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  • raw code

    Nearly a decade ago I wrote a series of now-long-lost articles that I had intended to turn into a whole thing. Y’know like maybe a book or blog or a video series. It was on the topic of technology and was called something along the lines of “the perks of being a nerd” wherein I (humbly) bragged up all the tiny, nerdy things I could build (usually in code) to automate my tasks or share my creativity through the digital realms.

    Ultimately I realized that this is basically the whole internet: nerdy people using nerdy skills to show off what they can do. My project got a little too meta, I got flustered, so I dumped the essays I’d written onto a long decommissioned blog and then got on with the aforementioned making of tiny, nerdy things.

    Yet, I continue to find myself driven by the knowledge that I have this underused skill always on the lookout for a problem to solve, that I can write computer software reasonably well. This notion is often tucked into my back pocket like a oil-stained shop rag dripping with raw code, waiting for an idea or opportunity to strike so that I can pull out said rag and wipe a few of those ifs and thens all over the—well, let’s just say this metaphor is starting to unravel here and go back to the point, huh?

    The point is that being a nerdy guy who can write code means that frequently I find myself in a situation where problem arises in my life and the solution (good or not) is one where there exists an option to write a piece of software to address the problem. Need to track my fitness goals? Write an app.  Want to stop wasting food at home? Build a meal planning and shopping list tool?  Find yourself wanting more control over your photo collection? Code an online gallery to share them without ads or limitations of a paid service.

    Inasmuch, it becomes a challenge for a creative guy to use this beige-coloured superpower wisely, and this little blurb of text might be the opening argument in what may likely become a regular collection of analog thoughts on this digital subject of the perks of being a nerd, and the inevitable temptation to use that skill to the point of detrimental distraction.

  • those words

    The whole point of this life I’ve drafted for myself, or so it seems to me more and more each day, is to simply get words onto paper.

    That is why I am here. 

    That is why I am jabbing the creativity fork into the idea wall socket and hoping for a spark. (Do not try that at home, it’s a little bit crazy after all.)

    In the middle of 2023 I decided to walk away from an okay government job to take a break and re-evaluate. That break evolved into a simple realization, the insight into my own existence that I had been pursuing the thing I needed at the expense of the thing I wanted. I needed to pay my bills and earn a paycheque, but I wanted to build stuff, create, make, write something that endured longer than a strategy memo or a performance metrics report or even a short-lived website. I wanted to create art and music and stories and somewhere in all that just put lots and lots of words onto paper that had even merely a small glimmer of a chance of outliving me.

    It is why I am here, jabbing around for that spark now, having turned our home into a single-income family and while I mostly live off of my savings to buy my coffee and digital ink supplies—not to mention all those forks.

    This is my vibe: to write. 

    To write all the time, because that’s what I get to do for a while, because that’s who I have chosen to be. It’s both what I want and what I need. And buried in there are the uncountable pieces of advice I’ve read over the decades, consumed in the years and months leading into this decision, and the same kinds of advice in which I’ve lathered my soul these past couple weeks as I jump into 2024 with a fork in hand, ready to jab around. That advice is this: just write then. That the point of it, is to do it. Go ahead. Think. Work. Feel. Immerse. Ponder. Wrangle the story, sure. But ultimately, just write. Put words onto paper.

    So I am.

  • workflow

    From what I understand about the craft of writing a novel, in writing said novel it is not advisable to expect that you will take a linear path from idea to published book.

    That is to say, the way there is no clear and easy path to you goal.

    There are curves and switchbacks. There are hang ups. There might be massive u-turns.

    Getting from A to Z is not necessarily straight shot.

    I’ve been working on my own craft and building on this advice by implementing what I am calling a writing workflow. Maybe it is that things don’t move in a straight line in general, but in smaller segments maybe those lines are a little less wobbly. Maybe the first draft comes together in a pretty logical way. And then maybe the editing is all over the place too, but as a segment of the journey alone it is less obviously so. Heck, I learned in high school geometry that even a circle can be a whole lot of straight lines connected up in the right way.

    Workflow can be a way of moving a project from phase A to phase Z stepwise, so that something new can move into phase A when something done moves into step B. And if the trip from A to Z is a long, winding road, breaking the wobbly, winding trip into manageable straight-shot pieces might make the whole thing a bit less dizzying.

  • resolution

    Now that the big day is come and gone, we can start thinking about wrapping up 2023.

    For me, 2023 was a huge year. Job change, life change, new roles, big accomplishments, travel, upsets, stumbles, achievements beyond belief and deleting hundreds of little things from my life. I had given myself the back half of the last year to figure things out after which I’d pretty much felt certain that life would start to make a bit more sense.

    It doesn’t, of course. But the calendar is about to turn over and…

    It’s not a wonder at all that I’m eagerly pondering 2024.

    The new year is often a time of making resolutions, kicking off new projects, or setting big goals. I usually do that, and usually I stick with a few of my resolutions and find myself in a very different place at the change of the calendar twelve months later. This year is not much different, but those changes are motivated by the events of 2023, the events of the year past almost as much as a resolve about the future.

    Maybe things will make more sense in 2024. Or maybe not. But we can resolve to hope so and aspire to find out, right?

  • followering

    Social networks come and social networks go.

    When change happens, people look for ways to build or rebuild connection with others. In 2023, that seems to mean creating an account on a new platform and seeking followers.

    Some people are clever at this, and say a couple controversial, dramatic or interesting things that get them noticed and suddenly they have many followers who hope they will routinely say controversial, dramatic or interesting things, and thus become performers for them.

    Other people say normal, human things and have conversations, one on one, inch by inch, real words by real words, and find new people to connect with and follow back in return, thus becoming a kind of friend for which our languages haven’t quite invented a better word for than “follower.”

    I sometimes say controversial, dramatic or interesting things, but for the most part I have found myself in the camp of posting normal, human things and having conversations.

    And that is okay, because social networks come and social networks go, and followers are largely and inevitably temporary connections with the universe.

  • inspiration

    I spent the weekend in the mountains and shortly after I arrived I snapped a picture of our view of the peaks from near the hotel. “Seeking inspiration.” I wrote on some social media post somewhere and hit the publish button.

    We talk so much about inspiration and what it means to be inspired, yet putting out fingers on how that manifests is difficult.

    Is it a sense of clarity and calm?

    Is it a burst of creative energy?

    Is it literally the view acting as though a muse?

    I didn’t know what I meant when I wrote “seeking inspiration” but the inspiration that found me was real and unique and may have profoundly changed the tone of my novel, bringing to my story a gravitas I might only have found by wandering the streets of this place where we’re visiting.

    Perhaps then, inspiration is just an openness to big ideas.

  • rules

    I’ve written here over the last week that I’m participating in a month-long writing challenge called NaNoWriMo, short for National Novel Writing Month, wherein the rules are to write every day and complete a fifty thousand word novel by the end of November.

    There are rules, of course, some written and some implied.

    All of those rules are on the honor system.

    There are rules about starting early. There are rules about editing. There are rules about how you engage other people about what they are writing. There are rules about just about everything.

    But in creative pursuits rules can also just be guidelines, too, and some of the best results come from colouring outside the lines.

    I had a social media conversation last week where someone asked about the “rules” for creating art. What was allowed, like, if using a straightedge to draw a line was considered breaking the rules.

    But like many creative pursuits, even if there was a rule that said you shouldn’t draw straight lines with a ruler, only freehand, then there would also be a hundred better reasons than rules to break any such rule and use any tool your wanted to draw as many straight lines as you pleased.

    I’ve broken a few NaNoWriMo rules while I might fess up about breaking them, I think the final result will prove that those rules were mostly just strong suggestions anyhow.

  • farming

    I’ve been known to spend some of my free time playing video games, and particularly when I’ve had a creatively productive day I enjoy turning on a console and booting up some gaming action.

    But if you’re picturing me right now playing some first person shooting adventure rampage, this week you’d be way off. I’ve been relaxing with a title called Farming Simulator, where you harvest virtual crops and deliver them to the grain elevator and track the economics of commodity prices while saving up for new and better equipment.

    A gaming recap would not have much place on this blog, however, except as I’ve been playing I’ve been thinking of the parallels between farming, virtual or otherwise, and a career in a creativity-driven profession.

    In simple terms, as a farmer you take an initial investment at the beginning of the season and you spend time, resources, fuel, and energy planting a crop into the ground. Weeks pass and those seeds turn into seedlings. Months pass and those seedlings turn into mature plants. And more time passes before your plants turn into something that you can harvest and sell. You make no money from any of your work until you pull the wheat from the ground and sell it. Months of work for one payoff at the end of the expended effort.

    As a creative you take an initial investment at the beginning of your career too. You plant lots of seeds, of a sort, making your art or writing your words as you spend time, resources, brainpower and energy making a lot of things. Time passes and you edit, refine, accumulate, and build a collection of work, and very likely during this time you are not making any money from any of your work… until one day you do. Months or years of work for a payoff at the end of an extended effort.

    Who says video games can’t make you think big thoughts, huh?

  • one thousand

    One thousand is simultaneously a lot —and not very much at all. It really depends on what you are counting.

    A thousand dollars can change someone’s life (or at least their month) but a thousand dollars is a rounding error in a corporate budget.

    A thousand days is almost three years and time enough for almost anything to happen to the average person, but a thousand days is the blink of an eye in the scale of history and barely worthy of a moments thought.

    A thousand words can tell an entire story, but a thousand words is little more than a few pages and a seeming drop in the bucket of a whole published novel.

    I’ve been writing a novel this month and I tackle it in one thousand word chunks, simultaneously a lot of work to sit down and write and yet not very much at all.

    But still —a thousand words, over and over and over again adds up.

  • documenting

    When I was working in government I wrote a lot of documents.

    And while I’m sure that there are many people who can sit down and write these same kinds of documents in a linear, start to finish way, I could not do it like that.

    I had a strategy, thought.

    I started with an outline. I would flesh out the headings. I will fill in the obvious bits. I’d add placeholder text for words and data that I knew needed to go somewhere but for which I also knew I’d need to spend more time thinking about. I worked iteratively at random points to build, expand, elaborate, and refine.

    In the end, I would have a complete document that was usually enough to pass through the web of bureaucracy for “input” and my part would be done.

    I don’t want to directly compare writing a fictional novel to crafting a government document, but there are likely enough similarities to ponderer them all the same in piecing together a coherent story which is not written start to finish but rather starting from an outline that is deepened, expanded, elaborated, and refined across the writing process.