ThinkingForest

A Trick for Undisturbed Writing

2023-01-18T05:16:32+07:00

A Trick for Undisturbed Writing
Cognizance: Recent publications, upcoming/recent appearances, current writing projects, current reading

For the last few weeks, I’ve been inhaling books on writing and habit-building and setting up systems for daily writing. I completed and submitted my first flash fiction story. There is one major thing that made it possible - TK.

In Cory Doctorow’s Context, there is an essay Writing in the age of distraction. The whole essay is short and fantastic for anyone that wants to write anything; however, the section I found the most helpful for myself was Don’t Research.

Now, this doesn’t mean you don’t do any research; instead, when you’re writing, write. A trick, apparently often used in journalism, is to write “TK” at any point where you want to add a fact that needs research.

Why does this work? In a recent story I was writing, I wanted to make sure I used the correct output of a specific command-line tool. While writing, I was tempted to open a browser or terminal and find the answer before I continued. The problem is that finding the correct answer or installing and running the tool would have taken the time I’d allocated for writing that day (we will come to that shortly). What’s more, by the time I returned to the story, I’d have to context switch back to the scene, which means re-reading.

When I got to any point where I wanted to be specific and wanted to make sure the content was correct, I’d add a TK to represent the idea. It was always easy to continue after the TK because I knew where the story was supposed to go. Sometimes I’d have to refer to a prior TK later in the story. No problem, just put another TK and keep going. Let’s talk about time and editing.

Time

Every author I’ve been researching talks about writing every day. They are okay with writing anything, as long as it’s every day. Some people recommend a minimum word count. I tried that and didn’t like it much. Sometimes 500 words flow, and sometimes it feels like a chore. Instead, I do one Pomodoro (about 25 minutes). That time is just for writing, not researching or anything else. Since I don’t have a specific word count to meet, I write more than the goal I set. And if I don’t, no problem.

It is easier to set a time than a goal. This has proven to be much better for my flow.

Editing

When professional writers give writing advice, it’s usually about getting a first draft. What I’ve yet to find is their workflow for editing. Remember all those TKs you’re adding to your story? You fix them in editing. Theoretically, when you sit down at a story you’ve been writing, you may read a few paragraphs and start writing again. You may fix some things while re-reading, but you need to edit. So when does this happen?

For the story I submitted, I wrote the draft with awful spelling, grammar, and TKs all over the place. Once it was at a place that I could call “done”, I used a different Pomodoro session specifically for editing and research. That means the writing session is always used for writing something. If I need to edit, another pomo (and usually several others) is used for editing.

The TKs are usually easy fixes since you know what to include. Run your manuscript through a software tool to help catch spelling and grammar issues. Then read your manuscript out loud. I found more flow issues by reading out loud than I had in the ten times I read it silently.

Biased Reviewers

Once I’d written the story and gotten to a second - or better - third draft, I let people close to me read it. So far, I’ve written technical fiction. The readers could be more technical - and that’s perfect. My reviewers read a lot, but I need to find a different genre or style than I’m writing in. I give them the draft and don’t say anything. They respond like an average reader coming to a new story.

After listening to their feedback, I’ll confirm they can finish it. If they didn’t finish, I’d messed up. If they didn’t understand something, I’d messed up. If they didn’t have fun - or feel something - I’ve messed up. Luckily, you have to get to the point with flash fiction and short stories, so finishing is still a challenge. How can you get average readers to finish if you can’t get your biased reviewers?

With technical stories, it’s easy to overwhelm the reader and make them want to stop, even in short stories. My readers said they didn’t understand the jargon but could get what was happening. That’s perfect. They don’t need to know exactly what Outguess is, but I better give them enough context and breadcrumbs that they don’t need to.

I’m fortunate that one of my biased reviewers prefers to read out loud. I sent it to them when I was in earshot, and when they read it, I made a mental note of where reading was difficult. Those are the areas that need fixing for the fourth/fifth draft.

Final Draft & Edits

Most outlets for fiction seem to prefer the Shunn format for manuscript submission. Coming from academic writing, Shunn is extremely simple. I use a plain text editor, so I needed to make a basic template for Shunn and copy and paste the text.

You will need to ensure everything is formatted correctly and fix the spacing. However, this is the perfect time to have yet another read-through. At this point, I mostly changed word choice, but I also found a sentence I’d always been happier with. The final run-through made that sentence stick out much more, and I had to fix it.

If you find yourself editing much in your Shunn format, your story needs another round of edits. Or you could just be overthinking it. Go for another round of edits if you feel like it, then submit and see what happens.

https://lifehacker.com/use-tk-while-writing-to-avoid-the-webs-black-hole-5129153

Cognizance

Currently writing:

“Feelings” A short story about a clairvoyant bird. IN PROGRESS
“Directed creative” A lit composition teacher of the near future. PLANNING
“Hashdeep” A CTF-style flash fiction about a NOC analyst investigation. SUBMITTED (726 words)

This work licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Joshua James, and include a link to ThinkingForest.org.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license.

How to get ThinkingForest

Blog (no ads, tracking, or data-collection):

https://thinkingforest.org

Medium (no ads, paywalled):

https://thinkingforest.medium.com

(Latest Medium column: ‘The Secret to Cory Doctorow’s Memex)

The Secret to Cory Doctorow’s Memex

2023-01-05T22:37:29+07:00

How can Cory Doctorow remember and easily reference so much? Let’s reverse-engineer his work process to find out.

I learned about Cory Doctorow from an interview on a small YouTube channel, Solarpunk Life. I’d seen him around cyberspace but never directly intersecting policies and tools. Through Solarpunk Life, I found and read the book Walkaway — a near-mandatory reading in the Solarpunk community — and decided to dig deeper into this fella’s work style.

Cory Doctorow at eTech 2007. Original image by Ed Schipul. CC-BY SA 2.0

Cory is a very prolific writer. He has a lot of tech commentary and is especially vocal about internet infrastructure, legislation, and copyright issues. Cool.

But something is odd.

When you look at his websites, specifically Pluralistic, it looks a mess. He usually includes an article, a daily links section, day in history section, and a works tracker section. With fresh eyes on his blog and zero context, it didn’t make much sense to me. For example, are the links just something he found interesting? How does it relate to his articles? Is there a use for this info? How does he do this every day?

Memex

I’ve yet to find a clear answer, but there are some hints. The first is his Memex found via a link on his author blog:

https://memex.craphound.com/2011/05/10/valentes-girl-who-circumnavigated-fairyland-sweet-fairytale-shot-through-with-salty-tears-magic/

A Memex is a device that acts as an extension of a user’s memory. The concept influenced the Internet, which can act as a collective memory for everyone connected.

The next hint comes from his near-daily posts on Tumblr. Tumblr content is nearly a clone of his other sites, but there are many more This day in history links. Categorized from 1 year to 20 years in 5-year increments.

The how is technically easy. He could use a database of links and meta-data, such as the Y/M/D published. Run a script to extract x articles from this day over the interval. Use Tumblr’s API to generate a post. It’s unclear if WordPress — the back-end for his blogs — acts as the database or if he is using another KMS. Probably a synced local DB + generator script.

The question that isn’t so clear is why?

I suspect he uses the Memex script to generate a Tumblr post for two reasons. The first is to refresh his memory. I read through the list and thought, “Oh! I remember that!” He can do this daily to refresh his memory of internet cultural events. That will help if he needs to go back and reference something because he knows it’s there rather than save and forget like so many Pocket articles.

The second reason is that he can pick old posts that are the most relevant to today. Those are the posts that make it onto his blog. Those are also the most likely to be referenced in new work on current topics. It’s using the Memex not only to refresh older ideas but also to surface the most relevant information applied today. Voila, internet culture archivist.

The section Hey look at this is a link dump that is probably the input to the Memex. I suspect these links are curated from social media and various RSS feeds (NPR). Add in links researched for articles (and the articles themselves).

So, we have an input (HLAT) and an output (TDIH). The link curation would take some time, but a good RSS feed, a keen social media eye, and an idea of the types of evergreen internet culture artifacts would make this easier. The result is a highly-curated list of internet factoids that make great references and conversation.

I’m still very curious what the back-end looks like.

Knowledge Reuse

How can someone be so prolific? I asked an ex-marine, and she said to reuse everything. I’m terrible at re-use; every project is a separate workspace built from the ground up. I can see how inefficient this is, but re-use takes infrastructure.

Cory has found a good knowledge re-use model based on the memex. The primary outlets are Tumblr (T), pluralistic (P), Socials (SM), Medium (M), Newsletter (N), & Craphound.

So, on a non-article day, you want to learn what is new in the world.

Fire up your memex to generate On this day posted to T -> review generated links -> (fix broken?) -> pick the most interesting/relevant for today.
Review RSS feeds + SM, and find any good nuggets of long-term cultural interest. Add to memex. Generate LotD.
Post Links of the Day on P, SM, M, N.

The longest part of this process would be cleaning memex and reviewing new content. The skill is picking only a few of the most interesting new links. Out of all the content that comes out each day, that would be quite difficult. You would get better with practice.

New Content Creation

Where does Cory get his ideas? Not sure. Having 20+ years of tech info fresh in your mind (and at your fingertips) would let you get deeper into current-event commentary. And I think that’s why his articles are deeper into the topic than you will normally see in something like journalism. Access to that history and a view of a current landscape likely makes a lot of ah-ha moments that would be perfect for new article research or many, many books.

New content is posted on all channels, along with the Links of the Day. Articles that make it to Medium eventually get read as part of a podcast series and posted on C.

Only one channel seems monetized, but all channels are tightly linked, leading you back to books and talks. Nothing is wasted, and it all starts with the memex.

Final Observations

Cory has an odd linking style in articles, where there will be a paragraph of text followed by a relevant link. At first, I thought this was about link transparency, but then realized it’s probably more about plain-text editing. I suspect he uses a plain-text editor for articles, maybe even something on the command line. I don’t care for the linking style as much as linking on the topic, but if you search and automate processes, that style makes a lot of sense.
The Colophon section (#bragsheet) is doing A LOT. First, it lists ongoing projects. This is genius. It serves as a project tracker, advertisement, and accountability system all in one. This part could be managed and compiled easily from a spreadsheet. Same for currently reading, upcoming and recent appearances, latest and upcoming books. I’d bet he is using a CSV/spreadsheet with a bunch of links and descriptions, filtering the archive, and maybe pulling recent posts from his blog RSS.
He seems to be quite famous for working everywhere, so he would need the process non-intrusive and local.

Conclusions

I don’t know much about Cory Doctorow, but he has created a system — presumably at least somewhat automated — to capture and reuse knowledge. A system like that needs direction, in his case, the topic of internet culture; otherwise, you have a shotgun blast of content, like social media. I’d suggest this Memex, if it exists, and the daily use of the system is a core component of why his writing has so much depth. Sure, he still manually does a crazy amount of writing, but his infrastructure focuses the internet sprawl. It helps build connections. Those connections likely make it easier to both spark a new idea and be confident in its grounding.

This is why his websites look a bit odd, maybe less orderly and polished than you usually find, and much more confusing to a casual observer. We’re looking into the mental extension of an expert. It’s not a product for a casual reader. It’s a collection of curated factoids to build expert-level knowledge. Awesome.

@Cory Doctorow — I’m very curious about the technical aspects of your knowledge management system. How do you interface with the Memex? What does search and update look like? Is everything local? Do you automate as much as possible?

P.S. Getting ready to read Cory Doctorow’s Chokepoint Capitalism. It looks like he will be on tour to talk about the book in early 2023.

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license.