Category: Writing

“A Content Methodology” for Contents Magazine

December 7th, 2011

If you’re into nerdy things like work methodologies and the nature of the content industry, you’d TOTALLY be into the article I wrote for Contents Magazine, a publication about all things content.

From “A Content Methodology Primer”:

It’s romantic to think that content work is an art, all brandy, pipes, and wood grain. But it’s not. It’s a process. A messy, sticky, multi-disciplinary process that begs for structure, consistency, and guidance.

That’s a daunting task. Content wants to be messy. It wants to roll around in the mud. It wants to be gross. Our job is to pull it together—to take the guesswork out of creating and curating it—and to treat content work as something closer to a science.

And, if you’re NOT into that, you might enjoy this video of a mullet/mustache combo whistling “Georgia on My Mind.”


Comments: 1

Issues Considered: Content Strategy, Writing

Time to stop being lazy

November 7th, 2011

There was a time when I was convinced I was writing for myself and myself only. This blog is an ongoing example of that: a subjectless ramble of personal thoughts, few of which are constructed for anyone but me.

So I just wrote. I didn’t proof. I rarely edited. I threw missives out like candy at a parade, and I watched as some of them slid under the curb. When so many things are tossed out without regard to audience, they tend to be easy to miss. I wondered why people didn’t comment, and I wondered how long I’d be willing to do this, and I ultimately decided it didn’t matter. This blog is for me. I’m the audience. Screw you people.

The real answer: this blog allows me to be lazy.

Quite the opposite of its intention, which was to be my canvas for practicing the art of writing. Just write, damn it. Just keep in practice – a post-a-day calendar for a non-writer looking to break into the business. Truth is, I’m long past that, and while my skills have improved slightly, my work habits have not. I am a lazy writer. I don’t do drafts. I’m a one-take-and-it’s-done guy.

When I write posts for Eating Elephant, I take great care in writing something worth reading. I write for an audience. I don’t have an editor, but I do have an internal scribe yelling at me to be better do better write better just be better aargh. And, now that I’m trying to get something together for the upcoming Contents Magazine, I finding that scribe is yelling even louder, this time backed up by a Real Life Editor Who Offers Suggestions.

(The Real Life Editor is much nicer than the internal voice, thankfully.)

So, yeah. Writing for others? It’s hard.

For nearly seven years, I’ve misunderstand what I was supposed to be practicing with this blog. I wasn’t supposed to write for quantity, but for quality – to develop some kind of writing methodology that could force its way through writer’s block and insecurity and all of the other crap that we as writers deal with every single day. Now, with a deadline looming and an audience waiting, I find myself wishing I’d have been a more focused student.

I really wish I’d have gotten the syllabus in the first place.

Time to learn focus, I guess. Time to stop being lazy.


Comments: 3

Issues Considered: Blogging, Content Strategy, Writing

He saw it, he loved it, he ate it

September 29th, 2011

I’ve seen this a few times, and I love it every time. From the venerable Maurice Sendak:

Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters — sometimes very hastily — but this one I lingered over. I sent him a card and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, “Dear Jim: I loved your card.” Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, “Jim loved your card so much he ate it.” That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.

—Maurice Sendak

(h/t @fchimero, @jasonsantamaria, and source Bobulate.)


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Issues Considered: Writing

How I Write

August 24th, 2011

I don’t find a quiet room. I don’t grab a cup of tea. Instead, I cram. I think of an idea, I email it to myself to remember later, and I sit down to write when I have time.

Honestly, I’ve never understood the pains some people go to in order to write. The planning. The organizing. The ritual. I’m sure it’s important, and billions of best sellers prove that it’s working for someone, but it just doesn’t work for me.

There’s no routine, for me. This is how I write.

This Is How I Write

I start with an idea. The idea never comes when I want it to. It comes at a random time, and that’s why a routine doesn’t work.

Usually, I jot the idea down. I email it to myself. Then, I put it on my to-do list. If I don’t put it on my to-do list, the idea might as well have never happened.

Next: when I have time, I write.

That’s all.

I know, right? Because writing is this prickly, amorphous tangle of emotion and fear and all of that.

Truth is, I just write. I just start something. If I finish, I finish. If I don’t, I wait until the next day. The issue isn’t the process – it’s about getting over the blank page, starting to write a few words, and ending up on a roll.

The tools

Today is my first day using a traditional text editor to write a blog post. I’m using BBEdit, and I’ve imported my blog’s stylesheet so I can see how it looks in realtime. My goal is to take it one step further, implementing Gruber’s Markdown syntax to create a simple and effective process toward writing my posts in HTML, making transfer to this blog more logical.

Before this, I was an unabashed Microsoft Word fan. What changed? A need for simplicity, first off, and a need for something that I could transfer from site to site. The copy/paste/format/code routine seemed so archaic, as if I was still trying to start a fire with sparks and leaves while a butane lighter sat just inches away.

I jot ideas into Evernote, but typically I use email to remind myself. My to-do list is Things, which I love, and I sketch more complex ideas into a Moleskin.

I used to use ultra-fine Sharpie pens, but they bleed through my current knock-off Moleskin. So I’ve switched to Energel Liquid Gel Ink pens from Pentel. They’re great.

Why does this matter?

It doesn’t.

Seriously. This does not matter.

This routine is mine. It’s not even a routine. It’s barely a list of actionable steps – it’s more like a random list of unactionable drivel.

I write the way I write and you write the way you write. Creativity. Analysis. Creation of any kind. These are not things that can be summed up in a 15,000-hit eHow page, or on a search marketing blog, or even person to person.

I mentioned this in my methodology post over at Eating Elephant: you create your own system by trying and failing and adapting and trying again. Because what I do will not work for you. What you do will not work for me. All we can do with each other is make suggestions, push each other harder, and remember that nothing creative is done in terms of black and white.

By all means, try my method. Try lots of methods. And take the things that work forward to create your own method.


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Issues Considered: Blogging, Meta, Technology, Writing

Editing, right before your eyes

June 17th, 2011

So I read this six paragraph review from Kill Screen on Infinity Blade, and it was good, and I liked it, and I thought “what an interesting way to position an iOS game,” and then I clicked the button: Begin Bloodline 2.

And then, I gasped.

Because here it is. The power and the potential of online content, pulling you in, tweaking your imagination. Changing. Right there. Changing as you watch.

Even more than the tech mumbo jumbo, though: this is the first time I’ve seen an article tackle the most important part of the writing process: the process ITSELF. Much as the game provides an opportunity to grow and learn from your mistakes, the article slowly grows through revisions, insight and experience, becoming more refined RIGHT IN FRONT OF YOU AS YOU WATCH.

That’s pretty great, you guys. Pretty f’n great.


Comments: 1

Issues Considered: Web, Writing

On missing your kids

April 22nd, 2011

I spent two days – and, ultimately, three nights – in Minneapolis at a seminar this week. Sierra and Isaac missed me. Missed me for real. To the point that they were asking where I was. To the point that, for the first time I can remember, they were concerned I was never coming home.

My first night back, I had scheduled a content strategy meet-up. I wasn’t home until just before bedtime. Sierra wanted to know if I was coming home.

“Is Daddy coming home?’”

For three days I wasn’t there. It was only natural to be concerned that I wasn’t coming home on the fourth.

This morning, I left early, as I often do on Fridays, to take care of things at work. Sierra woke up and wanted to see me. Had a fit when she realized she didn’t say “goodbye” to me.

“We’re not a family anymore,” she said.

Four days. And we’re not a family anymore.

I was going to write a blog post about how much her “DADDDDDIIIIEEE!!!” means to me, how awful I feel when I let her down – when I’m not there, even for a night, even when we all know I’m going to be back soon – and how it breaks my heart every night I have to try to sleep in a hotel alone, without telling her what my favorite part of the day was, without getting to hear what she learned at school, without feeling like she and Isaac own my life and that I’ve become that sappy dad that can’t handle being away from his kids for even a day or two.

I didn’t write that post.

Good thing I didn’t. Because Merlin Mann did. And holy shit, you guys. He WROTE the shit out of it.

From 43 Folders, “Cranking”:

Many mornings over the past six months or so, at almost exactly 6:00 AM Pacific Time, I was not in my regular bed. I was not even at home. I was sitting in another building, typing bullshit that I hoped would please my book editor. Who, by the way, is awesome.

And, if I noticed what time it was, I’d always wonder whether my daughter had run into our bedroom yet.

I’d wonder whether she had seen my side of the bed empty again. And, when I thought about my empty spot on the bed and how disappointed she’d be to scream “DAD-dy! DAD-dy! DAD-dy!” then see I’m not even there, I’d die a little.

I’d die a little, because as I thought about her, I’d think about my Dad. And as I thought about my Dad, I’d start thinking about hospital beds with cranks–then on to dents, and covered dishes, and rooms full of sobbing outdoorsy guys, and so on.

But, by then it might be 6:10 am Pacific Time. And I didn’t have time to think about my family. Not now, right? No, I had to keep working. I had to stay in that other building and keep typing bullshit that I hoped would please my editor. Who is awesome.

So, I’d type and type. I’d crank and crank. I’d try and try. I’d want very much to go home, make hot milk, and watch Toy Story 2. So much, I’d want this.

I dabbed at my eyes with my sleeve. I sat back and knew I had to say something. I realized it wouldn’t be enough. Because another person already hit it on the head. On. The. Head.

Excuse me. Gotta go hug my daughter, again.


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Issues Considered: Isaac, Sierra, Writing

Baby’s first signature

March 28th, 2011

The “S” is backwards, like a cheap stereotype, and only the “R”s are lowercase, but every time Sierra writes her name it’s as if hope for the written word has been awakened again.

No hyperbole. Watching a child learn to write is as powerful as you can get.

Because, you see, I thought I’d spent the last seven years learning how to write. No. Not right. Instead, I spent the last seven years how to write better or how to write for the internet or how to write copy and scripts.

But Sierra is learning how to write. Full stop. End of story. She is not learning style or function, but the basic steps of writing. Not first steps, but first phonics. Not first word, but first signature.

I have written a lot of things in my life. Some of it has been okay and some of it has been decent and some of it might even have been good if you ask the right people but none of it compares to the power of each letter Sierra pushes out of her pencil.

Every. Letter. S. I. E. R – twice. A.

The potential and promise of every letter, each more important and amazing than anything I’ll ever hope to write.


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Issues Considered: Sierra, Words, Writing

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