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The best part about being alone in a room by myself for several days is the mess I get to make.
Part of my job for the first 15 years of my career was bringing people into a room to map out user journeys with post-its, show where things are going wrong and creating ways to fix those problems. It remains today my favorite part of my tech-related work. I’m not sure if it was just a coincidence that it’s how my brain consumes data best, or if I inadvertently trained it to be so. But one thing I know for sure is that my creativity feels like a caged bird when it’s relegated to my laptop alone. It’s like peeping through a keyhole at the story where you know the rest of it is on the other side of the door— it’s very frustrating.
So I got messy, and I got organized, and I wrote like Hamilton running out of time… because I am (#deadlines).
Another thing I do is dictate.
This is something I have trained myself to do for big presentations, so that my notes are exactly in my voice. I dictate everything into one of my devices (last week it was the notes app in my phone because google docs seems to have gone to shit since adding gemini and it no longer understands my accent). It’s also helpful because I was diagnosed with carpel tunnel when i was 22 and finally 28 years later had surgery on both hands for it. This saves my hands from that for a little bit, too.
What I dictate is an ugly mess, and it’s definitely awkward to describe a kissing scene outloud to yourself, but nobody ever died of awkward, so forth I go. And as for the prose—I can fix everything in the next draft of edits.
What about you?
What works for you? I love learning how people work—it makes me feel less bonkers.
Also… wanna write together again? (zoom link below)
Next Co-writing will be May 20th—that’s tomorrow!:
Every Wednesday 7pm-8pm Amsterdam time which is:
10:00 AM in California (PDT/PST)
1:00 PM in New York (EDT/EST)
Hope to see you there!
xo
Nova
P.S. I often write with Kate Schatz from 6-7pm Amsterdam time on Wednesdays so I made it right after that so that I could just keep on truckin. If you don’t already know her, please go learn about her and her amazing contributions to the world.