Pragmatic Life

Silencing your inner editor

Yesterday you met the mischievous demon---the one who nips at your ankles while you're trying to work and says "it's a beautiful day outside. C'mon let's play." But there's a meaner demon. This is the one who tells you you're no good.

In his latest podcast, comedian Mark Maron describes a night in San Francisco while he is doing stand-up comedy. Hopefully, I won't change the point of his story while I clean it up a bit.

He's on stage doing his comedy set and everyone is laughing except for one guy. This one guy isn't laughing, he isn't smiling, he doesn't seem to be reacting at all. No matter what Maron says, this guy just seems to be angry. Maron is sure the guy doesn't find his material funny, in fact he imagines the guy taking some pretty solid shots at him personally.

So after the show, Maron stands in the back of the club and says goodnight to people as they leave. He's a bit intimidated by this guy but he asks him anyway "hey, what did you think of the show."

The guy looks at him and says he loved it. The show was really funny and he really enjoyed himself. 

Maron is dumbfounded. He realizes that the entire dialogue of disapproval happened in his own head and that he'd created the whole situation himself.

In comedy stand-up you have to face your audience as you are creating and performing. But this imaginary disapproval has real impact on the quality of your creativity. When you write, you are alone in a room. That demon---the one who thinks your writing sucks---will try to get heard. 

He might do it in a helpful way pausing to tweak a word or a phrase. He might urge you to delete the last few pages and start again. Mostly you should ignore him while you are writing. At the end of today's writing you can take a moment to listen to him.

You can not create and refine at the same time. You are in different states. While you are writing, this demon wants to push you into the editing mode. Don't do it. You aren't in a state to appropriately judge. Of course there are cases when you should break this rule but for the most part when you're writing keep writing.

It's kind of like photography. Don't throw out pictures because of what you see when viewing them in your camera. Wait until you look at them on your computer---when you are not caught in the moment. You might see things in the shot that you missed at the time.

I had a great partner in morning radio in Cleveland. When I thought I'd blown a bit and that the show wasn't going well Matt Morgan would say "Wait and listen to the tape after the show. It's never as bad as you think it is." Invariably he was right.

I know I've told this story before so I have to tell you the other side of this as well. When I thought I'd really nailed a bit and the show was going great he'd say "Wait and listen to the tape after the show. It's never as good as you think it is either."

The same is mostly true about your writing. Some parts are going to be better or worse than others. For the most part nothing is going to be as terrible or as wonderful as you think it is when you are writing it. Silence the editor demon you have inside of you and wait. When you look back at what you've written it will mostly be ok. It will mostly be stuff you can tweak and fix tomorrow or whenever you come back to revise your work.

Do we get weekends off?

Awww man it's Saturday---do I have to write?

Nope.

You don't have to write today, tomorrow, or ever again. 

Today is the day you battle one of your most powerful demons---the one that doesn't want you to succeed. Every day just as you are getting set to do your writing this demon is thinking of all the things you could be doing instead of writing. 

This demon is pretty smart. It doesn't choose trivial tasks that you can easily blow off. It reminds you of that email you need to get to. Not the stuff you can scan and delete but the worthy email you set aside to put some thought into before responding. after all this demon is really you. Oh and you meant to go through your winter clothes and pull out the items you are going to donate to help a needy family get through the winter. Surely that's more important than writing. And don't forget the leaves. They don't rake themselves you know.

It's not that the demon is wrong. These alternatives to writing are important. In many cases they are more important than you spending a half hour or so writing. But it's a false trade off. You can do your daily writing and still get to that email, those clothes, the leaves, or whatever your demon is whispering in your ear. 

You need to get your writing done AND these other tasks so that you start to reassure your demon. Do this day after day and your demon will realize that you're serious about this. Day after day and you can shut the demon out during your writing time. It doesn't mean he won't keep trying---that's his job.

You are alone and you're not alone. 

Your demons are, of course, you. Only you can battle them. But we are here with you helping by battling our own along with you. It's why I posted to this blog today. I woke up this morning and thought "it's Saturday, I could take the weekend off from the blog." That wasn't enough to convince myself so my demon added, "besides, no one is really reading these posts. Why do you even bother?" I don't know about yours, but my demon has a real sarcastic tone and rolls his eyes a lot.

The only way to beat my demon is to write. You can take today off. I can take today off. Nothing is really lost today but it strengthens the demon next time. He knows that sometimes he can win. It empowers him to try again. He sees our weaknesses and he hasn't even whipped out the old "let's take a break and make some popcorn".

And so that's what keeps me writing every day. It's what I'm doing blogging whether anyone is reading or not. I glance over at my demon.  He's mostly receded for the morning encouraged only by my continually referring to him. He's not a bad guy. He's just mischievous. Tomorrow you'll meet another demon and that one is just plain mean.

One Thing

One of my authors called me yesterday. We're wrapping up his current book today and sending it to the typesetter on Monday and after he rests for a few days we're starting his next book. We were talking about what will change and what will stay the same in the way we work together.

"You know," he said, "I've learned how to send you email."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"No matter how many questions I include in my email, only one gets answered. I've learned to split my questions so that each question is in its own email."

He's right, I do that. I've been caught at his end of that type of exchange as well. I dash off an email with three questions and get an answer to one. I want an answer to all three but I'm not clear with the person I'm sending the email to and so he responds to the question he sees as the most important.

So back to you and your writing---do you get caught up in this kind of exchange with your readers? Do you make it too hard for them to know what your core message is in this sentence, paragraph, section, or chapter?

If you aren't clear on what your one thing is then your readers may isolate on the wrong thing. Remember that as you take them on their journey, you are pointing out the sights to see. It's up to you to pick out enough points of interest to keep them engaged but not so many that they get overwhelmed. 

Prepare them for the one thing you're talking about then transition them to the next one thing. But one thing at a time.

A little Potchking is OK

Cory Doctorow was recently interviewed by Christina Katz for Writer's Digest. Prag readers probably know Cory from Boing Boing, from his political activism, and from his science fiction books. You can read the article for more on Cory and for the definition of "potchking" but at the end of the article, Christina asks Cory for his advice for writers who want to get published.

He says that it's ok if you are "pausing every once in a while and daydreaming about how nice it will be when the book is finished and published." This is, however a slippery slope and Cory warns that "it’s easy to tip over from daydreaming to making the daydream the main activity."

I'm not as big a fan of daydreaming about fame and fortune as Cory is. I would refer to this as the friendly demon. It feels benign but it can quickly get you to concentrate on the non-important things.  

I love to daydream, but I day dream about different book scenarios and see how they'll play out. Often before I do my writing for the day, I've imagined different paths through the material I want to present.

Cory ends with Robert Heinlein's advice to writers and makes it clear that doing these three things doesn't guarantee you will get published but not doing them guarantees you won't. The advice is "Write, finish what you write, send what you write to an editor."

Don't read this

I waited to post this today until your daily writing was done. Merlin Mann summarizes all you have to know about writing today in the pep talk and warning he posted to his blog. Some authors have a top ten list, Merlin himself had top five lists for a long time, PragPub's top ten list goes all the way to 11. 

Today, Merlin's list stops at one. He gives us the "Top 1 Habits of Amazing Writers". Coming in at number 1, "They write."

That's it.

In fact, that's really the habit you are trying to develop this month. You are trying to learn to show up every day and write. If you can do that for a month, you can do that for longer. It takes somewhere between four and six weeks to really establish a habit. For the first few weeks you are going to fight with demons -- both friendly and not. We'll start with the friendly demons tomorrow and move on to the not so friendly over the weekend.

Writers write.

They should also read and think and have rich lives -- but there are people who read and think and have amazing lives who aren't writers. The way you tell the difference is that writers write.

One of the hardest things to do as an editor is to cancel a book in progress. There are lots of reasons to cancel a book but the easiest marker for me is that the writer isn't writing. He's got different plans for reorganizing his work or for where he's taking the book next but week after week he's got nothing to show me. 

Believe it or not, this can be a very hard book to cancel. I start to have the conversation with the author that they haven't been writing lately and they assure me that whatever reason they had for not writing is no longer the case. 

It's ok, I tell them. This book just isn't a priority for you. How do I know? Easy. You're not writing right now. You're not bad for not writing. You're just not writing.

Anyway, Merlin is both helping and hindering you. He tells you to write and then he provides you with some amazing resources for writers. How can you write when there's all this reading you could be doing. I love a lot of his links and I own them and I've used them instead of writing myself. Let's just say that now, I save these books for a room in the house where I don't do my writing and leave it at that.

Now before Merlin provides you with all of the reading you could be doing instead of writing he cautions you that when you are reading about writing you are not writing. He also points out that every good book on writing includes five points which he details -- these are points that work well with NaNoWriMo and this with PragProWriMo. 

I'll come back to some of these points next week, but for now I want you to focus on just one thing.

Writers write.

Tightening up

Put on a set of headphones and sit down in front of a microphone and your voice changes.

 You almost can't help it. One minute you're casually talking to a friend and then you decide it's time to start recording your podcast and you gear up and all of a sudden you aren't so casual any more.

The best podcasters sound casual and conversational. They sound like themselves. They don't sound as if they are "on the radio". I've been producing audio for a long time and here are a few tricks I use.

First, I'm not talking to the microphone. I'm talking to someone and the microphone is capturing my voice. My focus is not on the microphone or on reaching it. My focus is on reaching the person on the other side of that microphone---my listener. I have a really clear idea of who that person is. 

In my early days in radio I moved from one radio station to another. At one station I was having trouble finding my voice. A colleague suggested that I hang a picture of a friend on the console just on the other side of the microphone and talk to them. It worked. I was just telling my friend what songs we'd just heard and what events were coming to town that we might want to go to together.

I shared another trick with a friend who is getting into podcasting. I told him to put one earphone on and leave the other off. There are technical reasons for doing so when podcasting, but also if you only hear your voice through the headphones you push it in unnatural ways. You might make it resonate more or push it deeper. All of a sudden your focus isn't on the conversation you're having it's on the sound of your voice. You. Your show should be about the listener.

It's the same thing when you're writing your book. You talk to friends about the ideas in the book. You explain the concepts conversationally and then you turn to your computer and start to type and all of a sudden your voice changes. You are writing a book. You start to sound like an author and not like yourself anymore. It's your radio voice.

Talk to your one friend as you write. You're in the middle of explaining something to them and realize that now they can do something really cool with the technology you're teaching them. How would you tell them that if they were in the room with you? Start with those words and we can formal them up later if we need to.

I might say to a friend "safe travels." I would never  use the words that my "Houston based flight crew" used this morning as we landed. They urged me to "have a safe and pleasant journey to the city of my final destination."

Don't edit yet

Last night I flew into Seattle. After we landed the steward made the standard announcements as we taxied to the gate.

He began, "let me be the first to welcome you to Seattle." 

The voice inside my head screamed "noooooooo. You're speaking to us. This announcement is about us and not you. Who cares if you are the first. The message is that we've landed safely in Seattle. Just say 'Welcome to Seattle.' And perhaps smile while you say it."

He continued with his instructions about staying still and his admonition that the baggage in the overhead compartment may have shifted and he finished with my least favorite part of the standard announcements. 

He said, "If you live in Seattle, welcome home. If not enjoy your time in Seattle or ..." I winced knowing what was coming next, "... the city of your final destination."

No one talks like that. I know this isn't NaNoWriMo where you have to be particularly tuned to your characters voices, but when you write you should sound like you. 

Sure, our flight attendant was reading a script, but someone wrote that script for him. That person probably began the outro with "If you live in Seattle, welcome home." She typed it up and took it to her boss. It was friendly and simple. It ended the announcements on just the right not.

"But," her boss said, "what if they don't live in Seattle?"

She looked at him not knowing quite what to say. "I welcomed everyone to Seattle at the beginning of the announcements. Here I'm wrapping things up and throwing in a little personal note at the end."

"But," her boss said, "you really need to include the people who don't live in Seattle. They'll feel left out."

I need to interrupt here to make sure you know that they really won't. When you write you don't have to cover every case in painful detail. Certainly not now while you are writing your first draft. There will be plenty of time to smooth out the cases that you might have missed. Now you are crafting the core of your story.

Our writer knew her boss was wrong but he wasn't really interested in her objections so she came back with the next draft.

"If you live in Seattle, welcome home. If not enjoy your time here."

"But," her boss said --- he always seemed to begin his sentences that way, "what if they aren't staying in Seattle. What if they're flying on to Vancouver or driving to Portland or staying in Tacoma. This is after all the Seattle-Tacoma airport."

Our writer can't believe she works for such an idiot but she says, "What about, 'If you live in Seattle, welcome home. If not enjoy your time here or wherever you are heading.'"

Her boss pretends to think a moment and then says "But, that's not really clear. Where is 'here' and 'wherever you are heading' could be a bar. We don't want to encourage them to enjoy their time at a bar. We're in the airplane business. We move them from one city to another."

And that is how we get from a fairly friendly statement that does all it needs to do and get to the least welcoming welcome phrase you can imagine.

Right now keep writing fast and fresh. Tomorrow we'll talk about authentic voice.

Getting Started

It's November. Time to start writing. But where to start.

There is, of course, the King's advice in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to "Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end; then stop." Although this might be good advice in many areas of our lives, it may get in the way of writing your book. I hope you'll stop your book long before the end, but today let's concentrate on the beginning.

The reader needs to start at the beginning. Your book needs to start at the beginning. You don't, however, need to start at the beginning when you are writing your book. You can. I'm just saying you don't have to.

I know people who write from the beginning knowing that they will throw out the first fifty pages and write them again. They use those first fifty pages to find their voice and set their direction. This is the launch they need that propels them on to the end of the book. Once they get to the end they go back to the beginning and fix their first attempt.

When Donald Sutherland was a guest on "Inside the Actor's Studio" he said that he preferred to work in movies that don't film the first scene first. He explained that he's still figuring out his character in those early days. If audience sees those moments in the middle of the movie they don't notice -- they're already involved in the story. But if the audience sees those moments at the beginning of the movie they might never buy in.

The other problem with beginning at the beginning is you spend a lot of time thinking of all the things you need to tell your readers before you get to the good stuff. So why not make a deal with yourself: assume you've told them all they need to know and start writing the good stuff. You can always come back later and fill in holes.

Whatever you do, start typing or writing down words. There's nothing as imposing as an empty page or text document. Eighty pages this month. Try to write at least four pages today.

Mechanics

You've chosen your topic, you know who your reader is, and you know what journey you are taking them on. Tomorrow's the day. You're going to start writing your book.

It's pretty exciting.

You should get a little organized and make some final decisions today.

Are you going to write in public or in private? If you want people to be able to follow along then you should create a blog or use an existing blog to post your prose to every day. Put some sort of disclaimer or explanation there today letting people know that what you post is not a finished work, it is an initial draft. Let them know that you are experimenting with ideas and style.

Even after you've set your blog readers' expectations, you may not want to enable comments on your blog for this next month. Readers can be wonderful and they may give you a lot of support and encouragement. 

They can also be distracting, discouraging, or down-right mean. Someone may innocently ask, "hey, have you ever thought of ..." and off you go like a dog after a squirrel forgetting what you were engaged in before the squirrel wandered by. Someone else might take exception with the way you've explained something or point to another site where someone else, in their opinion, is doing a much better job. As for mean, you'll be amazed at the comments some people will come at you with.

I tend to leave the comments on and I never respond to them. I always feel that the comment section is where the readers get to talk amongst themselves. If you turn the comments off, people still feel the same way, they just can't express it directly on your site. That's ok -- you will have to deal with public comments about your work at some point but now might not be the time.

If you decide to write publicly, please post a link below so that we can follow your progress.

If you don't want to write in public, I'd still like to hear how you are doing. I think it helps you to have to report back in each day and let us know how much your wrote, how much you have total and how it went. 

People I follow on Twitter do that for running, exercising, losing weight and other activities where they need to engage in regular practice. I can easily ignore it if I want but I do notice the day feels different if someone who works out daily misses a day. 

I used to meet a friend at the gym and our rule was "if you can't make it, don't let me know." If I knew he wasn't going to show up then it would have been easy for me not to show up. Your daily reports of writing will help other people keep writing as well.

If you are on Twitter, just tweet when you have finished your writing for the day. Use the tag #pragprowrimo and let us know what you wrote and how it went. 

If you're not on Twitter go ahead and post your progress in the comments to this blog. Somewhere you need to declare what you've done. It will keep you writing.

The only rule is to keep writing. Other than that, have fun and check back in with us to let us know how it's going.

Your task for today is to set up your writing environment so that tomorrow you can get started on your book.

The Journey

We'll spend a lot of time this month talking about your journey as a writer. Today let's think a bit about your reader's journey.

Yesterday you chose your topic but that's not enough. I'll give you an example. I'm writing a book on Cocoa (writing applications for Mac OS X). So is Tim Isted. Our books aren't anything alike even though the topic is the same. We each have different readers in mind and we each have clear ideas of the journey our readers will take over the course of our respective books.

My book is for experienced programmers who are new to writing applications for the Mac or the iPhone. Tim's is for people who've never really programmed before. They need to learn how to program the Mac but they also need to learn how to program. I assume my readers know some C-style language like Java, Ruby, or C/C++. They know about variables and methods (or functions) and conditionals. My readers just need to understand how to take all they know and apply it to the Cocoa world like a native. Tim needs to start at a different point.

Different readers. Different journeys.

So who are you writing your book for? At the Prags we view our readers as the heros of our books. If the reader is the hero of the story we're telling, then we need to understand that reader pretty well. Take a look at your topic and decide who you are writing for. What is their experience? What do you know about the context they'll be reading your book in? What do they want to be able to do when they're done with your book? 

You're not just writing words. Many people can put together a bunch of facts on your topic. What makes you special is the journey you are going to take people on. You are the tour guide, the Merlin, the Dumbledore, the teacher that will lead your readers on a journey that will interest, engage, and inform them.

As Andy Hunt says in his advice on writing: it's not the words.

"That's nonsense," you say. "You're writing. Of course it's the words."

Check out his article and if you don't have the time or attention span to read all of it, page down to the section headed "Map it out". He links to Dave Thomas' post on the Hero's Journey and suggest that you map out the journey your going to take the reader on. 

Andy asks you to think of the landmarks you'll see along the way and then understand what the reader will feel along the way. You don't need to make an outline for this journey --- you need a map.

Today's challenge is for you to identify your reader and the journey you are taking them on. Tomorrow we'll look at some of the nuts and bolts mechanics for this month of writing ahead.