Tweet Yesterday’s story about carving out the blackberry bush, while carefully leaving load-bearing columns in the heart of it, would make for an excellent post on document structure. Wouldn’t it? Maybe I’ll have to tell it again sometime when you’re not looking…. Today I want to talk about a different type of columns, though: text […]
Tweet I’ve used today’s photo before, but it’s so adorable I just had to drag it out again. That’s not the only reason, of course. It’s also incredibly appropriate to the story I want to tell. I don’t know if it’s readily apparent in that image, but we were building a fort in that photo. […]
Tweet Yesterday I took some time to try to tell you what’s so great about the humble text editor. Or, more to the point, what it has to offer us as writers. There’s a trick I mentioned in passing, and I feel like I should bring it up again just to make sure you pick […]
Tweet I started this series with a story about the time I color-coded myself, and some poetic language about the value of color-coding in a text editor. I also mentioned “Notepad” as a text editor, but that was probably unnecessarily misleading. I’m not talking about Microsoft’s built-in Notepad tool, here. I’m not even talking about […]
Tweet I grew up surrounded by books. Despite my mom’s best efforts to find room for critical necessities like furniture and open doorways, my dad has managed to pack an amazing number of books into every livingspace he’s ever called home. For eighteen years, those included mine. And for many of those years, I considered […]
Tweet So…a conversation that started out with my gross negligence as a father has now become an essay on expertise. I guess I’m telling you to fake it ’til you make it. The sentiment has been much on my mind recently, as I just finished reading No Plot, No Problem, the NaNoWriMo handbook. It’s heavy […]
Tweet Yesterday I told a story about throwing my daughter into the deep end of the pool. It wasn’t intentional, but it was astonishingly effective. Funny enough, I’d been thinking about that metaphor a lot lately. In the last year I’ve been thrown into the deep end at work, building incredibly challenging documents on impossible […]
Tweet I’ve been bragging recently about my daughter’s early education. (Joyful, joyful! The girl is learning to read!) We’ve also been trying to teach her some other skills — things like self-control, critical thinking, and fingerpainting. Last weekend, though, it was too hot to spend any time time learning (or teaching, for that matter). Summer […]
Tweet This week I’m talking about scripted solutions and the power of programming for a writer. I know it might sound intimidating, but learning a programming language isn’t that much harder than learning any other kind language, and in the same way, some are easier than others. I almost want to say, “Learning Python is […]
Tweet Writers are not naturally programmers. I’m certainly aware of that. In fact, I resisted becoming one for years even though all my friends were. When I finally broke down and accepted some lessons from my friend Toby, though, it changed the way I approach everything I do on the computer. Some tasks require a […]
