What is The Slow Man? I like to think of it as my way of working out how to slow down a little, lessen the haste and hectic pace that can wear us down, dull our senses, and make us lose our way.

I’ll be writing about many different things, including personal productivity, ways to manage your career and life, having a good drink, figuring out the little things in life that often escape us because we’re moving too damn fast.

If you’re interested, please come and check The Slow Man out and feel free to sign up for email updates below.

Thanks,
Gordon

I don’t plan to let it die, but I like to take a break from it from time to time. I’ve been spending more time on the social networks lately. One big reason for that is my job entails knowing the Facebooks, Twitters, and Google+ mechanisms. So it leaves little time for personal blogging.

As a means of a meager update, for anyone who may still be poking around here occasionally, please feel free to follow me on twitter or Google+. I’d be happy to follow you back and keep in touch. Relevant buttons below. Hope to hear from you.

-gordon

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Sure, I had lots of excuses and distractions and I did make a pretty good effort of it. In the end, I have over 25,000 words of a story that I’ve been trying to get out of me for years. But it’s still a failed attempt. And I’m OK with that.

I’m not going to beat myself up over it because I came out of the experience with a few new and reinforced ideas and tips for anyone who is thinking about doing it again next year (including myself).

1. Writing is goddamn hard.
   Remember that. Balancing storytelling, craft, concentration, and (in the case of Nanowrimo) a focus on writing as many words as possible in a sitting — that’s difficult work. And for the most part, when I sat down to do the balancing act for two or three-hour spurts, it worked out OK. I just needed to do more sit-down sessions.
2. Writing is rewarding.
   When I did it, it felt great. When I wasn’t doing it, I was thinking about it. If it hadn’t been for a few weeks of career woes in November (one of those aforementioned excuses/distractions), this positive feedback loop would have kept me at it. So, feel good about it when you’re doing it, no matter how crappy the work is.
3. Know your capacity.
   One of the things I was most curious about when I started the project this year was exactly how many words can I write in an hour. The last time I did Nanowrimo — back in 2002 — I used a spreadsheet to keep track of my progress and in general it took a couple hours a day to do my daily goal of 2,000 words. Being that was 8 years ago, I wondered what, if anything, had changed in that aspect. Generally, I was able to write around 1,500 words in an hour. What does that tell me? Well, when I do sit back down again and tackle the rest of this work, I should have a pretty good idea of how much of a time commitment I’m looking at it.[1]
4. Feel your story.
   I say “feel” because I have a tendency to over-think my stories. It’s easy to get into “this has to happen” or my story must have such-and-such element to it. But that can end up putting the story in too tight of a box. And it can also make you inflexible and stifle your imagination. Things I was very clear about before the writing began ended up being put to the test as I started getting deeper into the story. I actually brought a dead character back to life in the middle of the story.
5. When the “real world” calls, answer.
   Yes, I’m disappointed that I didn’t complete the project. But I’d have been even more disappointed if I hadn’t dealt with the conflicts that arose. Maybe the most important thing I learned is that I don’t have to make my self-worth and esteem dependent on the outcome of a writing project.

Now that I look over this small list, I’m not sure how useful it will be as a set of tips for Nanowrimo, but it certainly helped me look at the bright side of failing. If I can’t learn something from my failures, well, I may as well just give up.

[1] I have discovered this is a useful bit of information for me. It’s often the unknown that keeps from fully committing to a project. If I tell myself, in order to finish this novel, it’s going to be X amount of hours over Y days/weeks/months, that’s the kind of data that helps my analytical side shake hands with my creative side. I need both sides to win.

Writing on the iPad was one of the main excuses I came up with for getting this elegant piece of technology. After purchasing it, I soon realized that it wasn’t as useful as I thought it would be for writing. The main problem was the on-screen keyboard, but there was also a serious lack of writing-focused apps.

Six months after the iPad’s debut, the app situation, at least, has changed for the better. While I have discovered that when I need to do some heavy writing — for Nanowrimo, for instance — the iPad’s screen can’t compete with pounding out my words on my laptop. Still, for writing out short notes or a contemplative journal entry, I now use the iPad quite a bit for writing. Here’s what I have found works best for me.

The apps

After trying out many different apps with many different approaches, I have narrowed my tools down to two: Writer.ia and PlainText. Both are well-designed, simple tools that do what they do without a lot of fluff and features I don’t need in order to just sit down and write. I tend to draft in one and revise in the other.

PlainText is probably the app I use the most for writing on the iPad. As its name suggests, it’s just plain text, no fancy formatting options, no bullet lists, alignment options — you can’t even change the font. It’s extremely useful for writing lists, quick notes, outlines and other things I just need to dash out quickly. I’ve used a few other tools by the developer of PlainText, including the awesome Writeroom, and he really promotes the idea of simplicity in software, for which I am thankful. PlainText is free, but I’d have no problem paying for it.

PlainText Screenshot

Writer.ia is well suited for working on longer projects. It has its own custom keys to move between words and give you quick access to punctuation marks and other keys that are clumsy to get to if you’re using the on-screen keyboard. Combined with the Focus mode that keeps your view focused on the three center lines of text (see screenshot below), I think the app is particularly useful for editing and revising longer pieces of writing. Writer.ia is not free and, while its $4.99 price tag may seem exorbitantly expensive in the app world (I’m being mostly sarcastic — there’s a lot of irrationality when it comes to judging the price of apps), I found it was worth the five bucks.

Writer.ia Screenshot

If you’re so inclinded, you can read more about how these two apps differ in this side-by-side review on GigaOm.

Keeping it all organized

The tool that keeps all of this remote, mobile writing painless is a service called Dropbox. Up to a certain amount of storage, Dropbox is free and it pretty seamlessly keeps my documents synced between my computers and mobile devices. It’s a great way to keep everything I’m writing accessible and organized. I’ve been using it for a few years for various reasons and since I got the iPad, I use it daily.

For writing in the cloud, I could use Google Docs but I actually find that service a little bit frustrating and the fact that I couldn’t edit documents on mobile devices always kept the big G at a distance for me.

I put this system through its paces while trying to write my novel for Nanowrimo this year. It didn’t help me actually finish it, but I’ll keep this workflow going as I keep plugging away on it.

If you have any apps or services that help you get your writing down, wherever and whenever, let me know. I’m a huge nerd about this kind of stuff…

Here are some other articles taking a look at various  iPad writing apps:

• John Chander’s iPad Writing Apps Showdown (byjohnchandler.com)
• iPadGirl’s Review of My Writing Nook (ipadgirl.posterous.com)
• iPadGirl’s iPad Apps for Writers (inkygirl.com)
• 5 of the Best iPad Apps for Poets and Writers (Cloudy Day Art Podcast Network)

The Rules: Don’t take too long to think about it. Fifteen authors (poets included) who’ve influenced you and that will always stick with you. List the first 15 you can recall in no more than 15 minutes. Tag at least 15 friends, including me, because I’m interested in seeing what authors my friends choose.

15 Authors Who Have Influenced Me

1. Ray Bradbury
2. Raymond Carver
3. Joan Didion
4. Ernest Gaines
5. Céline
6. John Steinbeck
7. Cormac McCarthy
8. Toni Morrison
9. Gabriel Garcia Marquez
10. Junot Diaz
11. Henry Miller
12. John Fante
13. Ralph Ellison
14. William Faulkner
15. J.D. Salinger

This list is in no particular order and is probably leaving off some significant names. I tried to write it quickly, thinking of authors of books and stories that I have read more than once and that are always top of mind when I think of my own writing. It’s an interesting exercise, but I’m going to have to look at it a bit more before I can come up with any astute analysis. One thing that does occur to me is I more often feel like I’m more influenced by other artists besides writers — musicians and filmmakers probably more than anyone else. If I could write books like Kurosawa made movies, like Miles Davis made  music….

A few years later I tried to go back to the frenzied writing source, but something came up. Details are fuzzy.

This year, I’ve been mentally focused on finally writing this novel springing from a MFA-era short story, and publicly declared I was going to make this shit happen in 2010. Turns out a bunch of stuff happened this year and I have approximately zero pages logged in on that novel project.

But here we are again. Back near November.

So I am now declaring that I will go toe-to-toe with nanowrimo in 2010 to finally figure this fucking novel out. Get out of my brain and on digital paper. For once and for all. I mean it.

To be honest I was just too depressed last year to do it. New York and cold and rain were bringing me down. Thanks to climate change I’m still wearing linen in late October. So temperature is taken care of.

As far as motivation, my daughters are getting older and loving storytelling more and more. I need to put my effort where my mouth is in the parental inspiration department. And that takes care of the passion and commitment portion.

Finally, a friend of mine recently opted out of life. At this point in my own life, I can’t ignore events like this. It is clearly time to make good on unresolved potential, whether I am bound for failure or not. While I doubt his mortal decision was to help us get off our ass and do something, that ended up being the effect in my particular case. RIP, Aaron.

Are you doing the nanowrimo thing? Let me know in the comments or email and let’s connect and keep each other properly motivated.

EDIT TO ADD: My user name on Nanowrimo is choquito. Please add me as a buddy, if you like.

In any case, I am playing the part of my own motivation and saying to everyone who wants to listen that I am back (on the block?) and I want to be a writer. I am a writer.

And now it’s time to write.

I hope people are still out there, sort of watching me and my self-neglected blog. I want to make this as public as possible — I am committing to finishing something I am proud of and working hard at it. There. I said it.

Have you been going through some rough writing times? Would love to know how you worked through it. For me, I guess it’s just been a matter of giving it time and eventually getting sick of hearing myself complain. That and ultimately showing my two beautiful girls that quitting at something you love just shouldn’t be an option.

Thanks,
Gordon

Not for this site — well, maybe (send me an email or something) — but rather for Writer’s Digest’s blog MFA Confidential. They’re holding a contest and it seemed interesting enough to bring me out of hibernation to link to it. Read more about the contest at Writer’s Digest.

If you make it, let me know. And actually if you’d like to blog for After the MFA, let’s talk…

I’ve had conversations with people enough times to know a bit better how to respond to the question as well. So here’s my attempt.

There is only one thing I would have done differently: picked a different school.

Trust me, I am not denigrating the fine institution, instructors or students that I spent two years of Tuesday and Thursday nights with. I encountered some great people there, including a few instructors and fellow students who are making great contributions to writing and the teaching of writing.

But there is one thing I regret most of all, and that’s not focusing on teaching.

I am miserable in the corporate world. Always have been. Always will be. It puts food on the table but with every paycheck comes the price of a few ounces of my soul. I’ve been a professional writer and editor for about 15 years (including the horrendous years of being an assistant editor wherein I did nearly no editing and a crap-ton of assisting) — throughout these years I’ve never wanted to do something more than ditch the profit-driven corporate world and teach writing full-time.

So why did I go to a program that didn’t have an integrated teaching component to it? Convenience.

I was working full-time, raising two kids, my program was close by  (I could walk to it from my apartment), and held classes in the evenings. I also liked the fact that the program could be completed in two years.

If I had to do things differently, I think I would go back and find ways to make my MFA experience a little less convenient and a little more conducive to my long-term goals. It’s not that the experience was easy. Far from it. The two years I was in grad school were a couple of the most difficult I’ve had in my life — with the extreme highs and extreme lows of birth and death enveloping constant day-to-day struggles to just get shit done. In fact, if things had been any less convenient, I probably would have given up on the whole affair. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that I ultimately didn’t accomplish something I had hoped to gain from the experience. If I had a time machine I’d go back and fix that one thing.

Before you embark on your MFA journey, understand clearly what your goals are and what you’ll have to give up in order to get them. As in all things creative, convenience and shortcuts don’t often bear out the results we really want.

Because of a plague of spam I had forced all comments to go through approval before going on the site. I didn’t realize people had actually been saying stuff I would have loved to have seen. Damn spam.

Thanks again, for the comments on my last taking stock post. Big thank you for the thoughts and encouragement.

Things are still as busy as ever, but I hope to start writing a bit more on here in the future.