August

I Don't Normally Drink Folgers...

Monday, October 23, 2006 8:32 PM (permalink)

But I think I am going to have to start. Good god, this is brilliant.

Shouldn't they really be the Middle-Aged Mutant Ninja Turtles by now?

Monday, October 23, 2006 8:31 PM (permalink)

http://www.apple.com/trailers/wb/teenagemutantninjaturtles/

How Google Ruined my Writing, and Two Letters that got it back again

Monday, October 23, 2006 8:25 PM (permalink)

Back when I was in college, we didn't have the Internet--we had a library. I wrote all my papers on a smokin' hot Commodore 64, complete with cassette tape drive and a sweet dot-matrix printer exactly like Strong Bad's. Since all this goo was in my room, and the library was a 15-minute walk across campus, I had to actually think about planning my research and my writing as separate activities. If I had to look something up while I was writing, I couldn't very well stop each time I had a question and schlep all the way over to the library and back--there is no way I would get any actual writing done.

Somehow, over time, I forgot those halcyon days waiting for my printer to grind away all night on a 25-pager, and now find it hard to believe that there was once no such thing as Google, Wikipedia and Boing Boing. Where once my research and writing were separated by geography (and laziness), now they happen on the same lil' MacBook Pro (no more Compy 64!--oh, Compy...come back to me Compy....) This means that whenever I have even the slightest question about something, I can very easily stop writing and click on over to Google and get lost for an hour.

Convenient, yes--but it completely ruins your writing flow. The best way to improve your writing is to just keep writing--to plow through and put your time in just like noted plodders like Dickens and Thackery did. Nothing steals your writing mojo any faster than stopping to do research. Now, I am not suggesting that you do away with research--of course you need to look stuff up and/or plan ahead for future sections. But, for those of you who may not be aware of the most powerful took in the journalists toolkit, I have the solution in one simple two-letter "word": 'tk.'

This old chestnut has been used by print journalists for decades, and simply stands for "to come." Next time you are elbows deep in writing, and you have a question that requires some research, use my rule of one--if the very first link on Google doesn't answer my question (and I do allow myself that 10 second interruption) then I whip out the old 'TK.' Say I am writing about a road trip, and I can't remember the name of that little town in Montana I drove through that had the great Buffalo jerky--I just substitute 'TK' wherever I need that name and plow on, blissfully forgetting about it and pushing the inquiry to the back of my brain.

Later, when I am in 'research mode/mood,' I just spellcheck my document (the TK's light up like ATC at Newark) or just do a Find Next and write down all the things I need to research on a page or two of my notebook and then do it all at once. It turns out that economist TK was right about all that "Division of Labor" stuff. If I stopped to care about facts, how would I ever get any blogging done at all?