Back on the mat→

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Ev Williams — yeah, that Ev Williams, the one who started Blogger, co-founded Twitter, and is currently CEO of Medium — has started blogging again. If you look at the common foundation of those three services he’s built, then it makes sense that Ev has something to say every now and then.

This paragraph resonated with how I felt when I started my November challenge:

This post is another experiment, perhaps less grand but still dangerous-feeling. Like walking into a yoga class, 10 years out of practice. As I put down my mat and start stretching these stiff old muscles, I wonder if I should be here. It’s awkward. A little painful. Worth it? Hard to say. Everyone else seems so much more comfortable. Remember when writing on the web was just fun?

Well, we’re here now. Gotta just crack those knuckles and get to work.

”Remember when writing on the web was just fun?” Wow. I mean, that hits it square on the head, doesn’t it? That’s the exact thing I was after when I started blogging again. This all — *waves hands* — used to be fun!

Somewhere along the line it stopped being fun and maybe that’s why we all stopped doing it. Instead we settled for quips in 140 characters. And nowadays most people just hit the Share button on Facebook, churning over someone else’s content.

We stopped being creative and taking the time to really spell out what was on our minds.

Back to Ev:

I sometimes say that the internet has changed how humanity communicates and shares knowledge in such a profound way, at such massive scale, in such a short period of time of course it’s broken. What else could we expect? So we keep working on it.

That’s why I’m getting back on the mat — i.e., making an effort to blog/write on a regular basis (in public) again. Partially for fun. Partially to see what comes out of my brain. And mostly to understand from the individual creator perspective how our tools need to evolve for this point in the internet’s evolution.

Long form writing has been around ages — epochs even. It is how humans have communicated as far back as we have history books. And there is something special about writing long form that text messages and tweets cannot replicate.

Let’s endeavor back toward that ancient art. When was the last time you sat down and wrote an actual letter to a friend or loved one? When was the last time you received one? My challenge to you, dear reader, is to write something of substance and put it in front of someone else’s eyes. I promise it will be cathartic. Write a letter, or even a card. Start a blog and send me the link. Whatever fits. Just crack those knuckles and get to work.

¶ What I’ve Learned Over 30 Days of Blogging

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Today marks 30 continuous days of publishing to this site. It was a challenge to myself at the beginning of the month inspired by Shawn Blanc. I thought it would be good to review a few things I’ve learned along the way.

In no particular order:

  • Publishing regularly definitely has a dramatic effect on site traffic. Beyond RSS, I notified people of new posts via Twitter and my personal Facebook. According to Squarespace’s analytics, I am currently at 560 unique visitors for the month to date, which is a 273% increase month over month. I am also now sitting at 225 RSS subscribers, which is an 81% increase month over month.

    I have read from other writers time and time again the best way to grow an audience is to publish regularly. That seems to hold true. It reminds me of the old saying, “If you build it, they will come.”

    If anything, it’s nice to know a few more people than just my wife and parents read this site.

  • Writing daily seemed pretty easy until I ran out of my little list of ideas for topics. Then it got tough to figure out what to write about. It did not come easy, and honestly, I felt like I phoned it in a couple times. Not that there is anything wrong with phoning it in on occasion, because that is still forward momentum.

    I learned the importance of trying to have some semblance of a content calendar and knowing ahead of time some things I would want to write about. And sometimes something newsworthy arises and takes precedence over the plan. But it is good to have some ideas in advance to prevent spinning the tires in frustration.

  • I don’t enjoy writing much from my phone. I did a couple times out of necessity, and it is doable, but far from delightful. I wrote most of my posts from my iPad, and thanks to Safari’s much improved desktop-like experience, I published mostly from my iPad, too. I wrote a bit from my Mac, too, but the iPad has come a very long way for blogging.
  • I threw away a lot of drafts. I can’t tell you how many times I wrote something, read it over, and decided it either was poorly written or just plain not interesting. Often, the second draft is much improved, or even a different topic entirely. Don’t try to force the first draft into being the final publication.
  • Read other writers. I found a few more to read at the beginning of this journey a few weeks ago, and their words were very helpful. A lot can be gleaned from seeing what others go through.

Those are a few of the things I took away from my 30 day challenge. Now that I’m in a groove for doing this on the regular, I don’t see why I’d stop. I hope you’ll keep following along, dear reader.

Writing Prompts

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I’m 17 days into this journey of writing a blog post every day in November, and I’ll let you in on a little secret, just between you and me, dear reader.

It’s kind of hard. Some days the words just don’t flow out very easily. And more days than not, the hardest part is figuring out a topic to write about. Today is one of those days. No matter how much I pursue it, a topic is escaping me.

So I decided to search the web for writing prompts. Surely that would solve my problem! It turns out, though, that a lot of them just are…too over the top. I suspect many of them are meant to get a college student in a creative writing class out of a bind, not necessarily thirty-something uninspired bloggers.

If you’re still with me, you’ve discovered along with me that I’ve managed to stumble onto a topic about writing prompts and the difficulty of writing.

The truth is this is far from easy, but consistency is key. Sometimes the best prompt to get something done is to just do it.

The Best Time to Start a Blog

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I’m 11 days into my goal of blogging every day for a month, and I’ll admit it’s been challenging. If anything, it is proving to me that writing and publishing is a muscle — one I’ve let atrophy.

And then there are people like Brent Simmons, who celebrated 20 years of his blog inessential a few days ago.

It‘s tempting to think that The Thing of my career has been NetNewsWire. And that’s kinda true. But the thing I’ve done the longest, love the most, and am most proud of is this blog.

I’m not sure what my “Thing” will be in 20 years, but I hope to look back on my writing as something I am proud of. I started this blog a number of years ago, and I’ve had a lot of fits & spurts with it. I endeavor to write regularly, and maybe getting a solid month in will be the beginning of a writing habit.

All I know is I agree fully with Brent’s parting wisdom:

Old proverb: “The best time to start a blog is 20 years ago. The second-best time is today.” :)

¶ Okay, Let’s Blog a Little

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Despite my ambitions, I am a very inconsistent blogger. While I write something nearly every day in my journal, I have fallen out of the habit of publishing my writing for the world to see. Even my posting on social media has tapered off — well, original posts, anyway. I’m pretty heavy on the reply or comment buttons.

I can’t put a finger on exactly why my zeal for publishing has waned, but the fact that it has really bums me out. And that’s why I am taking a page off of one of my favorite writer’s blog. Shawn Blanc posted this today:

Here in the United States, November is known for three things:

  1. Thanksgiving
  2. Not shaving
  3. Writing a novel

Starting today — Friday, November 1 — I’ll be writing and publishing something every day for the whole month of November.

Though, instead of writing a novel in a month, I will be simply be focused on publishing something — anything — every single day. From photos, links to interesting things, articles, reviews, etc.

And apparently this is a thing.

And Shawn’s post reminded me of a post Daniel Jalkut wrote all the way back in May, titled “Blog a Little”. And that provided a little bit of clarity on the old publishing slump here at Full City Press.

I think people neglect to write blog posts because the feedback loop is not as tangible as the onslaught of (sometimes mechanical) likes or faves that you can receive on a social network. With blogging, you need a little faith that you will gain an audience. And on the open web, you never know who might come along and expand your audience.

I can say with 100% certainty that looking at Squarespace’s analytics is one of the things that can dishearten me the fastest when it comes to publishing on the web. My head tells me I shouldn’t care about the numbers, but it’s hard not to. My head also tells me the only way to possibly change that is to show up more often, even though it’s often hard.

So, in the spirit of changing that, I’m going to blog a little. So days may just be something pretty random, other days I may drop a bunch of words. And in the spirit of Shawn’s effort, I’m going to try to show up every day this month. I even set a recurring task in Things.

See you tomorrow.

¶ Ulysses 2.5

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When I get the urge to write something I either reach for the closest instrument I can or, if available, the one that provides the most comfort. My iPhone is almost always with me and I'll write there if I must, though I much prefer my iPad when lounging in a recliner or my Mac if at a table or desk. Maybe I'm a bit overly particular, but I prefer my writing environment of choice to be as similar as possible across my three devices. This is one reason I love Day One for journaling and why I loved Byword for most anything else.

Yes, I said loved. Past tense.

There are a number of reasons why my beloved Byword fell out of favor with me. The frustrations were mainly with iOS. It started to feel buggy, and sync often bogged down the app, or ended with conflicted copies of files. In short, it became unreliable.

Now, I don't mean to disparage Byword. It will always hold a special place for me. But sentiment isn't something that should keep a tool around of it is no longer working well. It is ultimately only a tool.

Enter Ulysses. I bought Ulysses for Mac some time ago and experimented with it a bit, but I never committed as the story on iOS was only for iPad, and I often start my ideas on iPhone. It felt like an incomplete tool for my writing process.

Of course, hints and rumors have circulated for a while that The Soulmen, the makers of Ulysses, were working on an iPhone version. When they announced a beta, I quickly signed up, and, thankfully, was quickly accepted.

To put it briefly, Ulysses has captured my heart and the words pouring from it.

The Experience

The best apps are the ones that offer an experience. They have a story to tell when you use them, and that story is expressed consistently on each device. Ulysses is such an app. It aims to encourage writing. It has all the tools one could want whether you are jotting a note or penning the next great novel.

Ulysses is powerful when it comes to organizing your writing. First up is the Library, where you create groups, sub-groups, add icons to groups for context, and more. The Library is as sparse or detailed as you want it to be. I use several overarching groups to separate writing for this site, work, and a few other things. Under each of those I typically have some sub-groups for additional context, such as Drafts and Published in my group for Full City Press.

Once you delve into a group you have the Sheet List. Think of Sheets as separate documents. Like a sheet of paper, it is a blank canvas. It doesn't need to have a title or a file name. It just needs words.

Once you create or select a sheet you're in the Editor. This is where the magic happens, and the true joy of writing with Ulysses is found. The Editor is clean, putting your words first. But it also places every tool you'd want within reach, kind of like Batman's utility belt. You can add keywords, set a writing goal, add a note, or even an image via the attachments sidebar. I make use of the writing goals to ensure I don't go overboard on words, and I love using notes to drop links I want to reference without mucking up my main text. I could see a novelist keeping notes about a scene or characters there, as well.

The best part is Ulysses is familiar whether you use it on a Mac, an iPad, an iPhone, or any combination of the three. Every tool you use on one device is found on another, in a sensible place for the size of screen being used.

Write. Anything. Anywhere.

I love the Ulysses’ slogan of Write. Anything. Anywhere. For the 2.5 release The Soulmen focused on the anywhere aspect of it. Bringing Ulysses to the iPhone is easily the capstone feature of this release. As I mentioned earlier, most of my writing starts on my iPhone while I am out and about. An idea hits me and I quickly jot it down, usually with a working title and attaching some notes to capture my general stream of thought. If the occasion permits, I may even tap out the first paragraph or two right there on my iPhone.

Ulysses, by default, leverages Markdown for styling text, which I have long held is the markup language every writer should learn and use. The various symbols you use for Markdown are easily accessible on a hardware keyboard, but can be a bit of a chore when using the on-screen keyboard on iOS. Ulysses again keeps the tools you need close by with the Shortcut Buttons that reside with the iOS keyboard.

Shortcuts are separated into three categories:

  1. Blocks: Headings, Lists, Quotes, Comments, and the like.
  2. Inline styling: Strong emphasis, regular emphasis, links, and more.
  3. Special characters: All the special characters you could shake a stick at.

Ulysses keeps all of these a single tap away while writing, instead of having to toggle the keyboard to symbols and maybe tap and hold on a key to reveal further options, as one would normally need to do things. These are located right in the QuickType Bar on the standard iPad keyboard, and are elegantly placed just above the keyboard on iPhone.

It is astounding how much attention to detail there is to keeping you focused on writing and not worrying about where things are at. Ulysses simply steps out of your way when writing while keeping any tools you may need within reach. To make another superhero reference, Ulysses is the Jarvis to your Tony Stark.

Keeping It All Together

Ulysses can be the one-stop shop for all your writing if you want it to be. It keeps everything organized. And when you use it on more than one device it also keeps everything in sync. Ulysses does this all through iCloud, and requires zero setup. It really just works.

Now, iCloud sometimes gets dirty looks when it comes to sync. Those aren't unwarranted as iCloud has definitely had quirks in the past. That said, I can't say I have had any trouble with iCloud sync in Ulysses. It has indicators in the Sheet List to show whether a particular sheet is uploading or downloading, and everything has always come across on all my devices. I don't even think about it. Ulysses has proven trustworthy that when I close it on one device, my work is there when I open it on another device.

Get to Writing

You don't need a fancy text editor to write. You can use paper, you can use TextEdit, Pages, or any number of tools. Ulysses is not needed for you to write or to write well. I don't think The Soulmen would disagree with that.

That said, when you set out to accomplish something, the caliber of the tool you use matters. There's a tremendous difference between using a generic tool and a precision instrument. Ulysses is the latter. It is designed to make a difference in your writing by taking care of all the things that typically steal away your attention while trying to focus on your writing. While it cannot create focus for you — that part is up to you — it does not create distraction.

Ulysses is the tool I whole-heartedly recommend to serious writers. Whether you write poetry, short stories, reviews, quips, thought pieces, or novels, Ulysses can handle it.

Write. Anything. Anywhere.

Ulysses is available on the iOS App Store as a Universal app for iPad and iPhone for $19.99. The Soulmen told me that price will be going up soon, so now is a great time to buy it. The Mac version of Ulysses is available on the Mac App Store for $44.99.

These apps are worth every penny, and I applaud The Soulmen for pricing them to be sustainable so Ulysses can continue to be the best writing tool for ages to come.

¶ November is for Writing & Thankfulness

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I've been seeing a lot of folks this past week getting ready for National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, as aspiring authors like to call it. NaNoWriMo is an ambitious endeavor. 50,000 words in 30 days. That is roughly 1,667 words per day.

I've also seen a couple other takes on NaNoWriMo, such as what Ben Brooks is doing. Ben isn't planning to write a novel, but he is taking on the challenge of writing 50,000 words on his site. Equally ambitious, if you ask me.

I was thinking this morning about Ben's take on the NaNoWriMo challenge and a challenge that I have done each November for the past few years. While I don't write anywhere near the amount each day in November to get to 50,000 words, I do write each of the 30 days.

A few years ago, my friend Shaun Jones (sorry, he doesn't have a website) introduced me to the idea of Thanksvember. Simply record something you are thankful for each day of November. Some days I write a sentence, some days paragraphs. I record all of it in my beloved Day One. Sometimes I share an entry with others, but often I keep it to myself.

I think the great thing about doing some kind of writing each day in November is not so much about the quantity — heck, even the quality — but rather the consistency. Taking November to write daily is a great way to start the habit of writing. It's so easy to have the desire to write but to allow yourself to be blocked to actual put words to paper or pixel.

Whether you are writing the next great novel this month or simply being thankful for something each day, be sure to write.

On blogs→

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Matt Gemmell:

Instead of a blog, let your site be a site. Or a journal. An online anthology. Your collected works. Your essays, to date. Your body of writing. A blog is a non-thing; it’s the refusal to categorise what you produce, and an implicit opt-in to the disappointing default.

Instead of posts, you have articles. Pieces. Essays. Stories. Poems. Briefs. Tutorials. White papers. Analyses. Even thoughts, if you like. Actual works, crafted and presented for the reader, instead of just being punctured by a push-pin, and affixed to a bulletin board, beside lost dog, and roommate wanted.

Instead of posting, you’re publishing. If you were a blogger, maybe you’re a journalist.

Instead of blogging, you’re writing.

Try those words on for size. See how they feel.

Matt's article on his disdain of the terminology surrounding blogging is an absolute must-read. I know I needed it. As I've alluded to recently, I've been wallowing in a lot of doubt as a writer. Matt's words were a great reminder to keep writing.

I remember very distinctly a few years ago when I decided I wanted this site to be more than a blog. When I traded blog in the navigation for articles. When I started calling myself a writer.

My readership is not fantastically large. But it isn't insignificant, either. But the number of eyeballs reading these words does not detract from the value of my words. I greatly value the time you take to read this site, dear reader, but to be frank, I'm not necessarily writing for you. I'm mostly writing for me.

I encourage you to read all of Matt's article. It is excellent. He is a very gifted writer. And finally, I want to leave you today with a final quote from his passage, one you should jot down in a notebook, or Evernote, or wherever you keep quotes to look back and reflect upon.

Language is a surgical tool in the right hands, and a blunt instrument otherwise.

¶ Welcome to Full City Press

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Here it is. The new chapter of my writing. Full City Press. For years, I've written about tech — primarily Apple — and it's been incredibly fun. Over the past year, however, I started to feel like I was in an echo chamber, and just murmuring the same thoughts as everyone else writing about Apple. And it burned me out to where I stopped writing publicly.

Writing is something I must do. It's almost a compulsion. If I don't put words to page every now and then, a negative effect takes root in just about every part of my life. Over the past months where I couldn't bring myself to write one more word on this site about technology, Day One became my rescue. There I could write freely about any topic. But I longed to share that here.

The former name of this site, techese, became a mental barrier for me. It just didn't feel right to write about non-tech stuff here under that name. So I did some soul searching and came up with a new name. Full City is a degree of coffee roasting (it's delicious, by the way). And Press has dual meaning as I press coffee each day, and also the link to writing. It's a perfect name for my future endeavors as a writer.

Writing about technology is still going to happen. It is too large a part of my life for it to not happen. But I'm going to take the liberty to write about any topic I choose. So let's grab a cup of coffee and get to writing again.