No kidding.

No kidding, I had completely forgotten that this blog existed. I tend to be better at starting projects than at sustaining them. I'm not bad at finishing projects, but I haven't been in the habit of writing lately.  There's nothing to stop me from starting this up again though. But one thing at a time, and this week I am making running a thing.

I have been thinking more and more about writing lately though. There have been interesting developments in the world of words, or rather in the industry of words. E-books are a thing, and they have changed the way people read, they have changed what people read to a certain extent but they are only changing the publishing industry very slowly.

I mean, books weren't going anywhere. People like stories, different people like different stories. There's room for more players on this field.

Curses!

I'm at the airport. I'm waiting to board a flight to Calgary. That's it. Just sitting here. Doing nothing.

Air Canada made me check my knitting needles. I shouldn't have asked but I have a lot of knitting to do. I didn't want to get to security and have to figure out what else to do with two thirds of a pair of socks. Actually I'm not knitting socks but I won't ruin a christmas surprise anymore than air canada already has.

What irks me is that at security it wouldn't have been an issue. Acording to my new buddies at security, there is a ban on metal needles but the current project is on wooden circs so it would have been fine. Stupid air canada, can't keep their policies straight.

Now I have HOURS ahead of me and no wool. I'll have to sleep, because I'll be loosing sleep until the 25th in order to finish Rachel's present. I'm sure this wouldn't have happened on west jet.

I knew it all along — Eat local, Act Evil

Local organic garlic is $1.25 a head. If I am paying a dollar for garlic, I expect to get at least 5 bulbs, a dozen if I make the hike to china town. I have a rule for eating organic: if I peel it, it doesn't need to be organic. I want to reduce my footprint. I just don't like reducing my wallet in order to do so.

As such, I was tickled when I read the piece in Slate (on Slate.com?) that, citing an article in Psychological Sciences by UofT scientists— stated that buyers of "green" products were more likely to cheat, steal and — my favourite — not share.

For the record I happen to believe that certified organic yarn maybe the dumbest product on the planet. I am not so concerned about the pesticides that go into the grain the sheep eat, as I am not going to eat the wool — not in any volume for certain. Some of my favourite wools happen to be organic (same for, and wines, tomatoes) but "organic" isn't what makes me lurv them.

How not to do things

I have taken a job not writing. Just a job. It keeps me fed and sheltered. At the moment that is what matters. And actually I am learning a lot.

I am learning how not to do things. And it's painful. There are days when I am words away from taking off my apron and walking out. There have been days when I have gone so far as to look up the number for Now Magazine, a weekly publication with muckraking sensibilities — think Lincoln Steffens "I have seen the future and it works" — to let them know such a high falutin' shop treats its' people shabbily. But I don't — I am chalking it up to experience.

So far I have learned
-never ask someone to do something you are not prepared to do yourself.
-never ask someone to do something you are not prepared to teach them to do.
-don't ask your staff to do something and then do something completely different yourself.
-if you don't take things seriously nobody else will.
-don't lay your problems on your staff.
-Never put off until tomorrow what can be done right now.
-Keep in mind, some things are better done tomorrow — especially if we closed an hour ago and everybody's shift is over.

Potato Pete says "I'm an energy food!"

I finally got around to catching up on the New Yorker Out Loud podcast. It was about poutine.

I don't mind the notoriety but it has been in the news a lot lately. We're suffering it's renaissance. There are four restos that I know of that serve poutine exclusively in downtown Toronto — recent developments. I guess I see why. It's a comforting food. We're hardwired to like starch, fat and salt in fries, cheese curds and piping hot gravy. Poutine's quality is judged on it being hot and fresh, not on, well, quality.

In retrospect, the New Yorker piece predecessed and probably inspired the ABC News piece and subsequent coverage. I think what miffed me most was that it was such a weirdly urban take on the food. Calvin Trillin cited Montreal as it's birthplace and late night drinking as it's raison d'etre, which doesn't really account for how it spread accross the country. It's hard to explain the local variations. In Ontario, we take our fries with gravy, probably not cheese.

While I concede Poutine is a top notch beer sponge, it was never the beer sponge of choice. After clubbing in Montreal, we always went for falafels. Falafel places are to Montreal are what coffee shops are to Vancouver.

Poutine however rules the ski hill lunchline. It was invented on a ski hill. It warms the bones, sticks to the ribs, and probably clogs your heart and colon, in a way the fortifies us to head back out into the Canadian winter. The ski hill model further explains the spread. Skiers and riders took it hill to hill with them.

Like most of Canadian cuisine, it's not very urbane. But than very little of Canada is.

getting back into it

so that I can get out of it for Christmas.

It has been a lean year. When you are used to writing for work full time it is hard to stay motivated to write for fun, for self-actualization, but especially for free.

The real problem is that I have been so busy working to make ends meet — at odd jobs and retail — that I don't have the time to take care of housework, let alone build the writing business. It's a big leap to back off on a small but guaranteed paycheck, in exchange for bigger ones that are rarely frequent or timely.

It's time I heed my own advice. "Just do it." I will do laundry later, I will sleep next week. I will not knit "just" one more row. Right now I will get back to writing.

Not RIGHT now. I have to get off to the butcher shop — gotta pay the bills.
d'oh.

Spring Cleaning.

Spring started at 7h44 yesterday. I am largely dedicating my weekend to spring cleaning. It isn't garguantuan. I live in a one bedroom apartment and I try not to accumulate things (books excepted) — I try to keep the place in pretty good order. I try to have a place for everything and everything in its place.

Where I went wrong...

I have been planning Spring Cleaning all week. Thus on tuesday, when I made bread and got flour all over the place, I didn't clean up. When I showered on friday I didn't rinse the tub. When I finished knitting my sweater, I didn't pick up all the snips of wool or put away all the sodding notions. Because I was going to do a Serious Clean on the weekend.

Blurgh.

Now not only oo I have 6 months of accumulated grime and maintenance to address. But a weeks worth of chores.

The right to bare arms

It has been a strange week for Women's history. The Vatican declared the washing machine the single most important development in Women's lib. Meanwhile Michelle Obama, one of most accomplished First Ladies in American history, is making headlines as a fashion plate and advocate of healthy cooking.

The washing machine... The argument has been made that the mechanisation and industrialisation of Clean actually increased the burden on women. Instead of liberating women to take on work outside the home, things like washing machines and vacuums just raised the standard, the amount of house work always increased to the point where it exceeded the time available to do it.

But I suppose the Vatican is not in a position to acknowledge the role of the birth control pill, the vote or the legalization of abortions in liberating women.

Michelle Obama... Went to Princeton and graduated from Harvard Law yet we are talking about her workout regime and what she feeds her daughters.

Food, not to mention what we do with it, is an important part of national discourse in any country. The thing is that having healthy rich people — of any colour — talking about what we should be doing to stay healthy and clean smacks of Progressivism, not education or policy change.

Actually this wouldn't bother me accept the conversation ends up being about how she talks her kids in to eating vegetables. It's too kitchen sink on one hand and aristocratic on the other. I mean she does have an army of chefs to prepare meals to tempt her kids.

And a Harvard Law degree. Someone should ask her about tortes. hehe.

Periodic Table of Typefaces

I while back I gave up on times new roman. Times new roman is dear to me. I just needed a change. What shocked me was that people noticed. People cared. People came to times new roman's defense. Others recommended alternatives. I have since gone back. I didn't find anything in the mac Microsoft Office catalogue that really got my blood flowing. Well some did get my blood pumping but not in a good way.

I hate courier. There's no excuse. It's not 1944, and we aren't making carbon copies.

Anything written in comic sans looks like grade 2 reading material. And on it goes.

Someone has put together a periodic table of typefaces. Helvetica is ranked one (where Hydrogen would go) and Times is number 7... nitrogen... any how I was thrilled. Courier is number 63 — the Europium, of the Lanthanides of the typesetters universe. Take that 1944.

Also discovered a webspread movement to ban comic sans at bancomicsans.com.

Still Breathing

I do still like the concept — choose folly — which I laid out in my first post but I am finding that I really am no longer married the topic of productivity. I was spending more time on being productive than on actually being creative. Out of frustration I ended up doing neither. As nobody was reading the blog, I don't have to worry about alienating the readership, I'll write whatever tickles my fancy.

I have been knitting instead of reading and writing lately. On that note the "norwegian purl" was brought to my attention — it is a neat little way for continental knitters to change from knit to purl without moving the working yarn from back to front, something I would categorize as folly. I am knitting up a k2p2 cowl onto a sweater just now and taking the opportunity to practice this new technique. I'm getting to like it quite a bit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DkwcejowiI

Making the best use of interviews

I love my recorder very very much. I use an Olympus WS-311 M digital voice recorder. It's nifty. It's a little bigger than a pack of gum. It takes a triple A battery, it plugs into the USB on my laptop, and it shows up on my desktop. The sounds is great, I couldn't recommend it more highly. Evidently it is also a music player if that is important to you.

Digital is particularly handy. I use quicktime to listen to recordings, and I file them away on my external hard drive when I am done with whatever it is I am working on. This is a huge advantage over tapes. I have to keep recordings of interviews for a certain amount of time for legal reasons but they're hard to file. They're clutter.

That said, I still loath going back to them.

Some things I have learned —
-Review your notes as soon as you have the chance to debrief.
- When you're writing go back to your notes before you go back to the recording.
- While I take notes longhand during the actual interview, taking notes by hand from the recording just takes work. Instead by using "apple-tab" I can switch between apps, from quicktime to word and back to pause and play the recording while I transcribe relevant passages.
- Despite my best efforts it is impossible to transcribe an interview with music on, even brain food music.
- When transcribing, make sure you capture what they were trying to say not just what came out. People don't always say what they mean to say, they pause at inopportune moments and they start saying one thing but change their mind and finish saying something else.

I am currently exploring the possibility of learning short hand — It doesn't look promising for the short term though.

Mixed blessings

The list thing worked.

When I ran out of steam, instead of making tea and watching 30 rock on Sidereel I checked the list and did whatever matched my level of ambition at that moment. I got almost everything done.
In fact all I have left is to listen/transcribe my interviews for these stories. Blurgh.

And of course I still have to write the stories.

Struggling for three days

"I didn't write 46 pages today, I wrote one page 46 times" Walter Mathau said it some movie where he was a writer.

I work in fits and starts, which is to say I will struggle —agonize — over a story for three or four days, only then I will sit down and write it. I do believe that I need that time for my understanding of a topic to come together. The thing is that at the end of those germinating days, I look at my "current projects" documents and feel like I wasted the day.

So the challenge for this week is to make those days where ideas are germinating look productive.

My friend Jeremy was in town this weekend. Over coffee we talked about our respective short-comings writing. He is an engineer and one of the most systematically productive people I know. On the other hand I work from my laptop wherever that might be, I get distracted, I procrastinate, I can't multi-task and tend to focus on the trees not the forest. I am not good at thinking about the next project if the current one is not done.

He is working on a fantasy series. Right now he is focusing on laying out his universe, characters and plotlines — and is not written anything yet. He's ok with that. Anyhow, this was a pretty radical idea for me.

He suggested I make lists, to prioritize, yes, but particularly so that I knew what to do with myself when I hit a wall, so that maybe at the end of those germinating days, I would have at least planted seeds for the next project.

So I spent the morning making lists. The whole morning — LISTS. At the moment it seems like a lot of time passed that has not gotten me any closer to finishing a story, but I will keep faith and see what kind of payoff I get when I reach end of the week staring down a Friday deadline for the mag and Tuesday deadlines for the paper.

Monday is my 730AM hockey game so its not like Mondays are very productive days anyhow.

The debrief

First a recap, last week I did sit down and write 300 words — not just any 300 words — 300 very good words. And then I got up and drank a glass of water, did a waltz around my living room and I sat down and wrote another 350 words. All done. In about an hour and a half. Six hundred words I had been struggling with for three days.

I did have very good interviews to work from on that story. I also took a lot of time over the previous two days to go back over my interviews, pull out the important quotes and figure out where I had to flesh the story out for myself. I loath going through my interviews. As useful as it is to hear the interview, I dread hearing my own voice on tape. I usually only go back to the interviews as an act of desperation. This is a good reminder that there is a payoff to doing it properly. The more I use quotes the fewer words I have to come up with myself.

So, the "just do it" approach worked this time.

Getting started and moving on.

I am notoriously bad at multitasking and exceedingly good at procrastinating. Here's the thing, like a lot of people out there I do want to be more productive. I am just not too sure how to go about it.

Given my years' experience procrastinating I am very knowledgeable at how not to get work done. That is where the question of folly and sacrilege comes in handy. I am looking to rid myself of habits that don't work — sacrilege — and explore and adopt wild and crazy ideas, or rather anything outside of my immediate confort zone that just might — folly. God has nothing to do with this. This has to do with making time for me to learn and create, so maybe in an animist sort of way God is interested. But that is not the point. Don't let Erasmus throw you off.

Rachel, my younger, cooler, and more connected sister, got me started reading Unclutter, and through their intrepid site I got hooked on lifehacker and 43 folders. This is just to say that I will freely borrow and refer to them, probably work my way through many of their suggestions.

There are two ground rules, one is low tech — I have a mac, not a hobby — and low up front investment, because I am afterall a freelance writer. I look forward to seeing if this makes me any more useful.

The first experiment — back to deadline hell. I have 600 words to go. Today I am only letting myself get up every 250 words. We'll see how that goes.

For Hallowe'en I am going to be productive.