“I’m much more a gardener than an architect,” concluded George RR Martin in an interview with the Guardian in 2011. What did he mean? He explained that there are two types of writers,

the architects and the gardeners. The architects plan everything ahead of time, like an architect building a house. They know how many rooms are going to be in the house, what kind of roof they’re going to have, where the wires are going to run, what kind of plumbing there’s going to be. They have the whole thing designed and blueprinted out before they even nail the first board up. The gardeners dig a hole, drop in a seed and water it. They kind of know what seed it is, they know if planted a fantasy seed or mystery seed or whatever. But as the plant comes up and they water it, they don’t know how many branches it’s going to have, they find out as it grows.

I’m definitely a gardener, but I’ve always wished I was an architect.

In school, I always struggled with writing essays because I was usually required to write an outline first, and I hated writing outlines. I didn’t know what I wanted to say; how am I supposed to write an outline for an argument I don’t have yet? I needed to write to know what I thought—to drop the seed in the hole and water it and see what grew from it. But I never allowed myself to explore this side of writing because I had deadlines to meet, and because I was an immature student, I always left all my assignments until the absolute last minute.

In this, I haven’t changed much.

It’s almost 8pm as I’m writing this. I mostly had an idea of what I wanted to write, but instead of spending time throughout the day writing, I procrastinated and only started writing a few hours before I usually go to bed. Sure, deadlines are one of the great motivators in life, but I’m not a young and naive teenager anymore—I don’t have the strength or the time to procrastinate. Nor do I want to anymore.

All my novels have languished for two reasons: I could never meet my own deadlines, and I spent too much time watering the soil instead of figuring out how many rooms the house is going to have. You don’t want to know how many times I’ve rewritten the same story because of the new “seed” I found and I just absolutely had to see what grew from it. Even this post has grown into something I didn’t quite plan or foresee. I had this John Ruskin quote I wanted to fit into this, but I think I’ll have to save it for another day.

I want to be an architect, even a bad architect, as Warren Ellis wrote back in June. “I’m bad at plans,” he wrote. “I try, but I always end up winging it.” And here, I can find both solace and a valuable lesson: as long as I’m out in the field scoring the soil with my trowel and planting the seeds and watering them, I’ll be okay. But an unplanted seed won’t grow, and an unwritten story will never be told.

Whether I plant seeds joyfully and see what grows from them or whether I pull out my drafting pencil and straight edge and get to drafting my house, as long as I’m writing, I’ll be fine.

This may be hard to believe, but I am not perfect.

I make mistakes. Like, all the time. One of the reasons why I’m still single in my 30s is because of the many mistakes I’ve made.

After I published yesterday’s post, I went to bed feeling like something was off. Was it the clunkiness in my writing? Yes, but that wasn’t it. My writing is always clunky. Was it how rushed I felt while writing it? Yes, but I always feel like that when working under a deadline. Was it my borderline inappropriate title? Yes, but it wasn’t quite that either.

It was all the above.

Another one of my many “rules” over the years has been to never update or revise anything I’ve published, except for the odd typo or to add a word I’ve needlessly omitted. I’ve never written this “rule” in some style guide or anything, but it was something I did and followed. Once my post is published, I felt like I was done with it, and it was time to move forward.

One of my goals with this project is to refine my craft and revamp my mindset, and part of that means clarifying these unwritten “rules” I hold in my head, to challenge and question them. And this is one of those “rules” I’m challenging.

I remember reading that Robin Sloan edited his posts all the time, and that has provided some comfort. Robin writes:

I remember when I blogged on Snarkmarket, years ago, I would change my posts ALL THE TIME. Not just typo fixes but make pretty substantial tweaks—clumsy language detected with the benefit of an hour’s reflection. Like oil paint; you can move it around for a long time. I loved it.

That quote comes from a post on the great Austin Kleon’s blog, a post where he writes that “blog posts can be edited, added to, improved upon.” Why is that important? Because “I want to be able to be wrong. I want to change my mind! I want to evolve.”

I want to evolve.

To evolve is to admit you’re not perfect, that you are capable of improvement, that your journey is ongoing and never-ending. To evolve is to live, and all I want is to live, mistakes and all.

Earlier today, I re-read yesterday’s post, and I spent some time revising some of it. I changed the title, I polished some of the clunkiness, and I clarified a few thoughts. I would normally be petrified of doing this, but part of my evolution is to do the scary things and hope my readers understand.

Like Austin writes, “to do the exploration that growth and change requires, one needs a forgiving medium… but what one really needs is forgiving readers.”

I will add that I also need to forgive myself for the many mistakes I’ve made and will make. After all, a life without mistakes is a life not lived at all, and again, all I want is to live.

And by here, I mean my website. By here, I mean my RSS feed in your RSS reader app. By here, I do not mean Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or any other social media company whose purpose is to suck up your content greedily to feed their money making machine without regard to you or your well-being.

It starts here.

My words in my home under my name. I own this—I own all of it—and you should, too. Your words in your home under your name. This is what the internet is, and what the internet should always be, a place by people and for people. No algorithms telling you what you should pay attention to, no corporations shoving their half-baked ideas in your face and telling you to like it, but a place where a shy, weird, nerdy guy can write without restraint and share photos of leaves or whatever.

Recently, Manuel Matuzovic, a very well-respected web developer was banned from Twitter for reasons unknown. In a post on his blog, he describes some of the things he’s lost since his ban. He doesn’t have access to his direct messages anymore, images, or bookmarks, and he even lost access to some sites that used Twitter as the login method. One day, everything was normal and the next, all the years of content he produced on someone else’s website was locked away from him, possibly forever.

Isn’t it somewhat ridiculous that these companies exist because of the content their users produce, content millions of people produce for free, and yet these users own none of it? That they can lose all of it by the whims of someone like Elon Musk? Or Mark Zuckerberg? What kind of living hell is this?

Toward the end of his post, Manuel writes:

If there’s something I’ve learned from this whole thing, it’s that I must be more careful with how and where I share my content. A social media platform should not be the primary source. […] Create everything on my own website and syndicate elsewhere, because you never know what might happen to your content or profile tomorrow.

“Now is a good time to reclaim control over your content,” he concludes.

I agree.

And it starts here.

Have you heard of National Novel Writing Month? Apparently, there’s a National Blog Posting Month, too.

After giving it very little thought, I’m going to participate in NaNo—no, NaBloMo—wait, NaBloPoMo—there we go. At least, I’m going to try.

From Amy:

Having taken part in NaBloPoMo last year (See a summary of 2021’s effort), I found out the hard way how important it is to get ahead with ideas and drafts, rather than leaving it until the day of each post to write it.

Have I learned from my mistakes and organised myself better this year? No. But here we are.

I’ve done daily challenges before, and I’ve enjoyed them well enough, so why not challenge myself with something new? I’ve been collecting dozens upon dozens of ideas and half-written blog posts over the past year or so, and I’m tired of them collecting dust. I want to explore them and work on them and draft them and publish them and see what happens.

I’m hesitant because oh my god who has time for this? But that’s the thing, isn’t it? We choose what we pay attention to, and by making this choice or that choice, we are choosing how we want to live our lives. I choose to write. That’s how I want to live my life.

So, let’s write.

For a full month.

What could go wrong?

I guess we’ll have something nice to look at while the world burns around us:

Climate change will increase opportunities to see rainbows, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of Hawai’i (UH) at Mānoa. The study’s authors estimate that by 2100, the average land location on Earth will experience about 5% more days with rainbows than at the beginning of the 21st century.

That’s about 18 more days than normal, which I guess is something. Silver lining and all, considering.

I needed this laugh today:

A group in Poland called 4th of July LARP (LARP is short for live-action role-playing) dresses as Americans and acts out various scenarios that they imagine happening in the U.S. during the summer holiday.

[…]

“LARP 4th of July is a drama about the wasted American dream,” the group writes on Facebook. “It is a story about hope, about a small homeland, about finding one’s place in the community.”

So many more great photos on their Facebook page.

When Ralph Waldo Emerson was in his mid-thirties, he started a series of biography lectures where he began to examine the lives of others with increased interest and scrutiny. In Emerson: The Mind on Fire, the author Robert D. Richardson writes that in Michelangelo Emerson

saw “the perfect image of the artist,” one who was born to see and express the beauty of the world… He loved the disinterestedness and spirit of the deal Michelangelo offered the Pope for his work rebuilding St. Peter’s in Rome: “no fee and no interference.” Emerson emphasized the sculptor’s interest in ideal beauty, how “he sought through the eye to reach the soul,” but he knew that the test of the artist and writer alike is not in intent but in execution.

For the longest time, this is how I’ve tried to work on my craft, by trying to express and execute “what the mind has conceived” and without outside interference. “Happy is he,” writes Emerson,

who looks only into his work to know if it will succeed, never into the times or the public opinion; and who writes from the love of imparting certain thoughts and not from the necessity of sale—who always writes to the unknown friend.

I was reminded of these quotes—these passages that I very happily transcribed in my notebook—when this morning I read this very sobering article in Ted Gioia’s newsletter:

How creative can you really be if you need to please an enormous mass-market audience? When you go down that path, you need to stick close to all the familiar formulas—and that’s exactly what you see in much of our culture nowadays.

Earlier in the article he wrote that “only 19% [of survey respondents] made more than $50,000. In other words, their arts degree was more likely to put them below the poverty line than in the middle class.”

What really struck me was that “only 10% devoted 40 hours per week or more to their art.” I’m surprised at both how high I think 10% is and how much 40 hours a week spent on working on one’s art is, too. Both of my reactions tell me how unbelievably sad and disappointed I am at how the modern world works.

Just yesterday I started to wake up at 4am in order to fit an extra hour of writing time into my day. And even then, I’m maybe working 15-20 hours a week on my art. I would do whatever it takes to double this workload if at all possible, but I need to go to work in order to to pay my bills and buy food to eat. And Ted Gioia understands this, too:

So my advice to students interested in the arts is based on my own practice: namely, that they should pursue their craft but also develop at least one money-earning skill before they reach the age of 30. It doesn’t need to be an elite career, merely something that will pay the bills in a pinch.

I wish I could be like Michelangelo and tell the Pope not to pay me as long he doesn’t interfere with my art, but I can’t. I wish I could look upon my “work to know if it will succeed,” to be one “who writes from the love of imparting certain thoughts and not from the necessity of sale,” but I can’t. This is the 21st century, and the best I can do is to wake up hours before the sun rises so I can fit a bit more time in my day to work on my art, and to go to bed when the sun is still shining brightly in the sky so I can wake up early and with enough energy to be able to work on my craft to the best of my ability.

I wish things were different, but I have to admit, I love what I’m doing, and that’s the point of art, isn’t it? To feel the joy of simply being alive to experience this? This world, this universe, this moment?

A few months ago, I wrote a reminder to myself about taking things one at a time. Since then, I learned about the book Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman, a book about “embracing finitude.” I started this book today, and in the introduction, he writes that:

Our days are spent trying to “get through” tasks, in order to get them “out of the way,” with the result that we live mentally in the future, waiting for when we’ll finally get around to what really matters—and worrying, in the meantime, that we don’t measure up, that we might lack the drive or stamina to keep pace with the speed at which life now seems to move.

I point this section out because I’ve battled with that feeling, too, that feeling of trying to “get through” my tasks like they’re some obstacle to overcome before I can get my prize. What’s that prize? In the end, I guess, the prize is death.

But before then, I want to enjoy my life, the two thousand weeks or so I have left (I hope). Earlier in the introduction, Oliver writes that:

The world is bursting with wonder, and yet it’s the rare productivity guru who seems to have considered the possibility that the ultimate point of all our frenetic doing might be to experience more of that wonder.

I’m a firm believer that sometimes there’s a universal force showing me the things I need to see at the time I need them, and I feel like this is one of them.

They’re called The Passenger and Stella Maris:

Cormac McCarthy is publishing two linked novels this fall: The Passenger on October 25 and Stella Maris on November 22. (Or you can wait until December 6 to get your boxed set.)

I’ve read every McCarthy novel, and I’ve been waiting years for something new to read from him. He’s the type of writer I wish I was, and I always look to him for inspiration and guidance. I. Am. Excited.

Also, apparently, he submitted drafts for these two novels eight years ago. Unbelievable.

Ethan Diamond:

I’m excited to announce that Bandcamp is joining Epic Games, who you may know as the makers of Fortnite and Unreal Engine, and champions for a fair and open Internet.

Epic:

Fair and open platforms are critical to the future of the creator economy. Epic and Bandcamp share a mission of building the most artist friendly platform that enables creators to keep the majority of their hard-earned money. Bandcamp will play an important role in Epic’s vision to build out a creator marketplace ecosystem for content, technology, games, art, music and more.

I love Bandcamp, and I’m usually not that opposed to bigger companies taking over smaller companies I love, but the fact that it’s Epic irks me. I hope Bandcamp stays the same for years to come, and I’ll reserve all judgment to see what actually happens, but I’m not looking forward to this future. Just look at what happened to Comixology recently. Ugh.