Daniel Tubb

This is a three for one day. I wrote, but didn’t post a piece two days ago. Didn’t post yesterday. So, this morning I posed what I wrote, revised one from yesterday, and did one from today.

I’m caught up. But, behind.

Today’s post, another quick one. This time, on Trying to Get Ahead. The process is working well. Find a topic in the notes, don’t think too much. Bring all various notes on the same topic together. Read it. Delete duplication. Find a first order. Edit it. Work out a better order. Cut. File notes that don’t find in a too code folder. Revise. File. Post. Update the writer’s log. Move on. All this, after a morning stacking firewood. A good day.

A post a day, without too much forethought. That seems to be my mantra these days. I did a bunch on Fichero late last night, and this morning did some work on a GUI. But, then I had a swim, and then sat down around 4:00 pm to do my words for the day. I edited about 1500 words. It’s good. The part on self help for writers. Tomorrow, I’ll do something else. But, for now. I’m happy that I’m making steady publications, and the words aren’t so bad.

Edited a short piece on writing short, then a longer piece on AI as a tool for writers. Not much more. Craft and cutting.

Tomorrow, thesis and book section. My goal. Get of the computer today.

More revising. It’s feeling quite workman like. Which I love. What section am I working on? Decide. Where are my notes? What have I already written about this? What is duplicated text from various drafts? What ideas go together? Put them together in a drat. Cut, edit, reorder. Rewrite. Rewrite. I’m done. Rinse and repeat. Repeat.

Today, I did a section on Wendy Belcher’s brilliant book, Revising Your Journal Article in 12 Weeks (525 words), and then a paragraph on books on grammar (215). Plus, a bit of a critique (95 words). And a paragraph on what this book is not (100 words.) Doesn’t seem like a lot. But, but it’s good.

I think tomorrow I can go a lot faster.

EasyFind and BBedit are the tools for this.

I’ve been revising, editing, and removing duplication for the Reader’s Guide. A section basically summarizing some of the excellent work out there that is how-to advice for writers. Of course, this book is no how-to book. But sometimes it’s important too know what you are not.

Also, spent a bit of time working on a script that integrates Bookends to CiteProc with Marked. Works wonderfully. You can write with Bookends in Markdown, and get back CiteProc, or move it to Word or Mellel. Took some fiddling, but I’m very happy. It’s perfectly formatted, Chicago Manual of Style 17th edition for books.

I’m not good at this daily writing. But, yesterday, while I didn’t do a blog post, I did do a lot of coding in the morning. Today, I did as well. A Reader’s Guide section, on this book as not self help, which of courses summarizes lots of the books I’ve read over the years.

But, I’m really excited of the process. Bring together text, code it, cut repetition, organize it, write it. It’s working.

Today, I did 1800 good words. Plus, coded 30,000 words down to 20,000. This week I can just go through and cut, edit, delete, them into shape.

Progress. At last.

Took Sunday off. So much for posting every day.

In any case, today I sat down with a yellow legal pad, a newfangled old-fashioned typewriter, and thought about the form of this book. What exactly do I mean by a castnet, an atarraya?

The form? A book of essays, that re woven together. Each is about 20 pages long. Give or take. No more or less than 17 and 25.

Doing that, forcing my self to slow down, was enough to let us sketch out the “spokes” or “radial threads” of a castnet. There are eight. These are probably going to feel very much like chapters. In the centre, there’s the Reader’s Guide. Outside that, on the first rung, we have the crisis on the linoleum, that will fead into the 8 chapters. It will be an interlude between each chapter. Then we have the threads: First and Second Fieldwork, Time and Money, Tools, Rules, Fichero, Bricolage, Makeshift, and Ambulatory Anthropology. Each thread has related scenes and arguments. Acknowledgements will come at the end.

Perhaps length and argument something like:

• Reader’s Guide (atarraya as social conversation) (2,000)
• Crisis on the Floor (writing is the hardest part of the deal) (7,000)
• 1. First and Second Fieldwork (cane toad) (7,000)
• 1. Time and Money (room of one’s own) (7,000)
• 1. Tools (panning into various tools for writing) (7,000)
• 1. Rules (mad rules (e.g. 789 serialized and don’t break the chain ) for writing) (7,000)
• 1. Fichero (mining into zettklekasten) (7,000)
• 1. Bricolage (workshop and improvise) (7,000)
• 1. Makeshift (workshop, and good enough mastery of non-mastery) (7,000)
• 1. Ambulatory Anthropology (embodied writing) (7,000)
• Acknowledgements (2,000)

Say, (2000×2)+7,000+(7,000×8 chapters) + 2,000 notes + 2,000 citations = 72,000 words.

I spent the first 2 hours doing that, and then 2 hours putting it into Tinderbox.

Structure is the hardest part of the deal. I was inspired with writers method of working long hand, with a pencil, and retyping.

Wrote a brief piece for the newsletter on writing without agency. On de-centring the idea that writing is a product of rational thought, rather than the thoughts themselves. Thus, the words have a certain agency. Probably, this is one of the flaws of thinking that AI is going to be a replacement for writing. Not the best piece, but a first draft certainly of an idea I had mulling around my head for years. So many times, I’ve gotten into my atarraya archive to do one thing, and instead I’ve done something else complete. Ideas have sparked off other ideas, that were put together by accident. Where is the agency? Order and control come out of the work.

Late post. All of it, the newsletter and this post, took 25 minutes.

789 is a good number.

Also ran 13.5 km today, and got Fichero building on Windows, Linux, and launching (then crashing) on iOS and Android.

Good day.