I’ve decided to go through my workflowy (which is a sort of grabbag of thoughts and reminders and todos that I have) and write about things that I’ve left as notes to myself. One of these phrases is “writing production line”. I suppose I wanted myself to evaluate my own writing production process, and lay it out more clearly. So let’s try doing that.
What is the writing production line? It’s a supply chain, from raw material to finished, published output. Why does it matter? Figuring out what my writing production line is, how it works, what the parts are, etc will allow me to better diagnose my “writing problems”. When I’m blocked and don’t feel like writing, or feel like writing and nothing’s coming out, etc, going through my production line process should help me figure out what I ought to do next. Less time spent sitting around in a funk, less time spent deliberating, more time spent on focused attacks at problem areas.
Routine is important for writing. Deep work doesn’t happen at random– very, very rarely. When it DOES seem to happen at random, it’s usually because there was a lot of behind-the-scenes preparation. Conversations with friends, solitary thinking, reading, reviewing. I don’t even realize it’s happening until there’s some sort of trigger that makes me want to write, and I only want to write because the thoughts are almost already fully formed in my head. And then it’s really cathartic to get it out.
Lately at work I feel like there’s this whole new area of writing that needs to happen, that’s going to becoming out over the next few months, and the main reason this is finally happening rather than not is, I think, that I’ve been exposed to more things than I was before. I’m thinking more from the customer’s point of view, I’ve read interviews we’ve done with the customers, I’ve read FAQs and help pages and support requests. And these things give a clearer idea of the questions that need to be answered. (So, cutely, the answer the the question of “what should I be writing” is answers to questions. The answer is questions.)
I suppose the same thing happens even with casual writing. I write about things that are on my mind. To some degree I realize it’s not very possible to consciously direct this stuff right before writing. It happens way in advance. It happens based on what I’ve been reading. So let’s review what information I’ve been consuming lately. I watched Gattaca recently. I read Speaker For The Dead and Xenocide, and I will be reading Children Of The Mind soon. I’ve been reading Steve Wozniak’s autobiography. I was reading some of Lee Kuan Yew’s memoirs. I just watched Good Will Hunting and Star Wars. I’ve been watching a bit of Every Frame A Painting. A Sideways Look At Time has been on my mind for a while. And I’ve been thinking about rereading Paul Graham’s essays and much of Ribbonfarm, and I’ve been curious about LessWrong again.
All of these things will influence what I write about, whether I like it or not. Raw materials are the first thing that count in a production line, and if you don’t have good raw materials, everything down the road is shittier by default. Not very much you can do about that. The good thing about having perspective and context, and having read broadly, for example– is that you get to look at something that doesn’t have much value by itself, and yet still derive value from it by making sense of what it represents. Facebook arguments, for example. [1]
Pause.
Let’s start over– the idea behind thinking about my writing production process, supply chain, whatever I want to call it– is to reduce friction and frustration in the whole thing. I shouldn’t be stuck staring at a blank page. If that happens, I should have some sort of rule-of-thumb that applies, that directs me to the next most sensible action. More often than not I think it means stepping outside, taking a walk, grabbing a cup of coffee. Going for a run or hitting the gym, if possible. And I should make time for more books and movies, and just good writing and art in general. What happens after that? Then I guess I should have some sort of quick sketch process where I write down my thoughts so I can revisit them as necessary. I think these vomits are actually not the most efficient way of doing this. I imagine the optimal solution might be something more piecemeal– probably just a well-tagged evernote system, where I write my thoughts on the movies I watch, books I read, and tie in the concepts and ideas and perspectives that I think are relevant, so that I can look them up at any time. Though that does seem like a lot of work, and I’m not entirely sure what all that work is for. But it’s definitely a more interesting and fun game to play than arguing with people on Facebook or Reddit or wherever. Because I’m not trying to impress other people, I’m trying to impress my own internal subconscious audience.
I suppose that’s the point of the whole thing. To amuse myself, in a deep, rich, fulfilling rather than superficial way. And it’s entirely possible to be “deeply superficial”, like Warhol described. I don’t want to fall into the trap of pretending that I’m somehow better than other people. This is just the game I choose to play because this is what I think I get off on. We’ll keep running the experiment and see if I feel differently afterwards.
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[1] I think I’ve changed my attitude towards Facebook rituals lately. I used to engage with them very directly, take them very seriously, and always try to have the last say in arguments. I like to think that I’ve largely relinquished this. It’s clearer to me now that it’s a game, like everything else. We’re all just little blips of cells, pond scum on the surface of a rock floating in infinite space, playing games. Taking things seriously is one way to play a game, pretending everything is a joke is another. There’s no escaping the infinite fractals of illusions we call reality, so we might as well pick something that’s fun and pleasant, rather than shoehorn ourselves into uncomfortable things.