writing – Page 3 – This Builds Character

Your perceptions might be wrong

In a BBC 6 radio interview, Radiohead’s Ed O’Brien explained why they left the song Lift off of the album OK Computer:

“Lift” is a funny song. We played that live with Alanis Morrissette, and it was a really interesting song because the audience, suddenly you’d see them get up and start grooving, it had this kind of infectiousness about it. It was a big, anthemic song. If that song had been on that album, it would have taken us to a different place, and we’d have probably sold a lot more records…

For perspective, OK Computer sold 7 million copies to Jagged Little Pill’s 25 million.

In that sense, the band may have been correct.

But they still made an album that sold almost seven times as many copies as their previous one and is regularly included in lists of The Best Albums of All Time.

It reminds me of a line from Thich Nhat Hanh’s How to See:

We should not trust our perceptions too much—that is something the Buddha taught. “Are you sure of your perceptions?” he asked us. I urge you to write this phrase down on a card and put it up on the wall of your room: “Are you sure of your perceptions?” There is a river of perceptions in you. You should sit down on the bank of this river and contemplate your perceptions.

Radiohead attempted to predict the reaction people would have to their song.

They couldn’t know for sure, but they had trust in their perceptions of the audience when they played the song live.

I always find points when working on something where I’m trying to judge the potential reaction of its intended audience.

Points where I tend to struggle come when I lack that trust in my perceptions—second guessing what people will think when the work is in front of them.

It might be worth remembering how Radiohead sought out the benefit of taking their work out into the world.

Uncertainty about how other people will react can’t be removed by hiding the work from other people.

What work will last?

Every week I edit a newsletter on writing and other things interesting to writers for my job.

Each issue is a new collection of links centered on a different theme, with other interesting nuggets at the end.

I’m always looking for ways to avoid linking to things people have already seen in the past week. If I’m just echoing what’s popular, I’m not offering much value.

Recently I stumbled onto a site that gives you the oldest existing results to your search.

It’s useful-ish.

It reminds me that there’s more to the internet than what was published days, or even hours, ago.

Many of the most frequently read posts on this site are things I wrote one or more years ago.

Yes, it’s a limited data set (I could/should post here more regularly), but they’re also posts on fairly evergreen topics.

If I write an engaging tweet, I’ll know in a matter of hours. When I publish something here, I might not know for a year or more if it has value to other people.

But the tweet will be difficult to find in a few days.

If I’m going to measure what’s a better use of my 4,000 weeks based on how many people find something useful in what I do, it makes sense to spend less time shouting to be heard in a big party and instead work quietly on making things that are available for people when they’re actively looking for them.

Clicks and eyeballs aren’t everything, but they’re a thing.

The In-Between Moments

I needed something to do while waiting for my coffee to finish brewing. A fresh pot makes a good dividing line between tasks.

I chose to weed my reading list of saved articles. There was plenty I saved months and years ago that I never came back to.

I saw a block of articles I saved for a story or script idea I never took past the idea stage. They seemed oddly relevant to a completely different story I’m working on right now—one I was just about to start working on as soon as my coffee was ready.

I’m glad I took the moment to tidy up my digital life instead of searching and scrolling. I’m also glad I have a system, even an imperfect one, for keeping track of things that spark ideas.

Those moments between to-dos have the potential to be a rest stop, a detour, or an on-ramp.

It feels like a lot of the writing and writing-based work I do lately is all about collecting shiny things, trusting I can forget them for a while, and then pulling them back out when needed.

Five Things I’ve Learned Writing a Weekly-ish Email Newsletter

I started editing the Quote-Unquote Apps newsletter Inneresting last July. Each issue has a themed collection of links aimed at writers and people interested in writing.

I wanted to collect a few thoughts about what works for me since it might help other people.

1. Sustainability > Perfection

For the first few issues I wrote a blog post to go along with the theme.

It slowed things down—It was doing the work twice.

Thoughtful copywriting for links shows the curator’s intent in fewer words.

And thoughtful doesn’t mean obsessive.

I take more than one pass on every line to make sure I’m happy to see my name attached to the work, but I won’t tweak it until I miss my deadline.

2. If it’s interesting to me, I won’t be alone

Even if something isn’t perfectly on-brand.

I’ve seen positive responses to links that were off-topic for the week’s theme, or outside the wheelhouse of the newsletter.

But only if the item is “I-need-everyone-to-see-this” level interesting to me.

3. It’s okay to not read the whole internet

I collect most of my material from my RSS reader and web searches.

It’s easy to go down rabbit holes, or think I need to look a little longer for just one more article.

The internet goes on forever, but I can’t. Eventually I need to shut tabs or Mark All As Read.

Some newsletters use a set number of links per issue—I focus on word count. My feeling for the point of diminishing returns comes from how much I know I’ll have to write to set up each link rather than how many links I plan to share.

4. Finding your voice is more archaeology than architecture

I never sat down and thought “This is the voice of Inneresting.”

One week I might get feedback about trying a different tense.

Or I’d look at the previous weeks and try a different paragraph structure.

Looking back on previous weeks, I picked out pieces of what felt right.

The more I wrote, the more examples I had to draw from to figure out how write the next one.

5. Read Several short sentences about writing

Verlyn Klinkenborg changed how I think about writing.

The book encourages you to see sentences as more than just conveyor belts to move “meaning” from writer to reader.

Klinkenborg disabused me of the idea that “the point” is something you only get to at the end of a text.

Every sentence should have a purpose on its own, not just push the reader forward.

Gatekeeping and Level Grinding

“…you used to be able to do ALL the reading. You could read all the essential science fiction books before you wrote yours. You could watch all the key movies before you directed yours. You could understand all the current thinking in a field of medicine before you prescribed a drug…
No longer.
—Seth Godin, “On doing the reading”

As someone that loved movies, went out and got one degree in movies, and then decided he needed another degree on the subject… I feel a little called out.

The inner gatekeeper might be more insidious than the person telling you that you don’t know enough minutiae to be a “real” fan, or that you don’t have the right experience or connections.

You can look for ways to circumvent a person trying to keep you on the outside in ways that you can’t with a voice inside your own head.

That voice inside telling you to wait a little bit longer. Do something else first. “Not yet,” it whispers. “You’re still not ready.”

“I refer to this as the difference between being in motion and taking action. The two ideas sound similar, but they’re not the same. When you’re in motion, you’re planning and strategizing and learning. Those are all good things, but they don’t produce a result.
Action, on the other hand, is the type of behavior that will deliver an outcome. If I outline twenty ideas for articles I want to write, that’s motion. If I actually sit down and write an article, that’s action. If I search for a better diet plan and read a few books on the topic, that’s motion. If I actually eat a healthy meal, that’s action.
Sometimes motion is useful, but it will never produce an outcome by itself. It doesn’t matter how many times you go talk to the personal trainer, that motion will never get you in shape. Only the action of working out will get the result you’re looking to achieve.”
James Clear, Atomic Habits

When I had time for video games that asked 60+ hours from you, I played a decent number of RPGs. I was never in a rush to complete the story, and often started off with a lot of level-grinding.

The thought was that if I build my characters up enough early on, it would make subsequent challenges easier.

Usually it worked out. One time it failed spectacularly.

I made it to the final battle of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and realized I’d chosen a path for my character early on that set them up as someone wholly unsuited to take down the last boss.

Learn as you do would’ve been a better model to follow.

The further you are from your goal, the more speculative your questions are. They could lead you down a rabbit hole in an unhelpful direction.

I try to remind myself of this any time I’m doing something new, or stretching outside the comfort of my wheelhouse.

Learn a little, do a little, repeat.

I tell myself I won’t know what questions to ask to get where I want to go until I’ve made a few mistakes or hit some dead ends.