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Posts Tagged ‘journalism’

Writing is a collaboration with readers

Posted in journalism, writing, tagged , , , , on January 23, 2008| 2 Comments »

When you are learning to write, your teachers usually blame you for any failure of communication. Considering that you are learning the craft, the assumption is often accurate. The only trouble is, you end up believing unconsciously that, if you find just the right words, you can communicate perfectly, and never be misunderstood. But, if you keep writing, and receive enough responses, you start to appreciate that, not only is perfect communication impossible, but that the baggage your audience lugs along can be just as important as what you say and how you say it. The trick, of course, is to know who is responsible for any particular breakdown in communication.

Teachers, incidentally, experience the same revelation – or, at least, I did. When I first stepped in front of a class, I imagined that I fully controlled the experience. As a result, my first semester teaching post-secondary was almost my last. I needed to learn that, while some students wanted to learn, I needed to cajole or entertain others before they would even try to absorb my lesson. Still others were either not willing or perhaps not ready to learn, or couldn’t learn from me. Even when, cured of illusions, I received consistently high evaluations from students, beyond a certain point, I couldn’t make everybody in a class learn. All I could do was provide an opportunity to learn, and tempt students to take advantage of it.

To say the least, the revelation was humbling. At times, it was profoundly discouraging, too.

In the same way, the most you can do as a writer is your best. You can articulate original or insightful ideas, choose your words carefully, and structure your thoughts in a way that would make Aristotle proud – and still, how readers receive your words will be dependent to some degree on what they bring to the experience. If anything, the possibility of not engaging your audience is even greater than with teaching, because you’re generally not face-to-face with your readers, so you can’t adjust your words to entice them better.

No matter how careful you are, some readers will dislike what you have to say because your topic is personally painful because of a trauma they experienced when they were four years old. Others will criticize you because you’ve written a commentary instead of an essay that proves your argument point by laborious point. Some will object because of what they think you said, but didn’t. Given half a chance, some will try to pick a fight with you if you’re accessible. The careless will misread what you say, take a phrase out of context, or in their minds transform what you said into something altogether different. the humor-impaired will miss your jokes. The paranoid will think you’re talking about them.

Even when you’re praised, the experience can be just as devastating. People will praise you because you are echoing something their much beloved great-aunt used to say, or because your throwaway phrase gave them the courage to leave their boyfriend. They’ll find a wisdom you didn’t intend, and make you feel stupid compared to the clever person they imagine you to be. They’ll praise an accident in your phasing, and ignore the parts you meant to be witty. And so it goes, each time you publish, until at times you’ll wonder how humans ever communicate.

The important thing to remember is that, as group therapy leaders are supposed to say, this isn’t about you. Or, not necessarily. You can never completely ignore what people have to say because at times, impartially-speaking, some of the ways that people misinterpret actually do point to a flaw in your work – especially if a majority make the same misinterpretation. But, at the same time, you can’t always give reader reactions undue weight, either. Often, the reactions will be based on nothing that you control. All you can do is write with what Balzac called “clean hands and composure,” absorb what is useful for improving your craft from the reactions, ignore the rest – both the good and the bad – and try to do better next time.

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First podcast

Posted in Bruce Byfield, computers, Free Software, freesoftware, gnu/linux, Internet, journalism, opensource, Personal, podcast, technology, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on December 5, 2007| 2 Comments »

Today, I had the new experience of helping out with a podcast. Like most people, I hate hearing my voice (it always sounds clumsy and over-precise), and any wishful belief in my own eloquence wilts when I hear all the “ums” with which I punctuate my speech, but I hope I have the chance to take part in another one.

I could hardly be excluded from this one. After all, it was an article I published a few weeks ago, “GNOME Foundation defends OOXML involvement,” that sparked the podcast. Moreover, when Jeff Waugh of the GNOME Foundation first floated the idea, he had me in mind as a neutral third party, and I was the one who pitched the idea to Linux.com, the main buyer of my articles. Admittedly, it was an easy sell, since Robin Miller, the senior editor at Linux.com, is a part time video producer and always looking for ways to extend the print coverage on the site, but I was still the one who got things moving.

After stumbling into the center ring while technical problems occupied Robin and Rod Amis, the producer, and stuttering into the silence, I soon found my tongue. The experience was not much different, I found, from doing an ordinary interview or teaching a university seminar. In all three cases, your purpose is not to express your own opinions, but to encourage others to speak, and to clarify their vague references for the sake of listeners. The fact that there was an audience of about 650 – good numbers, Rod tells me, for a daytime podcast – didn’t really affect me, because I had no direct contact with them.

Jeff Waugh and Roy Schestowitz, the two guests on the podcast, have been having bare-knuckle arguments on various forums, so I was expecting to have to referee the discussion. In fact, the image kept occurring to me of those soccer referees who are sometimes chased off the field by irrate crowds. However, the slugfest I expected never materialized. It’s harder, I suppose, to insult someone verbally, even over the phone, that to fan a flame war on the Internet, and both were more polite live than they had ever been at the keyboard.

Besides, Robin has the voice of someone calmly taking charge without any expectation of contradiction. Perhaps, too, an echo of my old university instructor voice ghosted through my own words.
But, whatever the case, everyone survived. I even think that the increased politeness influenced both Jeff and Roy to make concessions to each others’ viewpoints than they never would have considered online. As a result, I think that the point that the dispute is one of tactics rather than of different goals came through for the first time in the month or more that this dispute has been unfolding. However, I’m not sure that either of the principals has made the same observation.

The show had glitches that better planning might avoid next time. However, I like to think that both sides had a reasonable chance to express themselves, so it could have been worse. The Linux.com regulars are already discussing the possibility of another podcast, and I, for one, can’t wait.

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The need for neutrality in journalism

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Free Software, freesoftware, journalism, opensource, Personal, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , , , , on November 24, 2007| 3 Comments »

One of the hardest things about writing on free software is the expectations placed on me. Because the cause is good, many people expect me to write as a loyal partisan. And in one sense, I am: If I didn’t feel the topic was important, I wouldn’t write about it. However, I am not so partisan as to praise where I see problems in either software or people. Nor do I always feel an obligation to take sides when I explain a multi-side issue, or when the general reaction from typical readers is so obvious that to do would be to belabor the obvious. To me, these practices are part of my efforts to approach journalism with professionalism. However, judging from the comments I sometimes receive, they often enrage readers, especially those expecting a confirmation of their views.

Understand, I’m not naive. I know that complete objectivity is as impossible as a centaur. But I’m idealistic enough to think that, except when I’m writing an obvious commentary, the articles I write as a journalist are more useful to people when I’m not writing as an advocate. Rather, I try to write in an effort to express the truth as I see it. I’m sure that I fail many times, either because I don’t have all the facts or because I feel too strongly on a subject.

However, as George Orwell said about himself, I believe that, unlike the vast majority of people, I have the ability to face unpleasant truths – facts that I might dislike personally, but have to acknowledge simply because they are there (I lie very poorly to myself). And, since my first or second year at university, I’ve been aware that I have the unusual knack of empathizing with a viewpoint even while I disagree with it. With these tendencies, I believe that, if I make the effort, I can provide a broader perspective than most people – and that a broader perspective, if not the truth, is generally more truthful than a limited one.

Moreover, I believe that these are precisely the tendencies that a journalist needs to be useful to readers. Nobody can write uncritically about any cause without, sooner or later, lying for the sake of the cause and losing their integrity. For all I admire the ethics and hard work of many people in the free software community, even those I admire most sometimes express an ill-considered or an ignorant opinion. Some act short-sightedly. Very occasionally, a few act immorally, or at least for personal gain rather than the good of the community. And, whenever someone does any of these things, it’s my job to report the fact. To do otherwise would be against my principles, and a mediocre carrying out of my job.

This honesty is especially important in the computer industry. Many mainstream computer publications are notorious for avoiding criticism of the companies who buy advertising from them. Such publications are worthless to their readers, and a betrayal of the trust placed in them. I’m lucky enough to work for publications that don’t work that way, so I can report the bad along with the good.

However, to some of the audience, that’s not enough, especially on a controversial subject. They read to have their views enforced, and, if I don’t happen to serve their need, they accuse me of bias. Often, they need to cherry-pick their evidence to build the case against me, and usually they seize on the fact that I reported a viewpoint contrary to theirs without denouncing it. Often anonymous, they attack me in the strongest worded terms, sometimes explaining in exhaustive detail the error of my way in what usually amounts to a clumsy belaboring of the obvious.

Occasionally, one will demand the right to a rebuttal from the editors.
So far, I have yet to see any of them actually write the rebuttal, but I suspect that, if they did, it would probably be unpublishable without considerable revision. Polemic is a difficult art, and has a tendency to descend into trite comments and over-used expressions in the hands of novices.

(Which is another reason that I don’t write opinion pieces too often. They’re difficult to write well, and I don’t think I’m particularly skilled at them. And, anyway, a successful polemic is more about rhetorical tricks and memorable turns of phrases than about facts and explanation. It’s a play more on emotion than logic, and for that reason always seems a bit of a cheap trick. I’m not nearly as interested in manipulating readers as informing them.)

But what always tickles me about such accusations is that they frequently come in pairs. Many times, after writing on a controversial subject, I’ve been denounced as biased from both sides – sometimes on the basis of the same paragraph or sentence.

I suppose these twinned accusations could be a sign of sloppy writing on my part. However, I prefer to view them as a sign that the problem lies more in the readers than in me. If both sides find something to disparage in one of my articles, then I can’t help thinking that I’ve had some success with covering the topic comprehensively.

Of course, all these thoughts could be nothing more than an explication of my personal myths – the stories I tell myself to keep me going. The image of the investigative reporter who risks everything to get the truth out is still a very powerful myth, and one that I not only buy but apparently have a lifelong subscription to.

But, contrary to popular usage, a myth is not the same as a lie. And, in this case, I like to think that, even if I am partly deceiving myself, my work is still better for my acceptance of the myth.

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Journalistic leads

Posted in journalism, Personal, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , on November 23, 2007| Leave a Comment »

When I first became a journalist, I couldn’t imagine writing the seventeen or eighteen stories per month that I do now. With effort, I could manage just under half that. But, over the last few years, I’ve refined my work habits. I’ve also developed such a strong sense for possible stories that the problem is less finding topics than choosing which ones are most newsworthy and personally interesting. However, the change is not due to me alone. A good deal of my ability to cope with my present work load comes from the network of contacts I’ve developed.

I learned about the important of contact networks when I was a communications and marketing consultant, and about four-fifths of my income came from them. But it was only this month that I realized how large my network as a journalist has become. This month, five of my published stories so far have been from leads given me by other people. By the end of the week, that number will rise to seven. I’ve also had another four or five leads that I may very well follow next month, and several more that I appreciate, but probably won’t use for one reason or the other.

Some of these contacts are the normal accumulation in the address book of my mail browser, and from my participation on Facebook and Linkedin. Others are the result of deliberately requesting leads in a story about marketing free software projects that I did last year with Joe “Zonker” Brockmeier. A few are from people I’ve come to know in the free software community around Vancouver.

However, the largest proportion comes from strangers who have either enjoyed one of my articles (I know because they write and say so when they make their suggestion) or people whom I’ve interviewed in the past. While I suppose that hearing from past interviewees could be taken as a sign that I’m too accommodating and not critical enough, naturally I prefer to think that my efforts to report fairly and ensure that my editing of quotes doesn’t remove the sense or the context. I’ve yet to get the sense that any of the past interviewees think of me as a fan-boy who will write articles slanted the way they’d prefer.

Instead, I take these leads as a sign that I’m at least intermittently doing my job properly. So, to all those feeding me tips, my thanks for your help. I can’t always use your story ideas, but you make writing easier, more varied and – most important of all – more interesting for everyone.

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Mainstream writers and the social Internet

Posted in Blogging, Bruce Byfield, computers, Fantasy, Free Software, freesoftware, Internet, journalism, media, Personal, science fiction, social networking, technology, Uncategorized, web2.0, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on November 22, 2007| Leave a Comment »

I’m almost getting afraid to look at a newspaper or any other traditional print media. Every time I do, some writer or other seems to be belittling an Internet phenomena such as blogging, Facebook, or Second Life. These days, such complaints seems a requirement of being a middle-aged writer, especially if you have literary aspirations. But, if so, this is one middle-aged, literary-minded writer who is sitting out the trend.

The Globe and Mail seems especially prone to this belittling. Recently, its columnists have given us the shocking revelations that most bloggers are amateurs, that Facebook friendships are shallow, and that, when people are interacting through their avatars on Second Life, they’re really at their keyboards pressing keys. Where a decade ago, traditional media seemed to have a tireless fascination with computer viruses, now they can’t stop criticizing the social aspects of the Internet.

I suppose that these writers are only playing to their audiences. After all, newspaper readers tend to be over forty, and Internet trends are generally picked up those under thirty-five. I guess that, when you’re not supposed to understand things, putting them down makes you feel better if you’re a certain kind of person.

Also, of course, many columnists, especially those who aspire to be among the literati, see the rise of the Internet as eroding both their audiences and their chances of making a living. So, very likely, there’s not only incomprehension but a primal dose of fear behind the criticism that deserves sympathy.

At first glance, I should sympathize with them. I’m in their age group, share something of their aspirations, and I’m cool to much of the social networking that has sprung up in recent years. Yet somehow, I don’t.

For one thing, having been on the Internet several years longer than anybody else, I learned long ago that communities exist for almost everyone. If you don’t care for Facebook, you can find another site where you’re comfortable. If you dislike IRC, you can find a mail forum. If you can’t find a blog that is insightful and meaningful, you probably haven’t been looking around enough, but surely the Pepys’ Diary page will satisfy the most intellectual and literary-minded person out there. So I suspect that many of those complaining are still unfamiliar enough with the technology that they don’t really know all that’s via the Internet.

Moreover, although I ignore large chunks of the Internet, my only regret is that it hadn’t developed ten or fifteen years earlier so that I could have been a young adult when it became popular.

Despite, my age, the Internet has been the making of me. It’s helped to make the fantasy and science fiction milieu that I discovered as a boy become mainstream– and if that means people are watching pseudo-profundities like Battlestar Galactica, it also means that a few are watching movies Neil Gaiman’s Stardust or Beowulf and moving on to discover the stories and novels that really fuel the fields. It’s given me a cause worth focusing on in free software, and a job as an online journalist that already has been one of the longest lasting of my life, and that still doesn’t bore me. Without the Internet, I just wouldn’t be the person I am today.

Nor, I suspect, would I like that alternate-universe me very much.

Having absorbed the toleration that underlies much of the Internet, I can’t help feeling that criticizing other people’s browsing habits shows a lack of manners and graciousness that is grounds for shame rather self-righteousness. But, in my case, it would show a lack of gratitude as well.

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Negative reader responses

Posted in Bruce Byfield, journalism, Personal, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , on November 19, 2007| 1 Comment »

A couple of years ago, getting a negative or irrelevant comment about an article could leave me moping for a couple of days. But familiarity has hardened me, and today the nastier comments about my commentary, “It’s Time to Get Over Microsoft” left me not only unmoved, but observing the different types of negative comments with something like dispassion.

I’m not talking here about comments that point out a typo or a fact of which I’m unaware. As much as I might like to be omniscient, I’m not. I make mistakes, and some of them slip past my editors as well. Nor can I reasonably expect to know everything about a subject – although if an obvious fact has escaped me, I may berate myself for sloppy research. But, as I like to say, the only thing worse than make such mistakes is not correcting them, and I have enough professional pride to appreciate being told when I’m wrong, even if I’m inwardly wincing.

Nor am I talking about readers who simply disagree with me. If my initial expression of my views doesn’t convince people, I’m more or less content to agree to differ. Or, sometimes, I can have an interesting exchange with someone who thinks differently in which I learn perspectives I hadn’t considered. Such exchanges are part of the benefit of writing online, and, mostly, I’m glad for them, even if I sometimes to have to cut them short so I can get some work done.

Anyway, at times (and today was one of them), I’m expressing my views in a language calculated to provoke a response, so I can hardly be upset if I get one.

Rather, the ones that confound me are those that seem only tangentially connected to what I wrote. These fall into several categories:

  • Insults: Comments about my alleged stupidity, sexual orientation, politics, choice of topic or lack of objectivity – I’ve heard them all since I’ve become a journalist. Apparently, some people believe that insults somehow refute a viewpoint. The truth is, they are so inappropriate that I can’t take them seriously. That includes the ad hominem attacks of people who believe themselves experts on grammar; I admit that I can make mistakes through carelessness, but after seven years as a university instructor and writing hundreds of professional works, I almost always know more about grammar than my readers. In fact, often the self-appointed grammar police are wrong.
  • Tours through my life: Borrowed from the American fantasist and essayist Harlan Ellison, this phrase refers to people who think that they can psychoanalyze me through what I write (inevitably, finding me in grievous need of therapy). I have been diagnosed, for example, as being single and as a newcomer to the free software comment, largely because the commenter disagreed with me. Such comments generally reveal far more about them and their assumptions than about me or anything I write.
  • General comments: A surprising number of times, people seem to read just enough to learn the topic of an article, then sound off on some point that’s only related to the article if you squint for a long time. Their main interest seems to be an opportunity to sound off. Well, glad to be a public service, I guess. But wouldn’t a blog be a better place?
  • Missing points that aren’t missing: Even though I do miss some aspects of a topic (or omit them for lack of space), some readers like to find fault because they’ve missed a point that is expressed perfectly clearly in the article. Since the ones they say are missing are often at the end of the article, I suspect that they haven’t finished the article. At the very least, they are skimming.
  • A comment taken out of context: Hostile readers seem to have a special talent for responding to isolated phrases and ignoring the sentences around them in order to accuse me of fantastically wrong or misguided opinions. I seem to be unusually vulnerable to these uncontextual accounts, probably because I have the habit of expressing one possible viewpoint, then correcting or elaborating on it. However, if I wait an hour or so, another reader usually points out the mistake, so no great matter.
  • Complaints about what the article isn’t about: Some readers apparently enjoy finding fault with the choice of topic. For instance, when I write about OpenOffice.org, one or two readers are bound to write that LaTeX does whatever I am writing about much better — never mind that I’m not writing about LaTeX.

All these types of comments have become so familiar to me in the last few years that they have lost almost all their power to wound. Most of them seem so remote from what I was saying as to be irrelevant. However, as someone who spent about half his time as a university instructor trying to teach first year students how to frame arguments, at times these types of comments make me despair.

More often, though, my main response is simpler still: I wish they would show some indication that they had read what I was saying.

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Dodging the lime light

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Free Software, freesoftware, gnu/linux, journalism, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on November 6, 2007| 1 Comment »

Last week, ABC’s 20/20 ran a piece on the murder trial of Hans Reiser, the free software developer accused of murdering his wife in Oakland. I sighed in relief when it ran, because it didn’t include me.

It could have. Since I wrote one piece last year about Reiser’s problems with getting the Reiser4 filesystem accepted into the Linux kernel and another about what was happening with his company in the wake of the murder charges, I’ve fielded eight or nine requests from the mainstream media to talk about the background to the case. Since early summer, several of those requests were from ABC. But I never really felt comfortable doing so, although I made clear that I had no opinion one way or the other about the case, and only talked about Reiser’s work and reputation and what the free software community was like.

At the time, I rationalized my general comments as helping out other journalists. Also, considering that I’ve made a career out of explaining developers to non-developers, I figured that I might be able to see that the community wasn’t too badly misrepresented. And, let’s be honest, I was flattered.

But, simultaneously, I was uneasy, and this uneasiness continued to grow as ABC continued to talk to me. There was even talk of flying me down to San Francisco for a day to do an interview, which provoked a kind of Alice in Wonderlandish feeling in me. Spend the day travelling for something that I wasn’t that interested in? And going to San Francisco – one of my favorite cities – with no time for wandering around struck me as not worth the sense of self-importance such a trip would no doubt give me.

I tried suggesting other people in the free software community that ABC might contact. I even suggested one notoriously egotistical person, figuring that they would be pleased to be asked and would give ABC so much copy that its reporters would have no further need of me.

That only worked for a few weeks, then I received another phone call. At that point, I realized that I didn’t have a valid passport, which Canadians like me now need to fly to the United States. I explained this difficulty to a reporter, and how I didn’t really want the extra hassle of driving across the border and catching a flight in Bellingham – and he returned the idea of flying a camera crew up to Vancouver to talk to me.

I thought that unlikely, so I said that would be acceptable. For a while, I was worried that ABC might actually do it, too, but in the end the producers decided not to bother.

That was just as well, because in the interim, I had resolved to refuse the interview regardless of the condition. I took a while to understand my reluctance, but, what I concluded in the end was this: I didn’t want to feed my self-importance at the expense of the Reiser family. No matter what actually happened, those involved in the case are in a world of pain, and I didn’t want to piggyback on that pain for petty personal reasons.

And, ultimately, my reasons would be personal. No matter how well I can explain the free software community to the public, I’m far from the only one who can do so.

With this realization, I felt such relief that I knew that I had made the right decision. Now, I only hope that I can remain as sensible if someone contacts me about the case again.

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Turning down non-paying markets

Posted in Free Software, freesoftware, journalism, linux, opensource, Personal, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , on October 31, 2007| 3 Comments »

Every month or so, I get a request from a magazine asking if I want to write about GNU/Linux or free software. One or two are legitimate professonal offers that I am glad to consider, if only for variation and to length the list of markets to which I can sell – or, to be more exact, to which I might some day sell, since I don’t have many open slots on my monthly schedule. However, more often, the magazine either doesn’t pay or else pays a token like $30 per page, and I have to decline, despite their offers of additional payment in copies or free advertising, neither of which I have much use for. The exchange never fails to leave me feeling guilty, defensive, and unsatisfied.

Admittedly, many magazines and publishers prey on wannabe writers’ desire to be published. However, I’m sure that many are doing their best, paying what they can and hoping that they might one day generate enough income to pay their contributors better. In fact, I am sure that most of them are sincere; they’re generally too excited about what they are doing to be deliberate exploiters.

This sort of low-paying work might have acceptable in the days when I was writing articles in my spare time and trying to build a reputation. I could have helped the editors, and they could have helped me. But how can I explain to these well-meaning people that I’m not just dabbling in writing these days? That in the time I wrote them a 1500 word article, I could have made ten or fifteen times as much writing for my regular markets? That I literally cannot afford to contribute to their magazine or web site?

I can’t explain, of course. Not without being completely undiplomatic and crass. So, I usually hedge until my correspondents’ persistence forces me to be blunter, or they come up with another argument.

Usually, the next argument is the idea – either openly stated or hinted – that, since all of us are interested in free software, then I am somehow obligated to give my labor for free.

Consciously or otherwise, this argument conflates the meanings of free software. Free software, as everyone constantly points out, isn’t free because it doesn’t cost. It’s free in a political or philosophical sense – and, on that score, I have a good conscience. It seems perfectly reasonable to me that, in return for the money I need to live, the markets where I publish should have exclusive rights to my articles for thirty days. After that, I am perfectly happy to have the articles reprinted or translated under a Creative Commons Attribution – No Derivatives license, In fact, I almost never refuse such requests.

Besides, are the people who trying to guilt-trip me donating their labor for free? In many cases, I doubt it.

Anyway, I maintain that, in keeping people informed about free software, I am already contributing to the greater cause. I happen to be one of those lucky enough or persistent enough to be able to earn my living through doing so, but I don’t see why the one should invalidate the other.

True, I do make some gratis contributions to free software in my own time – but that’s beside the point. What matters is that I don’t feel the need to prove my credentials, particularly to strangers I don’t know. So, at this point, they usually break off the correspondence, often with parting comments about my selfishness or lack of generosity.

And of course I do feel hard-hearted at times. But, when it comes to the way I make my livelihood, I have to ration my time. Otherwise, I could easily lose a large chunk of my income for the month. So, I break off, too, muttering my excuses after an exchange that has satisfied nobody.

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Sweat and grace

Posted in fiction, inspiration, journalism, tagged , , , , , , , on October 7, 2007| 4 Comments »

“All it takes is some grains of faith,
A few kilowatts of sweat and grace.”
– Ray Wylie Hubbard

One of the most persistent myths among wannabe writers is that they need to be inspired to write. However, professional writers know better. For them, inspiration is less a form of divine grace than a habit of mind. And, in some ways, it’s less important that the sweat of regular, disciplined work.

Oh, most professionals know the joy of being in what computer developers call “The Zone,” that trance-like state where you can see the whole of your current project laid out before you and can seemingly do no wrong. It’s a heady feeling, and probably explains why Isaac Asimov, when asked if he would rather write or make love, pointed out that he could write for twelve hours a day.

But here’s the secret: Work you do while inspired isn’t always flawless, or even better than what you write when the words come slowly. Sometimes, it’s complete junk. It just feels easier. Later on, you may even have trouble telling what you wrote while inspired from what you wrote while sweating every syllable.

That’s the main reason why most professional writers don’t worry about inspiration, or wait for it. Often, of course, they have no time to do so; for most of us, a deadline is the surest cure for writer’s block around. But, more importantly, it’s not reliable, and professionals soon learn from experience that it’s also over-rated.

Instead of striking a pose and waiting for the Muse – that favorite pastime of wannabes more in love with the image of the author than with writing – professionals soon learn to cultivate a state of mind where they are always watching for potential material. Writers of fiction are looking for plot elements and characterizations, or maybe the odd turn of phrase. Non-fiction writers like me are always looking for subjects that they can turn into articles. After a while, the search becomes automatic, a little piece of you that sits back and observes while the rest of you interacts with the world. Some writers even go so far as to keep a notebook or PDA at hand for jotting down notes, although many prefer to keep notes mentally.

(Personally, I think that mental notes make for richer material, since they can make new connections with the rest of the contents with your brain, while written notes just sit there lifelessly, but that’s just me. You might be different).

Once you have the habit of looking for material, you will rarely have trouble finding something to write about. For instance, I can almost always find four or five topics that relate to free software with an hour or so of thinking and browsing the Internet. Give me a free afternoon, and I can find enough topics to fill my quota for the month. As the American fantasist Fritz Leiber once wrote, “It’s part of my entire adjustment to life, to view things from the perspective of gathering story material.”

This approach to inspiration is one of the key differences between amateurs and professionals, but it’s not the only one. Just as importantly, writers write. It’s only amateurs who spend their time waiting for inspiration, or talking about what they plan to write. True writers sit down regularly – usually, daily – and write. They may be in different moods or states of health from day to day, and they may write more one day than another, but they write.

Why? Partly because Asimov’s joke is true: even if you don’t want to go as far as he did, writing is more fun than almost anything else. But, just as importantly, writing is like any skill or activity from singing to playing a sport: it’s easiest with practice. The more you write, the less effort it is. When you’re in practice as a writer, you no sooner have an idea than you start seeing seeing what points you can make about it and the gaps in it that you need to fill – to say nothing of the structure that you need to express it. Sometimes, how you develop an idea may change dramatically as you work with it, but, if you’re in practice, then you can usually see the possibilities early on.

Just as a trained runner often needs less warmup than a Sunday jogger, so a professional writer finds the act of writing easier. That, really, is the reward of disciplined work – although if you’ve never written regularly and long enough to experience it, you’ll have to take my word for it.

Of course, sweat also comes in with revision and editing. Possibly the best advice I’ve ever heard from a writer is Robert Graves’ comment that a writer’s best friend is the wastebasket. Many pieces of writing are made by careful editing or destroyed by its lack.

But editing, in my experience, is a far less desperate an activity than writing itself. By the time you get to editing, you know you have something to build on and improve. Compared to writing the first draft, editing is not nearly as harrowing – it’s usually just a matter of putting in the work. Editing is more an analytical process than a creative one, so in general it’s less mysterious than writing and easier to learn, even though it’s no less important.

These comments will seem obvious to most working professionals. However, I am equally sure that wannabe writers will read them, nod solemnly – and then go right back to their old habits of waiting for inspiration.

But if you’re ready to write seriously, then maybe they will reassure you that you’re doing the right thing. The romantic myths about writing are lovely, but they’re not a substitute for pragmatism and hard work. They no more make a successful writer than the myths about personal romance make for a successful marriage.

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