Writing Advice (To My Younger Self)

I recently had the extreme pleasure of being interviewed by Ian Hines for is wonderful new project, Intrvws. Ian is an extremely skilled interviewer especially via email. He takes his time developing smart questions and is very comfortable letting people take a while to think about and compose an answer. As evidence, our interview was conducted via email between August 1 and October 4, 2010 (Two months!). I’m incredibly proud of having been a part of it.

I really urge you to read the whole thing, but I wanted to post a particular section here. It is the writing advice I wish I had given my younger self. I encounter young and just starting writers all the time and have given them all manner of hodgepodge advice.Henceforth, I will point them to this:

Ian:

I wonder, if you had the opportunity to send some advice to your younger self to read as you were first beginning to write on the web, what would it be?

Patrick:

Focus on writing well. Read as many posts and books on writing as you need to learn the craft without letting it distract you from, well, writing. Because, after a certain point, no book or post or advice will ever help you as much as putting those words down.

Also learn how to edit your writing to turn it into something other than a collection of words ordered according to some universally agreed to rules. Because some of those rules should be broken. In fact, many should have never been agreed to in the first place. Because those rules can stifle you from finding your own voice if followed too rigidly. More often than not, what you will be editing out of your writing is the rules.

Spend at least twice as much time editing as you do writing. Slave over every detail, sweat every word and punctuation mark. Read what you write over and over again. In fact, never stop yourself from revisiting something you wrote and improving or expanding on it if you feel it would make it better. Even something as simple as adding a comma where there should have been one can change the feel of an entire essay.

Be curious about everything but find one or two things that your are insatiably curious about and interested in. A subject or two that you can never know too much, or think too deeply, about. Write about these things.

Also, ignore the numbers. Ignore the audience. Ignore the fact that, for a very long time, no one may be reading. Just make sure that you are. Be your own biggest fan (when warranted) and harshest critic (when warranted).

Finally, do what I say, not what I do.

Doing The Dishes

Confession; I like doing dishes. I find it very meditative.

I like doing them late at night, before bed, alone. I like the warmth of the water. I like the smell of the dish soap. I turn on our under-the-counter radio and listen to the BBC on Minnesota Public Radio. It is just me, the task at hand, and the news delivered calmly, with balance, and a proper tongue.

I perform each step in a particular, rarely wavering, order.

1. Unload the bottom rack of the dishwasher.
2. Unload the top rack of the dishwasher.
3. Rinse the dishwasher safe plates, glasses, and silver and load each in their proper place.
4. Fill the sink with soap.
5. Wash each item in order from cleanest to dirtiest.
6. Empty and rinse out the sink.
7. Wipe down the counters and oven.

I find solace in the structure of these actions performed rigidly so that my thinking is focused and somehow still. When my brain is relaxed in this way I find that my body follows suit.

I’m sure we all have tasks like this. Some of us weed the garden. Some of us knit. Some of us mow the lawn or shovel snow. These tasks that we get lost in almost by design due to their repetitive nature. In these times we drift into the order and let our minds go.

We often don’t think of these as moments of meditation but it often has the same mental and physical effect. We are busy doing nothing yet doing something all the same. The more we can identify these times of productive meditation, the more we can make sure to enjoy them for what they are.

Choose Your Tasks To Fit The Time

Not too long ago, I was asked by a client of mine how long it would take to complete a certain large project. After thinking about it for a while, I gave what I thought was a fair estimate given all of the parameters, possible hurdles and building in time for contingencies. The client then asked me if I could do it faster than that. They asked if I could do it in about a third of what I had estimated…

The time a project takes does not somehow magically change because the actual time one has to complete it has. Could I have done that job in the timeframe the client wanted? Sure. Would I have had to spend just as much time as I originally quoted after the fact correcting mistakes and problems because I rushed through it? Probably. Would it be harder, and thus take more time, to make such corrections after the fact than to get them done right the first time? Definitely. Yet I can’t even tell you for how long, by how many clients and managers and in how many different ways I have been asked to do this very thing. I know I am not alone. As a matter of fact, a common joke in the computer industry is “You can have it cheap, you can have it fast or you can have it done well. Pick two.”

What you trade in time you most often exchange for quality or quantity. Sometimes you have to change the project or task that you set out to do. Sometimes you just don’t have the time you need for the project at hand. Maybe you cut a corner here and there. Maybe you drop less important aspects. In this case, the time itself does not change. The quality or quantity of the project changes accordingly with the time saved. It is now a different project, with possibly less than satisfactory results.

I try to use this approach with even the simplest items on my daily task list. For instance, I try to take an honest look at what I want to accomplish in the 15 minutes of time I may have to make a phone call. I am not going to make a call that I know has an hour worth of discussion in that time frame. If I do, I know that I will be trading a true discussion of the topics for bullet points at best. I may have to make another call to the same person later that will make up for, or even equal the time I chose not to spend in the first place. Is that the most effective use of the time? I think not.

Therefore, when you have a block of time to fill be careful to choose the right sized task to fill it. Like most things in this world, when it comes to time, nothing is free.