Page Practice At The Office

At the office I've started reflecting at the end of the day by writing responses to these four questions:

1. What has gone well?
2. What was my part in that?
3. What would I have changed?
4. What three things will I do tomorrow?

I've committed to thirty days of this practice. Written reflection has long been a good tool for me. Today was the second day it.

I'm already up for a change.

Usually this would mean that things have gotten challenging and I am folding the tent, but this time I have an idea. I'll keep the questions in mind but follow simpler instructions:

1. Fill a small page (A5) with recollection of the workday and my role in what happened.
2. On a sticky note, list three things to do tomorrow.

Done. Boom.

I feel good about this because I'm used to using written reflection in Morning Pages and my Writer's Notebooks. I've done the one for six years, the other for three decades.

But what's the goal?

I don't care. Or rather, I'm putting that question aside for a couple reasons:

1. I hate goals and feel obligated to them which makes me hate them even more.
2. I want this to be a practice, the goal of which is _do_ the practice.

What comes of is almost none of my business and beyond my ability to predict. Doing the practice is goal, reward, plan, and everything else. It's also a reason to use more ink which, for me, is the answer to almost all my questions.

The Way Of Nothing

I've come to the pages this morning with nothing to write. I'm sluggish but have three pages to fill. I know I'll fill them, but part of me wonders how.

As always, it begins with the decision to just fill them. That's not a goal, though if it helps to think of it that way, go ahead. For me it's a plan or map, a boundary for the game I'm playing. I have exactly three pages to fill and there's no requirement for what goes in them so long as I put ink down.

That's the second part: putting ink down. For the thousandth time, I'm vaguely considering the volume of ink these three pages will absorb. That thinking keeps me from worrying much about what I'll write or what I shouldn't write. Thinking what not to say is a trap to avoid.

I am drafting this on pages with numbered lines. I'm on line twenty of page one with about two and a half pages remaining. I balance thoughts of how far I have left to go with appreciation for how far I have come. I hold that balance by keeping the pen moving and noticing how I'm moved forward by it. By the time I consider how far I've come, I'm even farther along.

Yeah, but you still have nothing to say, says a small voice.

That voice used to boom and echo and I know how dominant it is for others, but it has become a pitiful squeaking for me. I smile at the sound of it because I know that I started with nothing to write and have filled half my three pages with ideas to help other writers.

It reminds me of this Aaron Sorkin story:

This guy's walking down a street when he falls in a hole. The walls are so steep he can't get out. A doctor passes by and the guy shouts up, "Hey you! Can you help me out?" The doctor writes a prescription, throws it down in the hole, and moves on. Then a priest comes along and the guy shouts up, "Father, I'm down in this hole; can you help me out?" The priest writes out a prayer, throws it down in the hole and moves on. Then a friend walks by. "Hey, Joe, it's me. Can you help me out?" And the friend jumps in the hole. Our guy says, "Are you stupid? Now we're both down here." The friend says, "Yeah, but I've been down here before and I know the way out."

I've been stuck down this hole more often than most people and I know the way out. I was down here two pages ago, yet we aren't stuck anymore.

How did that happen? This quote from Finding Forrester is a good answer:

"The first key to writing is to write, not to think."

The thinking writers do before they begin moving the pen is self-centered anxiety about what others will think. Not thinking is one way through that. I achieve that by writing only for my own amusement, expecting that no one else will read what I've written. That helps me be less anxious about what you (whoever you are) might think of me.

In practice this boils down to keeping the pen moving. It's tough to think while the pen is moving. It's tough to give into anxiety when the pen is moving. The way out of the hole reveals itself through the pen's movement.

The moving pen generates ideas. I've come to the pages this morning with nothing to write becomes three pages (revised to 700 words) through the simple act of deciding to write three pages just for me and keeping the pen moving. Ideas come out in blue ink as if by magic which is a pretty good name for this writing game.

I'm out of the hole now. Maybe you are too. I'll probably see you down there again. Or maybe not. You know a way out now and maybe your pen is already moving.

The "I" Problem

One thing that's tough to accomplish on a personal blog is to avoid plugging myself too much, to avoid being self-centered. If most of the sentences in a post begin with "I," there's a problem. If most of the posts on a blog have that issue, well then why read the damn thing? It's something I work on, something I'm aware of, and still my results in avoiding the over-indulgent "I" aren't great, but that's just because I'm so great I can't help it. Or something like that.

This idea came up today because of something I notice at work, a division of people who can't seem to help overusing "I" and those who almost never talk about themselves even when it would be acceptable. At work, I've gotten pretty good at keeping my "I" out of it. Some of that is made easy by the nature of the work. My job involves writing grants, managing some activities, and getting things done for other people. Also, the mission of the place is to serve others (It's a cookbook!) That is, it's not all about me. Right now that means reading a draft of new by-laws sent by a lawyer for a new initiative. Earlier it meant writing a section of a grant to sound as if the person signing it was the author. An hour ago it was writing an email disappointing one person while not revealing that it was someone other than me who made the decision. That guy was not happy, but oh well.

This is good work to do, a great job to have, my name doesn't have to be on things. It's not about me but it's troubling how much people feel the need to put their stamps and signatures on things. It's like people who give millions of dollars but demand their name be on the building. What, your money doesn't give you enough attention? Sheesh.

There's some question as to whether or not leaving my name off leaves me behind. The squeaky wheel gets the grease and all, but it's better to be a wheel that turns quietly, largely unnoticed. The right people know they can depend on me. That's enough.

Still, there's the writing question: Am I am thinking and writing too much about what I am doing, what I am thinking, and trying to get people to notice me? Even in this piece, I'm referring to myself, but there's a difference between using experience as example and turning the spotlight on myself to the exclusion of everything else. Here's hoping this piece is on the right side of that.

Getting away from I is like training writers away from "you" in referring to "the reader." I have no clue who "you, the reader" might be and assumptions leads to racism, sexism, and bad writing. "You" is almost always a sign of immaturity, inexperience, or laziness, but "I" may be even more dangerous. Note the man-child in the White House if you have any doubt.

There are times and places for "I" and "you" in writing, but it's always time to be wary of them. Avoiding "you" is just good sense. Avoiding "I" is also good sense, but it's more than that, it may even be spiritual, maybe moral. Like my job, writing isn't just about me. I'm in there, but there's so much more when "I" get out of the way.

Fonts & Templates

I'll begin by saying that none of this matters, but it matters to me.

This week, seeking distraction, I opened Google Docs and Microsoft Word and worked on the fonts and styles in my standard templates.

I'll bet you're real excited to keep reading.

Standard templates are the blank document into which one types. Long ago, I decided on page margins (half-inch top and bottom, one-inch side to side) and a font combination (Playfair Display title and headings, Open Sans body text). In this time at home, lacking enough to do, I got to feeling it was time for a new look in Google Docs. Having been switched to Word at work (sigh), I needed a template there too.

This how I keep from checking headlines and watching news briefings.

I played with Segoe UI, Calibri, and others, but returned to Open Sans. I changed sizes, weights, and line spacing. Eventually, I settled on a template for Google and something similar for Word (described below for geeks and freaks). It's the first time I've changed my template in years.

This reminds me of the lined paper I designed years ago and printed at the school system's expense on used sheets of copy paper. This is the paper I use for Morning Pages. I printed maybe a thousand sheets of it prior to leaving the school.

The design of those sheets began simply, but I refined it over years of small changes: I switched from twenty-five to thirty-one lines, added spaces for the date and page number, switched to dotted lines, shrunk the right margin, and added ghostly line numbers. Eventually, it became the page I use today, a page I love using and which, if I were a rich man, I'd have bound into books.

Creating a new template isn't necessary, but the act of tinkering and refining is a good use of _my_time so long as I don't go overboard. The template is a tool of my craft and I'm happy with what I've created and with knowing that I will refine them, maybe today, certainly down the road. Good tools are worthwhile and refining a good tool is a delight.

But when I want to really write I avoid Google Docs and Word in favor of Writer, a minimal, distraction-free editor with almost no control over fonts or templates. I'm drafting and revising this in Writer because I'm trying to write, not present. I've formatted the blog for presentation and can concentrate now on writing and revising.

Font fiddling and template tweaking matters to me because presentation of craft matters. A good template is a good tool but has nothing to do with the craft of writing. Knowing to keep creation and presentation separate, now there's something that matters.

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Template Details For Geeks And Freaks

Google Docs

• Title: Baskerville 30 pt, dark blue
• Subtite/Author-Date: Open Sans Light, 18 pt, dark grey
• Heading 1: Open Sans Light, 24 pt, dark blue
• Heading 2: Open Sans Light, 18 pt, dark blue
• Heading 3: Open Sans Light, 14 pt, dark blue
• Body Text: Open Sans, 11 pt, black

Word (Slightly larger, no complementary title font)

• Title: Open Sans Light 38 pt, dark blue
• Subtite/Author-Date: Open Sans Light, 18 pt, dark grey
• Heading 1: Open Sans Light, 26 pt, dark blue
• Heading 2: Open Sans Light, 22 pt, dark blue
• Heading 3: Open Sans Light, 18 pt, dark blue
• Body Text: Open Sans, 11 pt, black

If you've read this far, you're a geek.
If you try these in Google Docs and/or Word, you're my kind of freak.