Writers on Writing: Robin Sloan
I'm Robin Sloan, author of the novel “Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore,” in addition to many stories and other projects online. I'm currently working on my second book.
Okay, let’s start with the basics. How often do you write?
Every day! And then I give myself a "weekend," but it jumps around -- it's almost never Saturday and Sunday.
Do you try to write a certain number of words each day, for a certain number of hours, or does none of that matter?
I tend to have a specific section or "module" I want to draft, and length-wise it can range from 500 to 2,000 words. My way of getting myself going in the morning is therefore to say something like: "Okay, today I'm going to finally write the part where Fernwen gets the Golden Horn of Griffo! GO!" And then -- this is important -- later in the day, when I finish drafting that module, even if the draft is terrible, borderline incoherent, I allow myself to feel productive and victorious. The little two-stroke engine of "say you're going to do something" / "do the thing" is powerful and it can pull you all the way home.
Tell us about your writing tools. What do you do most of your writing with? And do you use different tools at different stages of the process?
I'm a big note-taker, and those notes are mainly scribbles in pen on the pages of the little notebooks I carry everywhere. After I've filled one, I'll sit down at my computer and go through it again, transcribing the scribbles into my digital storehouse as plain text, multiply-backed-up. Then I pitch the notebook, gleefully. As for drafting, it's all on the computer, even the roughest stages. The idea of writing complete sentences longhand fills me with dread.
Any favorite tools you want to recommend to other writers?
I'm on OS X and I use Scrivener, although I ignore and/or disable 98% of its features. Mainly I like its ability to organize lots of little scraps of text. Sometimes, if I need to just power through a section, I'll pop open a new document in iA Writer and write without encumbrance. Lately I've been tempted by Ulysses as a sort of Scrivener/Writer hybrid, but I don't yet trust its cloud storage. ~I need to know where my text files are.~ And I need to have like nine copies of them.
Let’s talk about prep and what work you do on a project before you start writing. Do you take a lot of notes and develop a detailed outline, do you just dive right in, or is it somewhere in between?
As I mentioned, I take a lot of notes, but that's at a stage before even prep or planning. My notes database is a big pot of story-stew: my interests and preoccupations and half-formed ideas all simmering together for months, sometimes years. I can dip a ladle into that anytime and come out with something interesting.
After that: all of my detailed outlines have failed miserably, but I do always have a plan for what I'm doing. I sometimes talk about my stories as Progressive JPEGs, a la dial-up internet, evolving from blurry fields of color to detailed images over time, the progression uniform across the whole piece, beginning to end. It's really the right metaphor for me! -- but I don't think I can use it anymore, because there's a whole generation now that has no idea what I'm talking about. Maybe I could create a Progressive JPEG simulator and post in on my website somewhere, and then just link over to that…
What about the ending. Do you know what it is (or at least what it might be) before you start, or do you figure it out as you go along?
Honestly, I have not ended enough stories satisfactorily to answer this question with any seriousness. Like a lot of writers, I'm still figuring it out!
Back to logistics. Where do you do most of your writing? Do you ever change that up?
I split my time between writing at home on a table that I love and writing in an office in a city that I love. But I should say that for me, much of the work happens between places. I leased an office as much to establish a long, walking commute as anything else. Solvitur ambulando. [Craig: “It is solved by walking”]
How do you avoid distractions like the Internet or getting sidetracked by new ideas?
The indispensable tool in this regard is Freedom, a tiny program that shuts off your computer's internet connection for a defined period of time. Freedom's great power is that it's a one-way switch: once activated, it can't be paused or deactivated short of restarting your computer. Honestly, Freedom is probably the most important app I use every day.
If you find yourself stuck on project, what do you do?
Letting it sit always helps, of course. Even a stretch of a few weeks can be hugely helpful. Mainly, for me, the benefit is that when I return to the thing, I can see the good parts again. It's a nice feeling to pick up a piece of writing you despaired over and say, hey, this part is funny. This part, too.
Any rituals, gimmicks or cheesy self-help techniques that help you write?
Not really! I will say that the more I treat writing like a bodily/athletic activity and less like an mental/abstract one, the better I seem to do. By that, I mean both that it's something your body does (which is inarguably true) and that metaphors of muscular exertion, stamina, conditioning, etc., have been useful for me.
Finally, what’s the one thing you wish someone had told you about the realities of writing before you started out?
Here's a two-part answer:
1. I'm not sure I (or anyone) can be "told" much at all in this regard. I think you have to experience the work yourself, and then, when you do "learn things," it's not like finally reading the right bit of pithy advice but rather getting a new block of DNA grafted into your cells. Specific; intrinsic; organic.
2. Whether that conjecture is correct or not: I'm quite sure I haven't yet learned ("learned") any of the most important things yet, so I'll put off dispatching advice to my former self for another few decades at least.
Check out more Writers on Writing interviews.
