Writing

What I Want in a Writing Application

. . . and what I don’t want.

No: The cursor disappearing on me.

Yes: Nothing to slow me down when I get rolling. Just type, enter, type, enter . . .

Yes: An understanding there are many different ways people want or need to write.

Yes: Easy, flawless pasting into the writing area.

Yes: Minimalist link creation, that gets what I want right the first time every time.

Yes: Automatic backup in the background, plus versioning.

Yes: Endless customization. I know, dream on.

Yes: If I’m not interested in syndication or a feed, a way to completely disengage from outside services.

Yes: The option to have the writing screen displayed in whatever font I want. I’ve switched this website to Atkinson Hyperlegible and enjoy its hyperlegibility.

Well now, only one “dont want to see”. A good thing, I guess. No developer wants just a list of No.

I’ll expand on these points when I get some time.

More later . . .

How to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich

Find and stage the ingredients: Peanut butter, jelly of some kind, bread. You may need to run to the store. If so, I’ll wait right here.

Grab a couple essential utensils: Small plate, broad dull knife.

If your bread’s sliced, pull out two pieces. If it’s not, cut two slices. Find your bread knife, your dull one won’t cut it.

Lay one piece of bread on the plate or your work surface. Open the peanut butter jar, scoop out an appropriate amount of peanut butter, to your liking, spread it onto the bread. The proper amount is up to you, but I’d recommend creating a layer no more than a quarter-inch thick, and don’t get too close to the edges of the bread. I recommend starting with the peanut butter. It’s denser and thicker than the jelly, usually, and provides a good backing to the lighter jelly. But you can switch the sequence around and see how it works.

Then go to your jelly jar, scoop out some jelly, again to your taste, spread it on top of the peanut butter. Again, the amount’s up to you. I personally like a neat sandwich and don’t overdo the adding of ingredients. A good sandwich has a balance of bread and the sandwiched materials.

Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches don’t often get too thick, the way lots of other sandwich assemblies do, so that’s not much of a problem. If you’re really hungry, you might make a thick sandwich and rush to the eating stage. If you’re just regular hungry and can hold off a minute, make two sandwiches, one after the other. To me, this approach is better, as a too-thick sandwich made from liquid ingredients can escape your mouth when you bite down, making a mess.

Close the jars. If you’re a neatnik and don’t plan on making another such sandwich soon, clean and put away the knives, brush any breadcrumbs or stray ingredients off the counter. Put away the jars of peanut butter and jelly and your loaf of bread.

Back to the sandwich: Put the unspread-upon bread slice on top of the spread-upon one, press down slightly to get the jelly to adhere the top slice to the bottom slice.

It’s done, your sandwich is made, Enjoy!

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This is the first exercise in John Warner’s book The Writer’s Practice. He asks the reader to do it, right off the bat on the first page. His explanation of why he did this included these ideas–we’re all writers, we can improve our writing practice by doing, we must always consider the audience we’re writing for, and we can and should approach any writing task as a writing experience, more than a mere task.

The Writer’s Web

Dave Winer asks: “What does the writer’s web mean to you?” He’s been working on tools for writing on the web for, oh maybe twenty years, and recently gained some speed and released WordLand, his conception, in early stages, of a writer’s tool.

Well, to begin to answer Dave’s question, I’ll start by saying I’m by no means a voluble person on the web. Elsewhere, yes, I can bloviate with the best of us. And I regularly need to write for my paid employment and volunteer work, and I do quite a lot of editing for other people.

But being voluble’s not a requirement for any writing, or blogging. I have no problem with my sporadic output, though I occasionally want to set some minor production goals, usually to no effect. It’s more natural for me to enjoy the writing as I do it, and having past writing available to read later, sometimes much later. A craft, an intellectual exercise, easily available and easy to pick up.

So, a writer’s web is a larger idea than just my own experience. I’m all for it. More speech is better than less, and we’re at a point of increasing attacks on speech, in the US at least or most notably. We need more writers. As a few of my recent posts show, I’ve been working on providing basic WordPress hosting for an inner circle of friends, so I’m able to directly support a writer’s web.

A big part of that is the writing interface. I’m OK with vanilla Gutenberg in WordPress, with the useful addition of GenerateBlocks from Tom Usborne’s crew. But I’m not sure how good it will be for others. I have a long experience writing with computers and have developed some skills and also some preferences over the years.

Hell, I can write just fine in a desktop publishing program, though I’d rather not. I can write just fine in a text editor, using HTML code. Did it for years. I’ve been interested in Markdown for a long time, but haven’t really put it to use. I see the usefulness of a “no distraction” writing tool. I do a lot of editing of my own work, so the editing part is important – making changes, trying new phrasing or word use.

I can see the usefulness of examining the writing interface, so more later.

One thing I don’t care for is Dave’s tying his tool to WordPress.com. I’ve been avoiding BigCorp, and weaning myself a bit from social media, pivoting to my own website, so I don’t want to use wp.com or Automattic. But I suspect Dave will open it up properly, in keeping with IndieWeb principles, so I’m keeping an open mind and will likely give his latest work a fair shot. I’ve had a wp.com account for years, though I don’t use it.

More later . . .

More Later on Free Press

At the end of my Free Press post, I said “More later”, so here’s some more.

Fred Clark talks about using an RSS reader, and links to a journalism site in North Carolina, The Assembly, where the writers tell us they want to to create “new models for state level news”. A wonderful idea, and the site’s full of good in-depth journalism.

We should have more of this. We desperately need it. One way to have more of this is for us to subscribe, pay some money and help them sustain themselves. Of course, if North Carolina’s not of interest or is too far away, find someone local or someone covering topics you find interesting. There are many good journalists out there, in a very discouraging world for journalists. When we find them, let’s support them.

A few words on Fred Clark. He’s a writer of long experience, and a damned good one. He should be getting a living wage from a legitimate publication. Instead, he writes/blogs for Patheos, for what I expect is a pittance. Patheos is a site with a focus on religion (Fred’s a progressive evangelical Christian, with great knowledge and insight to that community).

To feed his family, he works at a big box store – I think Home Depot, but maybe Costco. This is sad, he’s really good at what he does. Nothing wrong with working at Big Box, but our society should support Fred’s talent better. From time to time I send him some money from my meager funds, to show my direct support for his work.

In the post I link to above Fred explains RSS, Really Simple Syndication. An old technology in internet time, but one I use every day with my RSS Reader. As Fred says, it’s a way to bypass BigCorp’s Almighty Algorithm and get articles to read based entirely on what you want to read, not what Mark Zuck’s robots want you to read. I encourage everyone to use an RSS reader, you might like it and it takes the edge off The Algorithm. I have a subscription to The Old Reader.

This post is also a test of syndicating from my personal website to my Bluesky account (@kevinphayes.bsky.social). The idea is to publish here, syndicate elsewhere, such as the social media monster sites. Let’s see how that goes.

It would also be my first Bluesky post, which shows you how much I like that type of web presence. This is an IndieWeb thing, and I love IndieWeb things.

I doubt if I’m the only one who sees “Bluesky” as a last name, perhaps Russian, Ivan Bluesky. I also see it in my head as “Blueski”, maybe someone’s babcia–Poles I know pronounce it as “botch”. Mrs. Blueski.

More later . . .