibly retro. The biggest testament to my retro hippness, is the fact that I do a lot of writing with a fountain pen on paper (mostly pre-writing and other short things when I’m out in the real world.) Being a fairly compulsive person, I like to keep things in some semblance of order and a number of various notebooks, and other collections of blank paper help me do this.

I’ve tried unlined sketch books (which would have been great had it not been book bound, thus disagreeing with my left-handedness and portability demands,) low grade wide ruled notebooks, high grade collage rule books, memo pads, tablets, and finally steno pads. My demands are fairly high. Spiral binding is required, I need to be able to fit a medium amount of stuff on a page and I need to be able to throw it into a bag with ease, the paper has to be smooth and absorbent so that it agrees with my pen(s), the notebook shouldn’t be that thick because I like to be able to fill up a notebook every so often so when there are about 5 million billion sheets I never feel like I’m accomplishing anything.

For a long time I’d been muddling through a notebook that wasn’t perfect but it did the job fairly well, and one day as I was walking through Wal-Mart looking for batteries or t-shirts I walked by the notebook isle and saw something that looked perfect: a baby-blue steno pad for 97 cents. I really should have thought of it sooner, but in any case I bought it and took it home. It worked perfectly and a few pages into it I started writing an entry about finally finding the perfect notebook. It was entitled The Perfect Notebook Bliss and in it I planned to celebrate finally finding a notebook that was as near to perfection as I could manage.

Then I went on a canoe trip. While my prized note book didn’t get nearly as wet as some of my other things, one bottom corner got wet and the ink bleed through a little. No big deal. I rescued some of the most badly disturbed pages and kept using it.

Only hours ago, I went for a longish walk and had a good time (sarcasm) while it rained and thundered on me for about an hour. I hoped that the combination of my bag, my speed, the distance and my ability to maneuver my way between the rain drops without an umbrella would protect me and my belongings from becoming drenched. It didn’t work and most of my stuff got a little wet. Thankfully it all dried out fairly quickly, but the thing about fountain pen ink is that it will run with abandon if it gets a little bit wet.

I’ve given up on that steno pad, it’s cursed, and the bottoms of the white sheets have dark bluish color and the lines have washed away. Thankfully I know now what the perfect notebook isÖalmost. For my next foray into the realm of blank paper, I’m looking for something that is spiral bound across the top, has medium to high quality paper, is fairly small both in height and length as well as depth, and if I can find one that is meant as a drawing or sketch pad (thus no lines), I may have finally found the perfect notebook. Bliss.