5 things on my mind (and in my notebook)

On feedback, shallow work, professionalism, blind drawings, and not-knowing

A true story

Hey y’all,

I’m in between drafts — that free but somewhat anxious state for the author (and parent) when somebody else is watching the baby at the moment and you can do whatever you want with your temporary freedom.

Here are 5 things that are on my mind:

1. “Do you have any feedback?”

The comic on the diary page above is a scene from real life. I recently discovered that my boys, 12 and 9, are both writing novels and sharing them with each other in Google Docs.

I think I already told this story a few weeks ago, but the 12-year-old thought it was hilarious when he found out that I write the early drafts of my books in Google Docs.

“I thought you, like, used something professional,” he said.

Another true story

He has requested, several times, to read the draft of this book I’m working on about what I learned from being around him and his brother when they were little. I’m probably more nervous about what he thinks about the book than anybody else. I’m not sure he remembers, but he read the draft of Keep Going when he was only 5 going on 6. (This is the thing about writing short books with pictures that are easy-to-read — they function as picture books for all ages.)

I found out this handy fact about Google Docs: it will spit out a fairly decent .epub that you can export to your e-reader!

File menu > Download > EPUB Publication (.epub)

There’s something really interesting about having your unfinished book mixed in with all finished books by others. It would be paralyzing to compose a book this way, but for editing, it’s great. You can really feel how the thing reads as a book.

I think this will really change how I edit myself in the future: spit out an .epub, load it up on the Kindle, and read it like somebody else wrote it.

2. Work vs. play, serious vs. unserious, and “deep” work vs. shallow.

On Instagram, a reader asked me in response to my collages: “How do you balance making fun stuff with doing business? Do you allocate time to simpl[y] make ‘pointless’ things?” I scribbled the image above into my notebook in response, and then I got so worked up thinking about the topic that I scribbled this followup, which I’ve edited slightly:

This is pretty much straight out of the new book. In the “Time, Space, and Materials” chapter I advocate for actually scheduling playtime — a chunk blocked off on your calendar for goofing around, messing about, and playing in the studio. If that seems unprofessional or unjustifiable to your inner boss, call it your “R&D” (research & development) time.

3. Competence vs. incompetence & amateur vs. professional