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.”

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

Want to know what makes this “live for food” thing pretty fun? My wife. She likes to cook. A lot.

So we cook. A lot. And we try new things. And we grow gardens. And we buy cookbooks with beautiful pictures. And we introduce our kids to foods that they normally wouldn’t encounter and, let’s be honest, they still don’t eat them but at least they know what lentils and cardamom pods and homemade turkey pot pie are.

In the past month, we’ve roasted our own coffee, baked our own hamburger buns, planned a spring garden and developed a fast and easy kettle corn process.

(I say “we,” as if I’ve had any real input other than saying, “OMG THAT SMELLS GOOD LULZ!”)

So we like cooking, baking and gardening.

Now that THAT’S been established, I’d like to finally announce Kerrie’s new blog: Serves Four, a blog about cooking, baking and gardening. It’s named “Serves Four” because our four person family gets to reap the rewards of all that cooking, baking and gardening. It’s a blog because there JUST AREN’T ENOUGH cooking, baking and gardening blogs out there.

Check it out. We’d appreciate it.

It’s another blog.

Wait. Before you click away. Wait.

It’s a content strategy blog. It’ll touch on IA and UX and CMS and Web writing and all of those other cousin-disciplines, but first and foremost it’s going to be a content strategy blog.

I feel so grown up, writing a blog about one professional subject. *Blush.*

Why? Here’s why: I’ve been writing about content strategy, either here or over at Blend’s blog, for over a year now, but in both places the posts have seemed out of place.

At Black Marks on Wood Pulp, they’ve fallen upon the wrong ears; they’re shards of glass in the jelly of this might-as-well-be-a-daddy-blog blog – too sharp and too work-related to fit in with the posts about Sierra’s poop. And Blend’s blog is more of a news feed – a stream of data rather than a chapter book on professional development.

So, at the urging of Deane and with the help of Blend, I’m going off the deep end. I’m starting a content strategy blog. Just like everyone else who started a content strategy blog. Except mine’s going to be different.

Because it’s got a big jungle animal on it.

I’ll admit – I’m pretty excited to dive in.

Look for it. Soon. That is all.

And then, an hour too late, I read this little thing from an Ira Glass video on storytelling (via Brian Gilham):

Nobody tells people who are beginners, and I really wish somebody had told this to me, is that if you’re watching this video you’re somebody who wants to make videos, right? And all of us who do creative work like, you know, we get into it and we get into it because we have good taste. Do you know what I mean?

Like you want to make TV because you love TV. You know what I mean? Because there’s stuff that you just like love, OK? So you’ve got really good taste and you get into this thing that I don’t even know how to describe but it’s like there’s a gap. That for the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good, OK? It’s not that great. It’s really not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good.

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, your taste is still killer and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you, you know what I mean? Like you can tell that it’s still sort of crappy. A lot of people never get past that phase and a lot of people at that point quit.

And the thing I would just like say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste and they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short, you know, and some of us can admit that to ourselves and some of us are a little less able to admit that to ourselves.

But we knew that it didn’t have the special thing that we wanted it to have and the thing what to do is… Everybody goes through that. And for you to go through it, if you’re going through it right now, if you’re just getting out of that phase or if you’re just starting off and you’re entering into that phase, you’ve got to know it’s totally normal and the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work.

Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you’re going to finish one story. You know what I mean? Whatever it’s going to be. You create the deadline. It’s best if you have somebody who’s waiting for work from you, somebody who’s expecting work from you, even if it’s not somebody who pays you but that you’re in a situation where you have to try not to work. Because it’s only be actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions.

Hell yeah. I wish I could have imparted that kind of knowledge on the ad kids today.

I guess I’ll be happy I didn’t make any fart jokes.