Robin Sloan

Week 1580

Okay so wee­knote 1577 was way opti­mistic. I barely had time to think about fun projects, let alone actu­ally work on any.

I did finally get my iPad—and it’s glo­ri­ous. I have a very sim­ple shell for Pin­nebog (that’s the code-​​name for my iPad-​​specific story) up and run­ning; even with­out any bells and whis­tles, it’s a won­der to see words and pic­tures pre­sented inside this frame. Long-​​term, I think this is going to have to be my medium.

I’m faced with a bit of a fork in the road now. The two months of Cold­wa­ter are com­ing to an end. What a good run: the last seven weeks kicked out Last Beau­ti­ful, Nor­mal Heights, and a short piece in the amaz­ing 48 Hour Mag­a­zine. (See also.)

And now I have two clear options:

• Return to Pil­grim as planned. (For the unini­ti­ated: that’s the book-​​length expansion/​explosion of Mr. Penumbra’s Twenty-​​Four-​​Hour Book Store.) The good news is that Cold­wa­ter had the intended effect: I am now hun­gry to get back to the book. I’m burst­ing with new ideas; I feel sort of “re-​​pressurized,” if that makes any sense. The time is right for a story like this, and I’ve just got to sit down and write it.
• Keep jam­ming on the iPad and get Pin­nebog released ASAP. This is appeal­ing because the iPad is sim­ply so enchant­ing, and so ripe. I feel like there’s buzz to be had for fic­tion that really takes advan­tage of its canvas—maybe even a kind of first-​​mover advan­tage? All the pieces are in place for me to grab this.

But on bal­ance, I have to pick Pil­grim. The iPad’s not going any­where; in fact, it’ll be even more attrac­tive in another three months, with even more users and an even bet­ter OS. But I really believe this book is pegged pretty firmly to the moment we find our­selves in—the fact that I’m faced with this sort of deci­sion under­scores the point!—and if I want it to be a real book on real shelves in real stores (and I do) I gotta get cracking.

I’m going to be crisp about this: start­ing next week, it’s 100% Pil­grim again. Pin­nebog goes on the shelf, to be resumed some­time later in the sum­mer. In the mean­time, I’ll paw my iPad fondly and imag­ine all the cool things to come.

I need to set some new mile­stones for the book; look for those in the next weeknote.

We’re actu­ally clos­ing in on the story’s one-​​year anniversary—how cool is that? It feels right to be work­ing on it again now. The sur­pris­ing suc­cess of Mr. Penum­bra is really what launched all of this, after all. It’s time to get back into the Twenty-​​Four Hour Book Store—and find out what’s beyond it, too.

Here’s a cryp­tic clue: Mátyás Hun­yadi, the Raven King.

Week 1567

Num­ber of new jobs started: 1.
Num­ber of words added to Pil­grim: 0.

As expected.

See you next week!

Week 1566

A redis­cov­ery this week: when it comes to writing—specifically when it comes to mak­ing progress on a big piece of writ­ing, like Pilgrim—there is an order-​​of-​​magnitude dif­fer­ence between a ses­sion of one or two hours and a ses­sion of three or four. There’s just some­thing about that span. It’s the amount of time I need to load the program—it’s like the icon is still bounc­ing in the dock ’til hour two, and then… ta-​​da. I think it’s closely related to the dif­fer­ence between read­ing word-​​by-​​word and read­ing in flow. You know what I’m talk­ing about: the words melt away, the movie plays. That’s the good stuff.

Work­ing in a cafe helps me under­stand the dif­fer­ence. While the pro­gram is still load­ing, I am of course totally inter­ested in my surroundings—faces and book-​​jackets and con­ver­sa­tions over­heard. But after hour two? I become, to my delight, the weird per­son in the room: obliv­i­ous to every­thing around me, lost in the screen, mouth mov­ing silently. (Just a lit­tle bit.)

The point is: I man­aged sev­eral four-​​hour (and longer) writ­ing ses­sions this week and they were hugely pro­duc­tive. What a joy.

(I don’t want to make it sound like ooh mag­i­cal writ­ing. It’s still mostly just bang­ing things out and writ­ing “[[X]]” when I can’t think of the right word or “[[SOMETHING]]” when I can’t think of the right… some­thing. [You’ve never seen my rough­est drafts; they’re full of these place­hold­ers, like vari­ables.] It’s just that, in the third hour and beyond, it all picks up speed dramatically—like I’ve finally escaped some grav­ity well.)

In other news.

I added a new tool this week: a sim­ple log­book, not intended for idea-​​capture (that’s the iPhone) or reflec­tion (that’s this) but rather the very basics: what I did and what I ate.

It is cheap and tiny (3″ × 5″) and entirely un-​​precious. All data, no poetry.

This week I fired up Xcode twice, vaguely intend­ing to fid­dle with the new iPad stuff, and then forced myself to shut it down imme­di­ately both times. Focus. There will be time for that later.

I start at Twit­ter on Tues­day! Hmm: how many four-​​hour writ­ing ses­sions do you think I can pack in between now and then?

Week 1563

It’s been rain­ing hard in San Fran­cisco, and it lent the week a strange char­ac­ter; to me it seemed to pass sort of out­side the nor­mal stream of time. Like a pocket uni­verse. A wet pocket uni­verse. (Also, these things were on the loose.)

It was a good week for mak­ing memes. Stock and flow got wacky-​​incredible trac­tion over at Snark­mar­ket and my post on instru­mented read­ing made the rounds in the data viz world.

And if I’m right about stock and flow (who knows?) then some small frac­tion of those swarms got curi­ous and made their way over to meet my stock—maybe Penum­bra, maybe Scheme, maybe some­thing else. Maybe one of those peo­ple is out there flip­ping through Scheme this very moment. It’s a delight to think so.

Another delight: it felt so good to put together that post on instru­mented read­ing. I have been think­ing about that idea, and imag­in­ing that very graph, for a year entire. Whew. Done. Exorcised.

I announced the Remix Fund win­ners this week and made the ini­tial pay­outs. I like the feel of money flow­ing, even in small amounts. It feels healthy. Almost… meta­bolic. It’s a sign of life.

Read on…

Week 1562

Releas­ing some­thing new redeems even the lamest week; it’s a bit of a cheat, actu­ally. I mean, how lame can it be if you released some­thing? Not as lame as that other week where all you did was play Dragon Age, that’s for sure!

Though I didn’t give Gogo­main the time it needed ear­lier this week, I made up for it on Fri­day and Sat­ur­day, and it’s on track for a full rough draft by tomor­row. My rough drafts are truly rough—not like those fake rough drafts that have been pol­ished up for inspec­tion. Over the years I’ve become pretty com­fort­able shar­ing stuff that still sucks, and at this point I think it’s a true strength. (See: Ed Cat­mull on shar­ing stuff that sucks at Pixar.)

Pil­grim abides. Did I men­tion I released some­thing this week?

Read on…

Week 1561

I still don’t have any rou­tines; every day feels like it has to be invented fresh.

This week started with a strong push on Project Penum­bra, but then got side-​​tracked by The Truth About the East Wind. Is it get­ting side-​​tracked if you’re try­ing to close off the track? To tidy up the room and shut the door? Either way: I real­ized that just a lit­tle push could get East Wind done, or done enough—out of my brain and into the world. Exorcised.

So I got it into rough shape and shared it with some beta testers on Fri­day night, then spent a bit of today work­ing their feedback—which was nuanced and revelatory—back into it.

I also spent a bit of today mon­key­ing with code. Part of East Wind’s pre­sen­ta­tion makes use of a Flash class that con­nects Flash to Javascript, and I just could not get it to do what I wanted. The solu­tion turned out to be sim­ple, but the point here is not to tell you about ExternalInterface—blearghhh—it is to tell you that I’m torn. I oscil­late between think­ing that spend­ing so much time with code is dilet­tan­teish and defo­cus­ing… and think­ing that it’s a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage. I’m ulti­mately more inclined to believe the latter—as evi­denced by the fact that I keep at it—but some­times I won­der: If it’s really a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage, why aren’t I bet­ter at it?

Like a skilled musi­cian say­ing that his com­pet­i­tive advan­tage is the pies he loves to bake. But the pies, they’re really not that great, you know?

Also this week: I signed on to do a very cool project with a very cool com­pany! This is going to involve a lot of writ­ing (and maybe a bit of design, too) over the course of the next four weeks. We’ll call this Project… hmm. I really need a data­base of content-​​less code-​​names. Okay, how about this: I’ll use Wikipedia’s list of rivers in Michi­gan. So this project will be Gogo­main. I’ve done some out­lin­ing and sketch­ing, but the first real day of Gogo­main work will be tomorrow.

I’m really excited that Gogo­main is pri­mar­ily a con­tent cre­ation project—so it’s not just dish­ing out advice, or devis­ing a plan for oth­ers to fol­low, but actu­ally (sim­ply) (con­cretely) mak­ing something.

“Actu­ally.” That makes me think of the French word for news, which is my favorite: actu­al­ités! Also of Bat­tlestar Galac­tica, and Com­man­der Adama’s terse greet­ing: “Galac­tica actual.” He is the ship. Brrr; shiver of delight.

And actu­ally, I’m going to rechris­ten Project Penum­bra, because this new con­ven­tion is way cooler. So now that’s Pilgrim.

Bits and pieces. I plan to post The Truth About the East Wind (sad that it never got a cool river­ine code-​​name) some­time next week. Also next week: Remix Fund vot­ing. A few more copies of the book need to go out. What else? It would not be a bad thing to devote a day to rethink­ing, reor­ga­niz­ing, and repro­vi­sion­ing my office. It’s still reel­ing from Annabel Scheme ware­house duty. There are rub­ber bands and static-​​shield bags everywhere.

Gogo­main. Pil­grim. Those are my twin foci right now; roughly speak­ing, the first gets the day and the sec­ond gets the night.

First wee­knote com­plete! That wasn’t so hard.

Ground, meet feet; they are running

So now that Annabel Scheme is done and released into the wide open world, what am I writ­ing? I’m think­ing about my work for 2010 in two parts:

• The first is a full-​​length novel! It takes Mr. Penumbra’s Twenty-​​Four-​​Hour Book Store as a seed-​​crystal start­ing point and builds it into a much larger mys­tery and a much larger world. I’m work­ing with a won­der­ful agent on this, and aim­ing to have a (VERY) rough draft by SXSW—March 12. That’s fast, but I’m embold­ened by my expe­ri­ence with Annabel Scheme, espe­cially near the end; turns out if you just get over your­self, you can crank the words out pretty quickly. So this is Project Penum­bra.
• The other part is not so mono­lithic: I’m going to keep exper­i­ment­ing with new meth­ods and new for­mats. First up is a story called The Truth About the East Wind, pre­sented in (what I think is) a cool for­mat; I’ll be post­ing that soon. My notion is to pro­duce at least one story pro­to­type every month, and to try some­thing very new with each one. This effort does not have a cool code-​​name. Yet.

Two more things:

• One, I’m going to start keep­ing wee­knotes, inspired by Matt Webb’s at BERG. (The first will come at the end of this first week of twenty-​​ten.)
• Two, I’m going to add a bit of A/​V to the mix—either an inter­mit­tent very short pod­cast­let or an INTERNET VIDEO SERIES. I think I’ll exper­i­ment with both for­mats before mak­ing a decision.

That’s the plan. I’ve had a Scrivener doc burst­ing with notes for Project Penum­bra for a while, but the first lines of a first draft hit the screen today. It felt good!