A few of the writers I follow online, such as Patrick Rhone, and Harry C. Marks have started to use a more analog workflow [1] when they write. Patrick has switched to writing with pen and paper, Harry is using a vintage Smith-Corona typewriter to work on his novel. They claim that these writing methods allow them to work better, put themselves in another mindspace, and free themselves from distraction. They’re all absolutely right. But, it’s not right for me.

I’ve tried doing the disconnection thing, switching to pen and paper, or a typewriter to work. [2] I’ve carried every sort of notebook you can think of, from 8.5“ by 11” school notebooks to Pocket Moleskines, to Field Notes. They rarely get used. I lust over a good pen—my favorite being the Zebra Sarassa, but pens do me little good just clipped to the inside of my pants pocket. If I want to write, and if I want to do sustained writing, I have to do it in the digital space. Otherwise, I just shut down after too short of a time.

My iPad, actually, has become the best place for me to write. With the Apple Aluminum Bluetooth keyboard, and Drafts, I can plop down on any flat surface, and get right to work. I’m typing this up in my neighborhood coffee shop, on a lovely, warm Saturday afternoon. Here, I’m able to go into a different mental state, free from the distractions of home. My mind goes entirely into my writing the text on the screen in front of me. Even better is that when it’s done, I can read it. Six years of Catholic school education and daily handwriting classes did me no good. My scrawl is often illegible to anyone except me, and sometimes even me.

The analog methods have their advantages. A mechanical typewriter can’t run out of battery power. A notepad and pen won’t shatter if you drop it. What you write on them is permanent, or as close to permanent as is possible with paper. There is a very real, though very small chance, that any second the screen in front of me will die, taking my words with it. The worst that can happen to Patrick is that his pen will leak, and some of the ink will spill over a few words. Every method we use has its tradeoffs.

When Nietzsche got a typewriter, he noticed that writing on it changed what he wrote. He wasn’t sure if it was for the better, or for the worse, but it was a difference. For those of us who are trying to decide between digital writing and analog writing, this is something to consider. Whatever works best for you, whatever allows you to produce the work you want is what you should use, whether it’s Microsoft Word, a mechanical typewriter, pen and paper, or a stylus and wax tablet. I’ve found what works best for me is to use technology, and to use it on my own terms. More on that another time.

I’d like to expand a bit a point I made, yesterday, in my post “Scams, Shortcuts, and Honest Work”, namely this:

Technology is an enabler to them, offering myriad new avenues of dodges and scams, hidden traps for the unwary to fall into.

And, secondarily, this:

The power of the Internet, and technology in general, is often seen as shortcut to success.

Technology is an enabler to all of us, not just to those who seek to bend it towards the exploitation of others. While “independent content creation” pre-dates the Internet and widespread access to technology, the ubiquity of the Internet has been the biggest boon to individual people who make stuff since the dawn of economics. That is not hyperbole, either. It’s extremely easy, and extremely inexpensive to get started on any sort of creative project, and put it in front of people. Not only that, there’s plenty of people and services available to help you get started. Make music? Sign up for SoundCloud, and post your MP3s. Want to start a blog? WordPress.com offers you a free blog. Making crafts? Etsy.

It’s easy to get stated, but that also means that it’s easy to get lost in the crowd. There are some who say all you need to do is make good stuff, and eventually, the audience will come. [1] This is not a guarantee, especially if you’re not making good stuff. And if you’re not making anything, nobody’s going to come at all. Technology is only a tool. We need to use it to make anything, and it cares not a whit what we use it for. A router can’t determine if the packets running through it make a page of Spike’s amazing webcomic Templar, Arizona, or a keyword spam article, and more importantly, it shouldn’t.

There’s so much out there, however, that it is terribly hard to be heard above the din. We’ve sought shortcuts to find ways to make money, get attention, or both, with less work. Recently, someone discovered a seller on Amazon offering a T-Shirt with the slogan: “Keep Calm and Rape a Lot.” The sheer offensiveness of such a thing aside, it was quickly determined that the product actually didn’t exist. It was the creation of a computer program designed to come up with products based on the “Keep Calm and…” meme, and printed on demand if anyone was disgusting enough to buy it.

The seller, seeking to capitalize on a fad, found what seems like a shortcut to success. Just design a bunch of stuff that might be popular, list it on Amazon, and maybe one might succeed. If it does, they just create the physical product when necessary. The end result is probably not what they expected. It’s not Amazon’s fault that Solid Gold Bomb’s algorithm made an offensive shirt, and it’s not Solid Gold Bomb’s fault that Amazon listed it. Amazon’s service, and the algorithm are intermediaries. They’re tools. The tools can be misused, but that is not the fault of the tools. There are thousands of legitimate businesses built on Amazon’s distribution, and there are billions or more algorithms that do things that make our lives better.

The final decision about how we use these tools is our own. Technology can enable us to do amazing, positive things that benefit our world, or it can enable us to exploit the ignorance, sloth, or greed of others. Whichever we choose, the result comes not from the technology, but from the choices made by those who wield it. If we do evil, we must blame ourselves, and we must take action to stop it.

You can serve two groups of people: everybody, or somebody.

There’s nothing wrong with either, but certain things have to be sacrificed depending on which you choose. If you choose to serve everybody, you have to sacrifice uniqueness, for example. The more distinct you are, the more people you’re likely to turn off. You have to present a front of being all things to everyone, so that everyone can find some reason to use your product or service. You have to sacrifice quality to a degree—the more features you offer, and you need a lot of features so everybody can have something to want—the less time you get to spend polishing them. This can be overcome by throwing more people at the product, but you must have mass acceptance before then, so you’re actually making enough money to pay them. The result is something like Facebook or McDonald’s, a nebulous, noisy cloud of something that serves everyone, but nobody really loves.

When you choose to serve a particular somebody, or a group of somebodies, you get a little more freedom. The very act of choosing to serve someone’s niche is the start of this. Your product can be distinct, even quirky, playing to what your niche audience loves. This is easiest to do when you’re choosing to serve your own niche. If you’re your own ideal customer, you should know what you like after all. Without the external pressure to do more, you can take your time, focusing and polishing and honing everything so that it works perfectly, the way you want it to work—the way it should work. The problem is that a niche is small. Eventually, you’ll fill the whole niche, and the only places to go are to keep to that niche—occasionally glomming onto the one or two new people who fit—or you can expand beyond.

Doing the former is hard to sustain. Doing the latter risks destroying what made your thing so compelling in the first place.

There’s no right path here. It’s all a question of priorities. For me, however, I think anyone’s priority should be to make something great for a few people—one person at first. Make the thing you want, and then figure out if that’s what other people want. Bring it to them, with the vision and passion of an auteur. Own it, and control it, and cling to it, because it is your baby, and while you can share it, you don’t want to give it away. Far too often, it seems, we sacrifice the quality of something because we want it to be big, especially in technology. Have you ever cringed when a service or product announces a new feature? Was it because you knew you’d never use it? Has a service or product taken a feature away from you? Was it because you used it? Why fall into that trap with your own stuff?

I’m writing this essay on the subway, while on my way in to work. It’s a surprisingly great place to write, if you can get a seat. The one flaw I’ve found to the setup is that if you’re clinging to the poles, it’s a lot harder to type. You need both hands free. One can make it work if you wrap your arm around the pole, but this is an egregious breach of subway etiquette.

All you do is sit down, whip out your smartphone, and start typing into your off-line text editor of choice. (I recommend using Drafts for iPhone.) Owners of an iPad mini may find that to be a good tool as well, but full-size iPads are a bit too large for subway typing. Laptops are right out.

The advantages of the subway as a writing space are myriad. There’s no cellular service, no Wi-Fi, and only minimal non-digital distractions. Pop a pair of headphones on, and you can ignore almost anything—you don’t even need to turn on the music player.

In the space of a thirty minute commute, a good iPhone typist can write almost 500 words, and with periodic rerouting, train traffic, signal trouble, and unexplained slowdowns, you’ll find you have more time to write than you expected. A lot more. You’ll almost not want to get where you’re going. Almost.

For a fiction writer, a writing session on the subway is typically loaded with potential inspiration for characters and situations. There’s the teenage lovers clearly playing hooky from school, the homeless guy sleeping across some seats, and the asshole with the acoustic guitar busking for tips an he’s shoving his hat in my face despite the fact that I wasn’t listening or watching his terrible performance anyway.

Sorry.

Distraction-Free may not be an entirely accurate description of the subway as a writing—for God’s sake, you just tried asking me for money, and I said no!

Ahem. Distraction-Free may not be the best description of the subway as a writing environment, but it’s close. The mental shift that comes from relocating, the huge block of unallocated, Internet-free time, and our ubiquitous portable computing devices make it possible to get some real work done during a period of time we would have only wasted reading books and newspapers, listening to music, or interacting with our fellow city-dwellers. Just try not to get so deep into your work that you miss your stop.

And if this guy doesn’t stop playing guitar, I will go all Animal House on him. No, I don’t have any cash. Go away!

^* Above post was written only partially in jest.

Time is the enemy. There’s so much to do, precious little to do it in. Factor in time needed for little things like eating, sleeping, and the little maintenance tasks we must do to keep alive, and it’s a small wonder anything gets done. So, we rush. Run to catch the train. Grab breakfast on the way. Get your work done as fast as you can. Take a short lunch. Eat at your desk. Work some more. Run to catch the train. Heat something up for dinner. Rush rush rush. It’s the only way you’ll have time for yourself.

Must it be this way? Especially with creative work, the axiom still applies: “Fast, cheap, good. Pick two.”

If you want something done fast, and you want it to be good, it won’t be cheap. In your working life, the cost is your own energy, and you only have so much of that to go around. The result is that, after you burn off the easy energy, your work begins to decrease in quality—as does your life. Mistakes slip in. Little ones. Big ones. The less energy you have, the more the pressure is on to rush, the more likely you’ll fuck up. If you’re lucky, you, or someone else, will catch the mistake, maybe even fix it. If you’re unlucky, lives are in the balance.

Most of us are lucky.

And the cycle continues. Rush. Sleep less. Rush. Work harder. Do Bob’s work. Do Velma’s work. Do your work. Work overtime. Work from home. Work Saturday. Work Sunday. Run yourself ragged, make more mistakes. As this continues, the mistakes get bigger, as do the blind spots. It’s done. Next thing. Go. Run. And in the back of your mind, or even in the front of your mind, a part of you is screaming for a solution. You work harder, trying to get ahead for a bit, so you can take a day off. Maybe a week. Vacation. That’ll help, right?

It feels that way for a while. Then you come back, and everything is piled up. You have to catch up. Do the work you missed, and the work that is coming in, and the work that your co-workers aren’t doing, because they’re on vacation now. The deadline is looming. Can’t push it back any further. Ship or die. Run.

And you ship. And then you find out about all the little things that you, and everyone else missed. You were too busy, too close to the metal, and moving too fast to see the mistakes that piled up. And that pile needs to be fixed.

And the cycle starts again.

This happens to all of us. It happens at the top of the org-chart, and it happens way down at the bottom. Especially at the bottom.

All you can do is try and slow down. Stop running, and learn to walk when things get tough. Walk, and take your time. Think through what you do, especially when it’s something you’ve done before. It’s easy to be like water and flow through the same deep channels of your habits. With each trip though, the channel gets deeper, and it gets harder to escape. When you rush, when you run, when you go on autopilot, the mind slips right into those well-worn channels and nothing new happens.

Only when you slow down, look around, and walk instead of run do you find ways to improve things, and to avoid the inevitable pitfalls you run into, day in and day out.

Stop running, stop rushing. Walk. Just for a little while.