The first paragraph

> One of the most difficult things is the first paragraph. I have spent many months on a first paragraph, and once I get it, the rest just comes out very easily. In the first paragraph you solve most of the problems with your book. The theme is defined, the style, the tone. At least in my case, the first paragraph is a kind of sample of what the rest of the book is going to be. That’s why writing a book of short stories is much more difficult than writing a novel. Every time you write a short story, you have to begin all over again. – [Gabriel Garcia Marquez](http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews/3196/the-art-of-fiction-no-69-gabriel-garcia-marquez)

No small ideas

> This is why I love SF. I love to read it; I love to write it. The SF writer sees not just possibilities but wild possibilities. It’s not just ‘What if’ – it’s ‘My God; what if’ – in frenzy and hysteria. The Martians are always coming.

– [Philip K. Dick](http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/136554-i-want-to-write-about-people-i-love-and-put)

Concept design too

> Fiction is the study of the human condition through the medium of interesting lies. – [Charlie Stross](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2012/05/spoilers.html)

How fairy tales help us think

>”Once upon a time.” Four words. I don’t need to say anything more, and yet you know at once what it is you’re about to hear. You may not know the precise contents. You may not recognize the specific characters. You may have little notion of the exact action that is about to unfold. But you are ready all the same to take on all of these unknowns, the uncertainties, the ambiguities. You are ready to succumb to the world of the story…

> First, there is that semblance of distance. We are not in the now, but rather in some place in the removed past…

> Distance is a psychologically powerful tool. It can allow us to process things that we would otherwise be unable to deal with—and I mean this in both a literal and a more metaphorical, emotional sense—and it frees up our mind in a way that immediacy does not.

> Second, there is the vagueness, the deliberate lack of specificity…that which scares us in real life—the lack of definitions, rules, clearly defined borders and boundaries—is not only unscary but entirely welcomed in the fairytale…I can indulge in abstraction and play, engage my curiosity and foster my creativity, and remain the whole time protected by that vague veneer of “once”.

[An insightful article and nice tribute to Maurice Sendak](http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/literally-psyched/2012/05/08/the-power-of-once-upon-a-time-a-story-to-tame-the-wild-things/).

Good stories are complicated

[Ken Burns talks about why he loves conflict, villans and complications](http://www.theatlantic.com/video/archive/2012/05/ken-burns-on-story/257165/). A few choice quotes:

> My interest is always in complicating things.

> All story is manipulation.

> The kind of narrative I subscribe [to] trusts in the possibility that people could change.

> We do coalesce around stories that seem transcendent.

Making the world light

John Updike on why he writes:

> So writing is my sole remaining vice. It is an addiction, an illusory release, a presumptuous taming of reality, a way of expressing lightly the unbearable. That we age and leave behind this litter of dead, unrecoverable selves is both unbearable and the commonest thing in the world — it happens to everybody. … Even the barest earthly facts are unbearably heavy, weighted as they are with our personal death. Writing, in making the world light — in codifying, distorting, prettifying, verbalizing it — approaches blasphemy.

The Groupon voice

For anyone impressed by [Groupon](http://www.groupon.com/san-francisco/)’s copywriting (today’s SF offer, “Faces act as gatekeepers for incoming food and outgoing laughter, giving them the power to leave our bodies half-starved or bloated with unreleased giggles.”) and the fact that they can turn out unique copy for hundreds of cities every day, check out [their public “voice guide”](https://docs.google.com/View?id=dmv9rbh_2g92x4scj&pli=1&ndplr=1), which gives tips on how to achieve “the Groupon voice”.

Strategies include “fake history”, “absurd images”, and “highly technical language”. Pretty much the opposite of what you’d do for strict usability, and also pretty awesome.

The danger of reading

[Proust illuminates](http://www.bookofjoe.com/2007/04/reading_becomes_1.html) the first part of [my media diet](http://www.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=3692) (creation/consumption balance) better than I did:

> “Reading becomes dangerous when instead of waking us to the personal life of the spirit it tends to substitute itself for it.”

([as mentioned before…](http://www.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=2630))

My New Year’s media diet

I would like to be more intentional about how I consume media. Here are some thoughts on how I might do that in the coming year.

*Read the Eternities* ([via](http://www.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=3640))

Focus my reading on classical writing, not modern writing

*Books first*

Books are the complete thought meal (Tim Sanders). Films can be good as well, but leave less to the imagination. Video/tv is the least considered and most ephemeral.

*70/20/10 rule*

* Time: 70% pre-1900, 20% 1900s, 10% 2000s
* Media: 70% written word, 20% films, 10% tv/video
* Reading: 70% books, 20% magazines/journal articles, 10% news/opinion

*Balance media with life*

Media should be a relatively small part of life…80% life, 20% media (meta-life)?

*Balance consumption with production*

80% production, 20% consumption?

*Think in the morning, act in the noon, eat in the evening, and sleep at night. – William Blake*

(I read this originally as “read in the evening”, which likely works better for me than Blake, given the miracle of incandescent light).

*Don’t start the day with someone else’s thoughts* ([via](http://www.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=181))

It’s the only chance you’ll have to think your own.

So, what might this look like in practice? All of these 80/20 or 70/20/10 ratios are terrifically arbitrary, but they’re an interesting starting point.

* 16 waking hours each day
* 20% media = 3 hours
* 80% production = 2 hours, 26 minutes
* 20% consumption = 34 minutes

Of those 34 daily minutes:

* 70/20/10 eras = 22 minutes pre-1900s/7 minutes 1900s/3.5 minutes 2000s
* 70/20/10 media = 22 minutes writing/7 minutes film/3.5 minutes tv/videos
* Of the 22 minutes writing: 15 minutes books/5 minutes magazines/journals/2.5 minutes news/opinion/blogs

Now, pre-1900s is really only books, so that would wipe out the entire “writing” allocation, leaving no room for magazines, journals, or opinion, or for anything since 1900. And you wouldn’t really watch video news from any other era than the present, so the 3.5 minutes on the 2000s would be all video news. So some wiggle room is necessary.

Still, the rough daily schedule is something like: 22 minutes reading classic (pre-1900s) books, 7 minutes watching a film, and 3.5 minutes catching up on the news.

That’s not much time! And it’s hard to imagine watching a film 7 minutes each day. So let’s expand it to a two-week scale: 5 hours reading books, 1 1/2 hours watching a film, and 45 minutes catching up on news. That would roughly correspond to 1 300-page book (at a thoughtful rate of 1 page/min) and 1 film every two weeks, and 45 minutes on blogs/news catchup.

The era breakdown is probably best spread out over time, so that you’d tackle one book or movie at a time rather than splitting your attention between several. So at a rate of 26 books per year, you’d have 18 pre-1900s books, 5 from the 1900s, and 2-3 from the 2000s. Your 26 movies, being mostly from the 1900s and 2000s, could be split more evenly, and perhaps given their rapid evolution give half (13) from the 1900s and half from the 2000s. (Having just reviewed my Netflix queue, I’m tempted to give even more emphasis to recent films. Movies from the mid-80s don’t carry the same weight as Plato’s 2000-year-old dialogues).

How would you practice this? It seems important to first have a set of items that you are interested in consuming in the near future. I keep a massive Amazon wishlist of things I’m interested in, so I’ll need to prioritize from that a set of 18 pre-1900s books, 5 1900s books, and 2-3 2000s that I will actually tackle. Same exercise with films from my Netflix queue.

Next is to set aside the time for consuming and producing. A daily time for reading seems right, as does a biweekly time for a film. News or blogs could be done as either a daily check-in (3.5 minutes! What tools would make *that* possible?) or as a biweekly binge (might help prioritize what’s really important). Experimentation is probably necessary here.

Producing is a more nebulous area, but setting aside an hour to write each morning, and perhaps one afternoon a week to film or write something longer, would be a good use of that time. And, similar to consuming, keeping a list of things I’d like to produce–and scheduling them–would make sure I’m ready to go immediately.

So, given that I started with those arbitrary numbers, how does this look?

The first big ratio was “80% life, 20% media (meta-life)”. Is it right to spend a fifth of my waking life on media? Well, the average America watches 5 hours of television each day (almost a third of their waking life), and my combined internet and video consumption is probably at least that much. So slimming down to “just” 20% actually seems like a good first step, and I enjoy books and films enough that I’m happy to start there.

The producing/consuming ratio is the part I’m least clear about. Is producing media really 4 times as important as consuming it? Worth spending 2 1/2 hours a day? How would I even do such a thing? Well, blogging is a part of it, and personal journaling could be considered media production as well. Beyond that, it would be interesting to blend more rich media production, creating video or music on a variety of topics. This is something that is subject to big change given experimentation, however. The thinkers I most respect, however, are tremendously prolific in their writing and filming–even if they are not “professional” writers or filmmakers. So there’s something in this media production craft that seems worthwhile.

And the 20% consumption is not the limit of all media I’ll see. Media is a part of many other parts of life (that other top-level 80%), and if movies, books, or the internet are included in my work or social life I consider that separate. Watching a movie with friends is socializing, not “consuming”. But I hope to be more intentional about the things I personally choose to consume on my own time.

Here’s the schedule I’m going to start with during my sabbatical:

* 1 hour of writing daily
* 30 minutes of book reading daily (~1 book every 2 weeks)
* 5 min blogs & news daily (5 min catchup at the end of the day)
* 1 filmmaking or long writing session each week
* 1 film watching session every 2 weeks

I’ve also separated my media wishlists (Amazon & Netflix) into the appropriate categories:

* [Pre-1900s books](http://www.amazon.com/wishlist/QHCSTDGJP4YE/) (targeting 18/year)
* [1900s books](http://www.amazon.com/wishlist/LTW9WYUFTPQD/) (5/year)
* [2000s books](http://www.amazon.com/wishlist/3P4SAB9E93N0T/) (2-3/year)
* [1900s films](http://www.netflix.com/StrangerLists?prid=264588053&showList=353682) (13/year)
* 2000s films (the rest of my Netflix queue; 13/year)

Thoreau said that we should “be careful what objects and what subjects we thrust on [our] attention.” Hopefully my new media diet is an appropriate mix! I’ll check in later with an update…

Classics and creativity

It seems that if you hope to design things that cut to the heart of the human experience, you’re better off drawing inspiration from classical stories and literature than contemporary work. Something that remains relevant hundreds or thousands of years after its writing is a better foundation for meaningful work than the latest tech blog post.

Again: [read not the Times; read the Eternities](http://www.ryskamp.org/brain/?p=3640).