I remember almost nothing about the time I spent on the final edits of Bringing Nothing, and I’m sure in a few days I’ll have no memory of sitting here in my hotel methodically copying handwritten edits from the printed galley of The KOTRC into a Word document for the wonderful Bea at W&N.

Let me simply remind my future self of one thing then: you were tired, stressed and - above all - bored out of your fucking mind.

Oh, also: you just redesigned your website, but thanks to your recent abandonment of Twitter, you have no idea if anyone’s visiting it any more. Ah well.

Further Reading:

1. A parting of the ways "I never write—indeed, am physically incapable of writing—anything that I don't think will be paid for." - Truman Capote...
2. Need, need, got... So, last night - for reasons that will be explained soon - I decided to get rid of a few...

At this point, I know from experience, it’s a huge pain in the arse for the publisher to have to make changes. But then again, even after countless rounds of proof-reading - by me, by trusted friends and by paid professionals - I’m still finding silly typos. “Drugs dealers” is the latest. Right there, bold as brass, on the first page. Fucking fuck.

But I’m getting there. My part in the production process is almost at an end and then, after that, the pro’s take over completely: printing and distributing and tracking the thing - plus all the other stuff they bring to party - while I turn my attention to the business of whoring.

More on the specifics of that whoring soon. But first I have to get back to these proofs. Not least because I’m supposed to be checking out of here in a couple of days, and I really don’t want to have to lug them with me.

Further Reading:

1. Let the whoring begin Ok, I’m back in the room, and from hereonout things start to get really interesting. The proofs have been read...
2. The Sunday Afternoon Fuck-Up Round-Up: Prologue As a conservative estimate, by the time The Book went to press, I’d probably read and re-read the text four...

A little over a week ago, I closed down all of my social media accounts, with the exception of Twitter, which I locked. The explanation I gave was that, in an age when everyone and their dog is sharing every aspect of their life, being a digital recluse is the new “Internet famous”.

Since then, some people have criticized my logic - pointing out that if I really wanted to be a digital recluse then I’d close Twitter too (update: I have now). By drawing attention to myself for becoming a semi-hermit, am I not just trying to have my social media cake and eat it too?

Perhaps. The truth is that there were numerous reasons for me wanting to dial down my use of social media, but presenting numerous arguments in one column is the kiss of death to a columnist. The neo-narcissistic benefits of locking Twitter were what finally made my decision, and so that was the reason I gave. The others would keep.

This morning, though, Leo Laporte wrote a hugely revealing blog post and, in doing so, artfully proved the misquoted maxim that the medium is the message. In short: Laporte discovered last night that, due to a glitch in Google Buzz, several weeks of his updates had failed to reach either Buzz or Twitter. The kicker? Not one of his tens of thousands of followers had noticed, or cared.

Leo’s response was a vow to turn his attentions back to his blog - a place where people visit specifically to read about Leo, and where they email in the hundreds if he skips an update. By contrast, he argues, people on Twitter are so busy broadcasting their own updates that they’re unable or unwilling to listen to others’.

But, while I certainly agree with Leo’s reasoning for abandoning Buzz and going back to macro-blogging, it was another - almost throw-away - line in his post that chimed most loudly with me.

“I should have been posting [on his blog] all along. Had I been doing so I’d have something to show for it. A record of my life for the last few years at the very least. But I ignored my blog and ran off with the sexy, shiny microblogs.”

Reading that line, I instantly felt Leo’s pain. When I was researching my most recent book - which mainly focusses on the events of the past three years of my life - I spent several days going back through my blog archives, plus Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and the rest - to remind myself of details and events that may have been missing from my more traditional notes. What I found - or rather didn’t find - shocked me.

Throughout my earlier archives, I was able to find lengthy, sometimes surprisingly personal, posts - recounting the highs and lows of starting companies, making and losing friends, leaving London, beginning to travel around America and Europe… and countless other published episodes that backed up, and enhanced the contents of my private notebooks. But then, as I clicked forward through the archives to more recent years, something odd happened. At a certain point, the number of posts in each monthly archive dropped off a cliff, particularly where details of my personal life were concerned.

The reason, of course, was that I’d started to use Twitter for that kind of personal stuff. Unperturbed, I moved my research attentions away from my blog archives and over to my Twitter archives - and that’s when I started to panic: for all the dozens of updates I wrote each month, there was absolutely no substance to any of them.

“I am learning a lot about pens.” reads one update from last year. What does that even mean? “Ok, that’s quite enough of all this. I’m going out”, reads another. Enough of all what? And where was I going? Of course, the fact that I’m a particularly boring tweeter doesn’t help, but look at anyone’s Twitter account and it’s the same story - 140 characters simply doesn’t give enough depth or breadth to commit events, memories or feelings to the permanent record.

I’m one of the lucky ones: I hand-write a lot - and I mean a lot - of notes. Recalling personal experiences is what pays my rent so I have dozens of Moleskine books full of memories to look back on. I also have a similar number of published columns and a couple of memoirs to refer to if my recollection gets patchy.

Others aren’t so fortunate. A decade or so ago, a new generation who would previously have kept diaries instead started to set up blogs. Sure those blogs may have been twee or self-absorbed or clumsily written or emo or just plain boring - isn’t that the joy of a diary? - but they at least required the writer to take the time to process the events of their life, and the attendant emotions they generated - before putting finger to keyboard. The result, in many cases, was a detailed archive of events and memories that they can look back on now and say “that was how I was then”.

And then along came micro-blogging - and, with a finite amount of time and effort available, the blog generation turned into the Twitter (or Facebook) generation. A million blogs withered and died as their authors stopped taking the time to process their thoughts and switched instead to simply copying and pasting them into the world, 140 meaningless characters at a time. The result: a whole lot of sound and mundanity, signifying nothing.

To argue for a mass switch back from Tweeting to Livejournaling (or Bloggering, or Movable Typing…) in the interests of the permanent record is as ridiculous as campaigning for everyone to abandon instant messaging and return to letter-writing. The fact is people are busy (or lazy, depending on your view of humanity) and for the vast majority, immediacy will always trump posterity.

But for those of us who have had reason to look back at the past few years - like me writing my book, or Leo having “woken up to a bad social media dream in terms of the content I’ve put in others’ hands” - the realisation is slightly terrifying: by constantly micro-broadcasting everything, we’ve ended up macro-remembering almost nothing.

(Originally published on TechCrunch)

Further Reading:

1. Quod erat faciendum “Comedy is an escape, not from truth but from despair; a narrow escape into faith.“ -Christopher Fry ... Last week...
2. Hello world 2.0 Oh, you noticed. Welcome, then, to BNTTP: OBOANMH - a new blog with a new and much more exciting purpose....

No related posts.

Spotify users can access it here; for everyone else, here’s the track listing...

Mia - Paper Planes
Crash Test Dummies - Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm
Bender - Turbulance - Original Mix
Fall Out Boy - Sugar, We’re Goin Down
Savage Garden - Crash And Burn
Semisonic - Down In Flames
Ash - Burn Baby Burn
Metric - Help I’m Alive
Destiny’s Child - Survivor
Fall Out Boy - Sending Postcards From A Plane Crash [Wish You Were Here]

Further Reading:

1. 1000 words in two hours I’m 1000 words behind my target already. No time to waste writing this post. I’ve decided that it was XFM...
2. Undressing models and messing with Daniel Ek. There are apps for that Day two of Le Web and I’m hard at work: perched on the edge of a gigantic bed in the...

‘Despite his unusual taste in living accommodations, Carr is easy to please when it comes to local landmarks. He’s thrilled about the Golden Gate Bridge: “Every time I see it, I get happy.” He’s also fond of the Tamale Lady (”who shows up in bars and sells you tamales, even though I can’t imagine that’s hygienic”) and, even though it is uncool, the Cheesecake Factory at the top of Macy’s in Union Square (”I like to go there and pretend I’m a tourist”).

His all-time favorite thing about San Francisco? The weekly pub quiz at Elephant and Castle, a Financial District bar named after an area of South London, whose menu includes bangers and mash. The quiz, run by a Brit, reminds him of home: “I get a two-hour respite from calling people ‘dude.’ I call them ‘chap,’ or whatever British people say.”‘

Read on at SF Weekly...

Further Reading:

1. From the Elephant and Castle to Twitter: trivial pursuits in San Francisco When I first arrived in San Francisco, I was disappointed to learn - at least if Google was to be...
2. Walk softly and carry the U.S. Pacific Fleet Col. Jessep: You want answers?Kaffee: I think I’m entitled.Col. Jessep: You want answers?Kaffee: I want the truth.Col. Jessep: You can’t...

The purpose of my visit is to moderate a panel called “Unsexy & Profitable: Making $$ Without Hype” at 3:30pm on Saturday in Hilton A/B.

You should come along.

Further Reading:

1. Tick follows tock follows tick follows.... I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: I am always - always - late for flights. I always...
2. They speak Twitter there, don’t they? Greetings from Colorado - the Connecting Flight state. You join me at Denver International Airport waiting for a connecting flight...

“Holy crap, if I’d pay money to solve this, so would other people. There’s a business here!”.

It’s the moment that has kick started a million businesses and generated billions of dollars over the decades. And on Sunday evening, not for the first time in what I laughingly call my career, I experienced it.

I’d filed my TechCrunch column earlier in the day and with little else planned, I decided to relax by watching some old episodes of Jonathan Creek: the BBC comedy drama about a magician’s assistant who solves seemingly impossible crimes. The show ran for four series in the UK between 1997 - 2004 and, I think, was also shown on BBC America. I’ve looked for the DVDs over here but I can’t find them, nor can I find a legal way to view them online. Like the petty criminal that I am, then, I headed to YouTube. Sure enough all four series were there, as was a recent one-off reunion special.

As I worked my way through the entire back catalogue, I remembered just how great a show Jonathan Creek is. David Renwick’s scripts are brilliant - apparently each one took him several months to write, thanks to the intricacies of the puzzles each episode contains. The show is so good in fact, that I started to feel guilty: I know that Renwick isn’t going to receive a single penny of residual payment from my YouTube viewing. If only there was some way to contact him, tell him how much I enjoy the show, and offer to send him some money for the lost DVD sale. (Note: it’s not the BBC I care about losing money - they can afford it - but Renwick himself.)

And then I realised that I’m not alone in having this desire, or alone in wanting to pay money to solve it. In fact several times recently I’ve found myself on the other side of the equation. Back in December, I decided to give away the US ebook edition of my last book for free, online. My reason for doing so are outlined here - basically it wasn’t widely available in the US and I wanted people here to read it so they might buy my next one.

Since then I’ve had several dozen emails, tweets and other digital notes from people who have read the book for free, asking if there’s any way they can retroactively pay me some money to say thank you. No, really. Most asked for my Paypal details, or a way to send a check for the ebook cover price of $9.99. Others offered to buy me $9.99  worth of beer at events they knew I’d be attending; an offer which would have been much more enticing had I not given up drinking last October.

And that’s when I had the moment. I want to pay David Renwick for work of his that I’ve already enjoyed, but I can’t. People want to pay me for work of mine, but - expect through some tortuous email exchange, which resulted in me turning down the dozens of offers of money because it seemed somehow weird - they can’t.

Read more on TechCrunch...

Further Reading:

1. Kindling - but in a good way There’s no way to write this post without sounding like a self-promoting hack, so I’m not going to try. Hold...
2. Guest format: theatre review (Tony Blair: The Musical) A few years ago - four if I recall - I went up to the Edinburgh Festival with a cheque...

“... So, yes, the manuscript is done and is with my editor. Nothing I can do now but wait. Like eating in a Wimpy or (I’m told) childbirth, it’s amazing how quickly you forget the pain of the actual experience and start yearning to go through it again. I’m Patty Hearst and Microsoft Word is my Stockholm Syndrome...

...One last thing: lots of people have very generously offered to read through the m/s and give me their verdict. Others have been more open in wanting to know what / if I’ve written about them. The truth is, I’m as keen as anyone would be to know what the verdict is. I honestly have no idea whether it’s a sack of shit, or whether it’s struggle-through-able...”

I wrote those words just a bit more than two years ago in a blog post entitled “Save > Attach > Send > Vomit“. I’d just submitted the manuscript of Bringing Nothing To The Party and was in a horrible limbo phase, waiting for my publisher to give his verdict.

The funny thing is, I don’t remember anything about those few days - or the previous week or so of writing. I almost certainly spent most of the week that followed drunk. I’m pretty sure the blackout thing was a subconscious decision: a shortcut to my forgetting how much I hate the actual act of book writing, especially as I head towards - and then past - my deadline.

Two years later and I’m back in that same limbo; the manuscript for the new book landed with the very same publisher three days ago, and there’s nothing to do - again - but wait for his verdict. Again I’m already starting to forget the pain of the actual experience and again I’m starting to think about what to do next, beyond the shit-ton of admin that will come between now and publication day in (I think) July. Assuming that the thing is at least publishable.

The difference this time, of course, is that I can’t even get drunk. Instead I’m just taking some down-time; catching up with reading, seeing friends I haven’t seen for weeks, remembering to eat lunch, all that stuff. One other thing I’ve finally got round to doing is putting the rest of Bringing Nothing To The Party online. You can now read the full contents chapter-by-chapter, complete with clickable footnotes and commenting here.

Right! I have about 24 more hours left of break time (Mike kindly gave me a week off from writing my TechCrunch column) before I have to go back to work. I’m going to download a couple of old episodes of Jonathan Creek and order a takeaway.

I mention that not because I think you’ll care, but rather so that when I look back in another two years, I have at least some idea of where this time went.

Further Reading:

1. Save > Attach > Send > Vomit I finally finished it on Friday, the book. It was an odd experience, writing a story that hasn’t finished happening...
2. Once you’re lucky, twice there’s clearly been some kind of administrative error If you read my column last week you’ll already know this, but for a variety of reasons I haven’t got...

I’ve decided that it was XFM distracting me. Too many lyrics. Instead I’ve switched to this Spotify playlist. Five days of classical music. That should do it.

Further Reading:

1. Sugar, We’re Goin Down #VX22 Hello from flight VX22 from SFO to New York. I’m heading from coast to coast for TechCrunch Disrupt which starts...
2. Undressing models and messing with Daniel Ek. There are apps for that Day two of Le Web and I’m hard at work: perched on the edge of a gigantic bed in the...