Kit
February 3rd, 2010 | daybook
Working on an episode of FREAKANGELS and a WIRED UK column about human spaceflight that will probably get a bit shouty, this evening. Around midnight I’m going to switch to something else. I have a shitload of travel coming up, and for a chunk of a month the only writing I’m going to be doing is on a netbook on planes, on a netbook in hotel rooms if I’m lucky (and not asleep), and, if I’m very very lucky, in paper notebooks in dive bars.
(Because, you know what, Steve? iPads look very pretty in that STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION way you and your people have, and I’m sure they’ll be a marvellous coffee-table machine, but they’re the wrong form factor for serious writing. Netbooks do that better. As a dedicated writing/internet machine, my Eee 901 running OpenOffice and Chrome wins.)
My business runs on four things, really. A netbook, a smartphone, a handheld email device and notebooks. Currently, that’s the 901, the iPhone 3GS, a Blackberry Curve and a pile of Moleskines and Field Notes. The phone and the email device have to be two different devices, because having to answer the phone when you’re in the middle of typing an email or note is, frankly, fucking annoying. (I used to work on an all-in-one handheld, a Visor or a Treo with a foldaway keyboard that I could write on as well as do email and take calls. That got annoying. Convergence is a nice idea, but not for me.
(I’d add in a fifth, an mp3 player. I thought a moment ago that was non-essential business kit, and then I tried imagining travelling without one.)
Obviously they all serve different purposes, but they are all in fact bent to the same purpose, the essential purpose of writing: getting the idea down before you forget it. Doesn’t matter if the idea’s crap. Doesn’t matter if it’s not immediately useful. Doesn’t matter if it’s half-formed. Get it down. Jot it in a text file on your computer and toss it in a folder called Loose Ideas. Thumb it out into a note file on your phone. Scribble it into a notebook (in block caps so you can read it later, if you’re me). Record it as a voice memo (I’m working with someone right now who sets his phone to voice-recording in the car and spitballs ideas into it as he drives, hits send to email it out to me when he parks, just so he doesn’t lose the ideas).
If you don’t have some kind of kit for capturing ideas, even if it’s a 50p reporter’s notebook and a pencil from the local shop for local people, you’re doing it wrong.
(I used to burn through those fuckers. I’d sit in the local burger bar because it didn’t close until 3am, writing episodes of LAZARUS CHURCHYARD in longhand and sketching out the panels and pages because I was terrified of asking Matt Brooker to draw something that was impossible. This is a paranoia I’ve had since David Lloyd told me at a convention that Alan Moore had written him a panel where a character was to stand with his back to the reader, smiling. Think about that for a second. Yeah. Matt was a greatly more experienced comics artist than I was a comics writer, and I really didn’t want to embarrass myself.)
(Point of story being: don’t be afraid of being lo-tek. Worked for me, in those dark pre-internet days when the most advanced electronic device I owned was a small portable b/w television that only worked if you punched it every ten minutes.)
is the award-winning creator of graphic novels such as 
Have you seen the Peek(http://www.getpeek.com/)? It’s an email only device.
So is my Blackberry, as far as I’m concerned. (Plus I can search Wikipedia on it.)
You knobend, they don’t work in Britain.
Yeah, the iPad looks shiny and all, but the thought of typing anything of consequence on what is basically a chrome-backed bathroom mirror makes me twitch.
Totally with you on the paper & pen thing. With all the tech in my pockets, the little Moleskine and pen are still the fastest and most immediate way to put down a thought. Some things are at the point where they can’t be perfected any further.
I still prefer a plain old college ruled notebook for working out ideas before typing them. I think better using one, I can make little doodles illustrating the idea, margin notes, etc. as much as I love technology it’s still not that freeform to use.
It’s funny, for the longest time I used a paper notebook for writing, but when I got a really light laptop (the Dell D420, practically a netbook, but with a more pixels on the screen than most netbooks), I found myself using it much more often, so that now I rarely write on paper.
Oh, and it really helped that I have the Windows-equivalent of TextMate (the ‘e’ text editor) so I can write in Textile markup.
Don’t care what you say, Warren, that iPad was made for me.
But I see your point about being interrupted on a converged device. Thank god the iPad doesn’t do calls.
Perhaps it’s creeping senility, but I’ve been wondering lately if I should go back to a wee pad of paper. 75-95% Graffiti errors on my damn LifeDrive are taking their toll (the error rate is that high because I grafted Classic G into it, NFW will I use that Anti-Christ G2 for HWR!).
But yes. the Bottom Line *is* Get It Down.
(claps hands vigorously)
Yes to all of this post. iPads are likely to be more useful to the photographer set than the writer set.
Having a notebook (as in, the paper thing) is one of the most useful writing tools I could have. All the discombobulated thinking out loud goes in there, and maybe some early drafts. When it gets down to writing for “real,” my laptop will do, but lately I’ve felt that when I’m out and about, a netbook wouldn’t be so bad to have either.
Now, there’s one thing Steve Jobs wouldn’t argue with you about.
For all the iPad tries to be, it definitely doesn’t want to capture the clientele of serious writers.
I agree that the iPad is not suitable for writing. The thing is, it’s not meant for writing. Apple doesn’t want to replace the netbook completely with the iPad– they want to create a space in between the Kindle and a netbook, for people who want to read, watch media, surf the web, etc. on a midsize device. I think they nailed that market.
The tough thing for me was, I wanted to want the iPad– but I’m not in that market right now. I need a small laptop for writing, occasional light Photoshop, surfing the web on the go, and the occasional game. So I am waiting on the iPad (until I see how it handled comics, and how publishers handle it)– and getting a MacBook Air to write on.
I actually get a frightening lot of ideas down just using the stock yellow notepad on my iPhone 3G. My curse is that I only get properly inspired at the most inconvenient times (while driving, riding a bicycle, hiking in the middle of nowhere) and need a way to get it down and email it to myself so I’ll look at it later. It works much better than the 79 scraps of receipts, gum wrappers and napkins stuffed into my pockets that I used to use. My handwriting is abysmal, and my hands can’t write fast/legibly enough to keep up with my brain so actual moleskines don’t work well usually, plus I lose them all the time.
[...] is going to fit into your work life. I just read an interesting post where writer Warren Ellis outlines his writing tools, and he’s found that the all-in-one approach doesn’t work for him. Instead of taking [...]
Mickie Rat, why don’t you record your notes rather than typing them down? I do that with my N900, surely there is an iPhone app as well. Plus, you can start by saying “Diane, …” and feel all 90s.
Not about writing, but I’ve switched back to a paper week-at-a-glance calendar. Appointments, todo lists, and micro journal all in one. It’s changing my life seeing it all there in front of me. Good for me.
On the writing topic, handwritten things have a visceral memory. Stuff from ten to twenty years ago, I remember printing like that. Whatever.
The iPad is for readers, not for writers. It’s designed for content consumers, not producers.
I use a regular A7 notepad I carry everywhere and a private jottit.com wiki to keep notes ordered and connected. I’ve tired to use the “voice memos” feature of last iPod nano but I feel silly talking to it and sillier when listening to my own recorded voice.
[...] this post by Warren Ellis (who is a comics et al writer I enjoy very much, both for his stories and his [...]
Cool kit. Needs pictures. 8)
iPad is for people who want to watch things – not make things. This is why Apple is evil.
Way to stick it Jobs ;)
Yep, a good Netbook with OpenOffice and Chrome will piss all over the iTampon from a great height.
[...] isn’t just the opinion of an unpublished amateur. Professional writers agree! Get it down. You can pretty it up later, organize it however you want or need, but if it [...]
I liked those little Moleskines that come in three packs until the day I ran one through the wash by accident. I liked Clairefontaine mini-memo books as well until the same thing happened to one of those. I have a habit when travelling of sticking them in my jacket pockets and then washing my jacket. I’m surprised I haven’t tried to wash my passport yet, come to think of it …
I found something called Rite-in-the-Rain in Seattle that works well when you use them with Fisher space pens. In fact, that’s the only way I think you can use them — they’re made of waterproofed paper. It’s a decent setup — you can spill liquids on the notepads and the pens write on nearly anything. That’s not the best part though. The notepads are BRIGHT YELLOW so you’re pretty sure when they’re in your pocket.
Otherwise, the iPad would work better if Apple made the back of it out of bullet-resistant materials and then offered to laser engrave your organisation’s logo on the back. That way it could be issued to journos as standard equipment that stores easily in body armour. It’s chunky enough that it should stop small arms fire at the least. :-)