Writer’s Diary #45: Writing on the Weekend

Daniel Tubb

An update on progress today. First, it’s Saturday. It took some effort to get started. Weekend. But as soon as I got going, it’s been steady. Nice. Moving around the document in a bit of a flow state. Picking away at different pieces, listening to Belle and Sebastian. Why write on the weekend? Why not take a break? I know where I am going, and I am not willing to give up the momentum every week.

What did I do? I picked away at the front matter. I adjusted the title and edited a blurb (371 words). Mostly, I edited a piece on makeshift (571 words). Then, I stuck into some notes riffing for the next section, on the epigraph I want to use from Pablo Neruda, which unexpectedly is a way to get into writing about the Orkney Islands, where I was first exposed to Latin America.

This will allow me to get into a bit of an autobiography that I wrote years ago about how I ended up working in Colombia. However, it’s 3,000 words and ought to be about 1,000.

I’m not sure digressing to Scotland and autobiography makes sense, but I read somewhere “Don’t be afraid to digress.”

But, since the book is about tools and a tool we all use to write is a computer, getting to Scotland for a little will let me spend time on my first computer, and learning how to write. It would beep at every spelling error, and had a wonderful pixelated font, not unlike the one I am writing on now.

Writer’s Diary #44: Departure Mono

Daniel Tubb

For the last few weeks, I’ve been drafting in Tinderbox my book Makeshift using the fantastic Departure Mono font. It is a monospaced pixel font, reminiscent of the fonts I used to learn to type on in the 1990s command-line interfaces and that graphical user interface of the Atari ST, which I learned to write on. It’s a glorious, free font. Kudos to its creator Helena Zhang.

Writer’s Diary #43: Tinderbox 10 and the Guadi View

Daniel Tubb

I’m a long time user of Tinderbox from Eastgate Systems. A Mac app, that is a Swiss Army knife for notes.

This summer, once again, I’m working on the book. I have hundreds (or more) of pages of notes. Now is a good time to find some order in my madness. For that, I really like Tinderbox’s brand new Gaudi view.

The Tinderbox Gaudí View — the first novel hypertext view in years — tessellates the idea plane to keep more notes in sight. Tinderbox continuously adapts the shape and placement of each note to give each a fair share of the available space, while avoiding unwanted distraction. Gaudí view is especially good for brainstorming and conferences!

It is great for brainstorming, for bringing notes that are related together by dragging them while the other notes slide smoothly out of the way, and for lingering and attending and playing with and getting a feel for the notes.

The thousands of new badges, via SF Symbols, are just really nice to have as well.

For example, this is a sample of the outline of the book.

Screen Shot of Gaudi View

Update July 22 at 1:50 pm.

I learn from Mark Anderson’s wonderful TBRef that with a force expression in the Guadi view control at the top, it’s easy to get related notes to come together.

$Tags==$Tags(that)

Notes with related tags, are drawn together. Super useful.
Guadi View, organized with like minded notes brought together.

Multi-Column Text Editor on Mac?

Daniel Tubb

I’m working on a piece of writing today. I often write in markup, and enjoy the multi-column view of Markup 2. But, editing in multi-column view is a different story. The Mac has excellent apps to work with text. I use Highland 2, BBedit, and Tinderbox. Each brilliant, in their own way. None of them support multi-column editing.

Do any apps on the Mac?

It is possible to create a Word file that does this. (e.g. Make a custom page size to fit your screen, adjust the margins, add columns, adjust the font, etc.) It is far from elegant, however. You have to do it again, for each file.

Multicolumn text editor.

multicolumn text editing.docx

With so many full screen Mac and iOS text editors that work with markdown, do none of them support editing text in a multi-column mode?

If so, send me an email. If not, and you write one, I’d love test it.

Notes on Running #3: Aîka

Daniel Tubb

Aïka is five months old. A border collie, and new to our family. Rambunctious. Fast. She loves her walks. This morning, I took her for a run. We went slow, but it was quickly clear that running with a puppy forces one’s attention to her rhythms, her pace, and her speed. I took my full presence and attention. Feeling the leash, plating it, never letting it tighten because we got out of rhythm. Quickening as she did. Slowing with her. I’m sure she made my run better.

Aïka at five months.

Writer’s Diary #42: Steady Improvements in Tinderbox

Daniel Tubb

I’ve been a long-time user of Eastgate Systems’ Tinderbox. At least since 2010, when I first bought a copy to do fieldwork. It’s a tool that I keep coming back to, even if I leave from time to time. Every time I come back, I am impressed, once again, by its steady, evolutionary, sometimes revolutionary improvements. Mark Bernstein has created a brilliant, powerful piece of software for knowledge workers. I think it’s criminally underused by anthropologists. But, that’s for another post. I’ve long thought of it as a Swiss army knife for notes. But that doesn’t really do justice to the software. Do check [Tinderbox] out.

For now, I just wanted to call attention to one of the little changes made over time that Mark has worked into Tinderbox, which make things just nicer.

Between the version I was using, and what I upgraded to yesterday, a small change, is that it is now possible to make the left-hand pane (map/outline/etc any arbitrary width. Before, there was a minimum size. It’s a change that perhaps most users will probably never notice.

But, I write books. And, often, when I am in the thick of writing, I want to make the text pane on the right as big as possible, and make the left hand pane as narrow as possible. This wasn’t possible to do to quite as narrow as I wanted before. It now is. Thank you, Mark. Just one more of the steady refinements that makes Tinderbox indispensable.

Screenshot of narrow left hand side map pane in Tinderbox.

Rules for Writing #2: Delaying

Daniel Tubb

Stats: 20,759 steps, ran for twenty minutes, stretched rather too quickly, one coffee, beans and rice for lunch, and 6 pages, tight, longhand, which doesn’t quite match my goal, but I am going to be nice to myself.

I struggled with social media and the news until I blocked them on my computer as well. It’s amazing how often I reach automatically for the news. There is more time to think, when not reading short pieces.

Today is one of the few times I’ve exercised before writing. I did it yesterday as well. It used to be that I treated a word count as a thing I had to do, come hell or high water. Today, I’m equally committed to the words, but I kept delaying until quite late because of kids, because of meetings, because of presentations. By the time I got to words, I knew what I wanted to write. A draft came easy.

I used to think I was only a morning writer. Now, I’m not so sure.

.

A forest field replaced with yuca, Suaita, Santander, 2014.

Rules for Writing #1: Success

Daniel Tubb

Quick update. Today, we travelled by bus from Santander to Socorro, up the Canyon of Chicamocha. It’s a steep canyon, and the bus drive is probably four or five hours door to door.

Lunch was a Colombian meal at 3:00 pm. I had it sin proteina. It was rice, chickpea stew, a beetroot salad, and yuca with tomato sauce. Lemonade to wash it down. The kids ordered Colombian Chinese rice. It was rather large.

Most of the day was on the bus, so I had not done much moving. I did a quick run first thing this morning in Bucaramanga, then a longer run when we got in at 5 o’clock. Both were slow and steady. First, up the hill there and back for 2 km, then since it was raining, an hour and a half around the balcony of the Casaredonda. This got me my 20,000 steps and my stretching. No social media, podcast, or news was essay. No coffee, too. I wrote this post, and revised it, after writing 1,500 words for a chapter on Rules.

In short, today, I hit all my rules, despite traveling for 6 hours.

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Writer’s Diary #41: Rules, for a Month’s Writing

Daniel Tubb

Here I am, once again, with my rules. Rules for writing. Temporary ones, mind. They never last more than a month. But, that’s good enough. Good enough to get some momentum. I know the book’s structure. I know the argument. With a little effort, I could make headway. My sabbatical is coming to an end, so why not finish on a high? So I’ve turned to rules.

I wrote them.

I have had some success with rules in the past.

To start my first book, I had a writing challenge with a colleague. To finish it, I did a writing challenge with other colleagues. Both worked. I have tried this other times, and it has not worked. No matter.

This time, the rules are my own. Just me, this time. The rules I will adopt for the next month, starting now.

The rules? The rules are not just about writing this time. Writing is part of it, but writing is an embodied activity. It is a thing we do in the world. Therefore, the rules are for writing and to be in a good place for writing.

  • Run for 20 minutes a day, perhaps longer, and cool down and stretch for ten minutes.
  • Take 20,000 steps.
  • Eat whole food, plant-based.
  • No caffeine after the first coffee.
  • No news, social media, or podcasts.
  • Write (or revise from notes) 1,500 new, good words into the manuscript.
  • Write a post about the day, with a photograph.
  • Stop.