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 1577

It’s May now, and I am simul­ta­ne­ously filled with awe at the full­ness of the year so far… and shock that it’s so far gone. But this sea­son is always like this; too slip­pery. The April-​​May-​​June cabal is not to be trusted.

Pin­nebog (the iPad project) is plot­ted out, but I haven’t really put any sen­tences or func­tions together yet. I’m telling myself it’s because I don’t have my iPad yet (it’s a 3G, and should arrive this week) but really I’ve just been lazy/​busy.

I have another project brew­ing, too—an audio col­lab­o­ra­tion. In fact I have the intro and call-​​out drafted, but held off on post­ing it this week­end because I don’t think I have it quite right yet. This medium is not native ground for me, so I’m a lit­tle less reck­lessly con­fi­dent than usual. But let’s go ahead and give it a name: Trap Rock.

And there’s another sonic sur­prise com­ing soon, as well! Remem­ber the Remix Project? Remem­ber the win­ners? Yes indeed.

This is going to be an intense, trun­cated week, because on Thurs­day I’m fly­ing up to Alaska, where I’ll stay through the week­end to a) address the Alaska Press Club, and b) com­pose a con­tri­bu­tion to 48 Hour Mag­a­zine.

Two weeks after that, I’m fly­ing to Qatar.

See what I mean about a slip­pery season?

Week 1576

Whew—I’m glad to have a quick respite after sev­eral unquiet week­ends in a row. This after­noon, I am relax­ing and scheming.

So my next project—still part of the Cold­wa­ter stream of quick wins—is going to be an iPad app. I’m call­ing this Pin­nebog. (I pro­nounce it PIN-​​eh-​​bog. I won­der if that’s right?)

This was a tough deci­sion. On one hand, an iPad app is a ter­ri­ble idea: not that many peo­ple have iPads yet; it’s a more dif­fi­cult plat­form to make media for than the web; and at some point in the process, I’ll have to wait on Apple’s approval. Bleh.

But on the other hand, the moment is just so ripe to put a stake in the ground.

This morn­ing, I started read­ing Ken Auletta’s New Yorker piece about the Kin­dle, the iPad, and big book pub­lish­ers but couldn’t fin­ish it because it was just so unin­ter­est­ing. The head­line claims it’s about “the future of books,” but Auletta and the big publishers—and Ama­zon and Apple for that matter—really don’t have much to say about that at all. At least not in the book­fu­tur­ist sense. Not in the under­wear sense.

Not when there’s stuff like this trick­ling out.

Now, the real chal­lenge here is to design a project min­i­mal enough that I can do it very quickly: in weeks, not months. I’m tak­ing The Truth About the East Wind as a sort of start­ing point. Pin­nebog will also use images and sound to tell a tale, but my inten­tion is to up my game con­sid­er­ably: richer images, deeper inte­gra­tion into the text, and clev­erer inter­ac­tions along the way. And in order to make that fea­si­ble, it’s going to have to be very, very short. Just a wee slip of a story.

I fore­see offer­ing it up for free, of course.

Okay: now I’m off to scheme a bit more about how this will look, and what tools I’ll use to cre­ate it. I decided on this next project about ten min­utes ago—so you could not be more up-​​to-​​date.

Do go check out Nor­mal Heights if you haven’t seen it yet.

Week 1575

For this week’s wee­knote, I sub­mit Nor­mal Heights. Woo!

Weeknote 1574

Cra­zi­est week ever! Late wee­knote. Short weeknote.

You should be fol­low­ing Kovet Moire if you’re not already. He will be the key to every­thing. See you Friday.

No seri­ously, that’s it.

Week 1573

Project Shell­drake com­mences. You will hear more about this over the course of the next two weeks—but just a bit more. The action hap­pens April 16–19. Be ready. I’m going to need your help (and I’ll explain what that means as the date approaches).

In other news, Eric Rosen­field writes:

I’m prob­a­bly going to have to write a whole piece on Robin Sloan, because he seems to be doing every­thing you’re not sup­posed to do as a writer and being very suc­cess­ful at it.

Yesss!

Week 1572

Okay, made a big deci­sion today.

I mean, in the grand scheme of things it’s not a big deci­sion. It’s a big deci­sion when you decide to move to Mozam­bique. It’s a big deci­sion when you decide to vote for a health care reform bill. So yeah actu­ally, maybe I just made a small deci­sion: I’m going to put Pil­grim (Mr. Penum­bra) on the shelf for about two months. I’ve been lamely whack­ing at it since mid-​​February and sim­ply not mak­ing real progress. This is bad because:

• it’s no fun; and
• there’s noth­ing to share along the way.

So I believe the sit­u­a­tion demands a sharp shift in strat­egy. Here it is: for the next 60 days I am going to focus on some small projects that I can cre­ate quickly and share imme­di­ately. I need to put some points on the board. Jeez, I need to give you a rea­son to stick around!

The first one is prob­a­bly going to be a very (very) short story. The next after that will prob­a­bly involve sound. Ooh, I’m excited; sim­ply mak­ing this deci­sion, and shar­ing it here, is really ener­giz­ing. Watch this space.

The code-​​name for this new strat­egy is Coldwater.

P.S. What hap­pened to wee­knotes 1570 and 1571? Dig­i­tal archae­ol­o­gists will be won­der­ing about this in a hun­dred years, no doubt. Shhh. Say nothing.

Week 1569

Busy. Busy, busy, busy. Brain very occu­pied. I’m day­dream­ing less—and that’s big trou­ble for a writer! Do I need to set aside a block of time for day­dream­ing? Can it even work that way?

I’m typ­ing this from a plane. My tweets this week are going to be 100% geo­t­agged pho­tos; you should fol­low along, because I think it’s going to be weird/​fun.

Com­ing tonight or tomor­row: the first of the Annabel Scheme remix projects! Yep, it’s Emily Cooper’s renderings—and they are beautiful.

Have just real­ized that, given my afore­men­tioned tweet exper­i­ment, I will be unable to tweet about the ren­der­ings this week. Hmm. You’re going to have to help me get the word out.

This Fri­day I’ll be in Austin for a few days of SXSW Inter­ac­tive; drop me a line if you’ll be there, too.

(Note to wee­knote aggre­ga­tors: you’ll prob­a­bly want to take me off your list, as these are increas­ingly ten­u­ous approx­i­ma­tions of the wee­knote genre.)

Week 1568

Decades hence, we will refer to this period as the Sea­son of Lame Wee­knotes. Our peo­ple will tell tales: ah, we thought all was lost; ah, for so long we heard noth­ing; ah, it was all work and no sto­ries. Our hearts shrank, our skin grew pale and the birds—the birds didn’t bother with melody any­more. Instead they croaked like frogs, hissed like snakes.

That’s okay: some­times you have to really invest in one part of your life so all the other parts can, in short order, reap the rewards. Like Shake­speare said: “There is a tide in the affairs of men…”

Some­day very soon, the sea will sub­side and we’ll walk on land again and unfurl the tents and ban­ners and scrolls we rolled up so carefully.

But until then: wow, what a flood.

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 1565

Have you heard about the short 20th cen­tury? The notion is that the 20th cen­tury didn’t really go from 1900 to 2000. It went from 1914—the start of World War I—to 1991—the fall of the Soviet Union. Makes more sense, right? And its coun­ter­part is the long 19th cen­tury, 1789 to 1914.

I’ve started to think of 2009 as “long 2009″ in my per­sonal his­tory. It began in Novem­ber 2008, when my co-​​conspirator Andrew Fitzger­ald fin­ished his first novel and I, in a fit of (let’s be hon­est) jeal­ousy, decided to recom­mit myself to writ­ing. And now, “long 2009″ ends this month, when I begin at Twit­ter.

Which is not to say that the writ­ing ends! No: that course has been set. What I mean is that the fulcrum-​​power of the year is bounded by those dates. And “long 2009″ was cer­tainly the most impor­tant year for me since, say, 2004, when I co-​​produced EPIC 2014 and joined Cur­rent.

Mostly I just enjoy telling sto­ries about time: mark­ing out epochs and hinge-​​points. Maybe a bit of coun­ter­fac­tual thrown in there, too.

This week I saw Sep Kap­m­var give a talk at Twit­ter. His project with Jonathan Har­ris—We Feel Fine—was one of the very first things I encoun­tered that had been made with Pro­cess­ing, and one of the things that made me want to learn it for myself, which led to all sorts of other things. Some­thing about see­ing this old influ­ence in this new con­text… it was a nice juxtaposition.

This was a very suc­cess­ful week for Pil­grim. I wrote a lot of mate­r­ial. Very rough, but all in sen­tences and para­graphs, com­mit­ted to the screen, which is the essen­tial thing. I’m mind­ful of my notion to have a barf-​​draft done by mid-​​March, with SXSW as my arbi­trary dead­line; I think it’s quite pos­si­ble, and hit­ting that dead­line is my focus and my mea­sure of success.

That’s it! Short wee­knote this time.

Week 1564

Post­ing this note a bit early, as if to ban­ish this week from my sight. I guess it’s impor­tant to have bench­marks, right? High and low. I got sick this week—sicker than I’ve been in years, bleh—and so the days were mea­sured mostly in mugs of tea and Net­flix streams. And I got approx­i­mately noth­ing done!

Among the media I con­sumed was Miyazaki’s Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind (which takes a while to get through—it’s four dense vol­umes). I find myself re-​​reading it more fre­quently than any other work of fic­tion, manga or oth­er­wise; I think this was maybe my tenth time through. I just can­not wrap my head around how good it is—and how it was essen­tially Miyazaki’s side project for years. The scope of the world, the speci­ficity of the vision… and the human­ity of it. Nau­si­caä makes me cry every time.

I haven’t deliv­ered on my tease about big news from last week; soon, soon.

Head spin­ning with iPad pos­si­bil­i­ties. It looks like such an insanely cool can­vas. I can’t wait to get my hands and fin­gers on one.

Okay, really, that’s it. This week is now OVER.

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…