Experience, design & technology.

Posts tagged “writing”

Problogging

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Posted on June 21st, 2012

A few days ago I posted a short note, essentially my thoughts on the ‘do what you love’ topic, which has also been covered quite extensively elsewhere. One great way to start doing what you love (as a job), is to just start doing what you love and receiving payment for it! The way I’ve done that is to start this blog, then I left my job for 9 months to go traveling around the world. Right now my only job is to write interesting things on this website, for interested and interesting people to read. That’s it. Right now I get paid in page views and (very rarely) nice comments. You know, as well as I do, that I can’t feed myself with…

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On format

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Posted on January 30th, 2012

Printing Press, by Thomas Hawk I’ve been thinking lately, about the plethora of new book distribution formats (be that electronic, audio, print-on-demand) and one thing occurred to me that I just can’t shake. How will we look back on todays written word, in generations to come? I don’t mean through the lens of nostalgia, rather I mean how will we retrieve, access, read and learn from this moment in time – when a staggeringly huge amount of it is locked up in proprietary formats and in many ways destined to decay along with their creators. I’m reasonably certain that the standards-based web (HTML, CSS, JS) will be with us for a long time, but what of other book formats and their makers? The ePub…

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Print the truth

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Posted on January 14th, 2012

Sign of deeper troubles over at the NYT – here’s Public Editor Arthur S. Brisbane; I’m looking for reader input on whether and when New York Times news reporters should challenge “facts” that are asserted by newsmakers they write about. … Is that the prevailing view? And if so, how can The Times do this in a way that is objective and fair? Is it possible to be objective and fair when the reporter is choosing to correct one fact over another? Are there other problems that The Times would face that I haven’t mentioned here? I’m honestly surprised by the innocence shown by someone whose role description requires that he “monitors the paper’s journalistic practices”. What do you think the answer to the…

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Since 2011

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Posted on January 12th, 2012

Late last year I decided to pull my sleeves up and give this blog a bit more attention. I looked at my namesake and decided it could be so much more. I opened textwrangler, learnt how to inspect and architect CSS, and most importantly got back into the habit of writing. I didn’t have any goals for the writing, apart from consistency and some fuzzy thoughts around quality. Aiming for achievable targets does help, as progress and success on those fronts is highly tangible and it feels good. I like writing on here, I never really know what form it is going to take and I like that it will grow and flex over time. I set myself a target of one post per…

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Plotto

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Posted on January 9th, 2012

Have you heard of Plotto? Neither had I, up until this morning. It’s a text from 1894 by Georges Polti, which creates a structural system for creating story plots. It’s quite extraordinary, taking 36 basic plots through a staggering 1462 plot permutations. Below is one example. Plotto is being reissued by Tin House. Fun for the whole family (if your family is full of aspiring authors, or plot geeks). Via brain pickings

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the bigger picture

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Posted on December 27th, 2011

A bit of a small train of thought piece coming up.  This was inspired by these two posts by Marco Arment. I’m glad I follow people like Marco, Michael & Jason. They’re writers who take a longer view on life, industry and on this whole blogging thing, and in many ways have been doing this for a long time. Certainly longer than I have. It really helps, seeing others who’re facing conceptual struggles I can relate to, and taking a stance on what they’re all about. Even if they don’t know specifically what they’re producing (or perhaps that’s actually the point, that what’s being made can’t be labelled so easily), they’re prepared to stick to the core goals of the site. The blog is the…

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The death of writing

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Posted on December 2nd, 2011

Most people who write for a living are thrilled by the sheer flexibility computers offer. In my case, I can rapidly bang thoughts into WriteRoom or Scrivener and then mould and shape them rather like a sculptor working on a piece of rock. When I used to write using only paper, the process was slower and I’d be frustrated by errors and editing. At school, this was even worse, since we were encouraged to submit final English essays with no errors at all, or we’d be marked down. This turned a creative pursuit into laborious drudge work, which the computer typically makes significantly less painful. Also, if we look at very young children, the simple act of holding a pencil and learning writing doesn’t…

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journal-ism

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Posted on November 18th, 2009

Today I spent some time going through earlier posts, making small tweaks or edits to image sizes – bringing the site back up to date with the new theme (courtesy of subtraction.com). Something that came to mind during this was that I haven’t been using this site as a sketchpad or notebook as much as I should. Tracing my mindspace through those earlier posts was quite fun, even the ideas I’d written even as little as 6 months ago seem so alien to me now – which is somewhat fascinating considering it’s all so open and public.The immediate comparison this draws is that of the private diary or journal. Two very different writing positions emerge;a) Write down ideas (which often feel quaint at a…

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