Sotto Voce.

I feel compelled to poke my head out of the Treehouse of Overwork long enough to offer some brief, vague, and half-formed thoughts about the interesting discussion occurring right now in webcomic-land about Internet trolls and their effect on creative people. Zen Pencils makes the case for Art Triumphant with a visually and viscerally compelling four-part serial (see parts 1, 2, 3, and 4). Chainsawsuit makes a cerebral counterpoint here. Read both, enjoy, and let them get you thinking.

And now for my $0.02: Creative writers go through the same thing. I’ve had this discussion, or variations of it, with poets, novelists, etc. over the years. And the one thing that rings clear to me is that the response to critics and/or haters has more to do with how closely writers identify with their work. The more personal someone’s work is to them, the more criticism stings and the more haters get to them.

I tend to land on the chainsawsuit side of the issue, mostly because of the way I identify — or don’t identify — with my work. People think I’m being pedantic when I say “I write” rather than “I’m a writer,” but to me the distinction is really important.* Writing is something that I do, it’s not what I am. And as a result, when people criticize my work on the merits, a little piece of me doesn’t die every time. If there’s something that I can learn from the criticism to improve my work, I try to learn from it. That being said, it’s up to me as the writer to take the criticism on its merits and take away anything of value that might help me do better next time. (That’s not to imply that every critic has a nugget of wisdom to share; there are a lot of obtuse people out there.)

With insecurity often comes defensiveness. We react to harsh criticism by claiming a superior high ground. We console ourselves and others by saying that it’s easier to just sit there and throw darts at someone than it is to go out and actually create something that never existed before. Objectively, that’s true, but here’s the thing: creating something that never existed before doesn’t automatically mean you’re a better person. It just makes you a person who creates things that never existed before. You are not a superior person because you do that. Creating things that never existed before is your job.

If someone tells you that you did a bad job, either they’re right or they’re wrong. If they’re right, learn from the critic and do better next time. If they’re wrong, ignore them. That’s it.

That’s not to say that the creative act should be devoid of emotion and personality. You pour a lot of heart and passion into your work. Of course you do: you care about it. But then, when it’s done and out there, it’s standing on its own. It’s not attached to you with an umbilical cord, it’s not an appendage of your body. If you treat it that way, then the praise and criticism of the work become praise and criticism of you the person. Instead of always feeling satisfied that you worked hard and applied your skill to create something that didn’t exist before, you end up feeling good or bad depending on whether people like or dislike the results. You have given the critics the power to validate you the person, not simply to offer their opinions of your hard work.

Rather than risk blundering headlong into the whole “art vs. craft” debate that people who write are always having, I’m going to stop now. Like I said, this is all half-formed stuff that’s probably not ready for prime-time. I just felt the urge to throw this at the wall and see if any of it sticks, so I can come back to it later and see where it takes me.

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* = Or the time that I was chatting with a young writer who said, “It must be nice to get paid to be a writer,” and I replied, “I’m not paid to be a writer. I’m paid to write,” and he got pissed off and stopped talking to me. I wasn’t trying to be a smart-ass; I really think there’s an important distinction there that a lot of inexperienced writers don’t get. If you think you’re going to find an editor who is willing to subsidize your writerly lifestyle, you’re absolutely in the wrong line of work.

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Meet the reason I haven’t posted here in forever. If you’re a writer in or around Maryland, you’ll want to attend this conference in April. We’ve got some great speakers and sessions lined up. And if you’d like to help us promote the conference, feel free to share this link to the conference homepage. You can also get a PDF of the flyer by clicking on the image below. Thanks for your help in spreading the word!

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Happy 50th anniversary, Doctor Who!

Everyone’s got their favorites. Here are mine:

• Favorite Doctor: Peter Davison
• Favorite compan . . . wait, are you kidding? No
• Seriously? Seriously
• That’s like saying George Lazenby is your favorite Bond. Timothy Dalton, actually
• You’re weird. Tell me something I don’t know
• Anyway. Favorite story: The one where Tom Baker goes to Paris
• City of Death? Yeah, that’s the one
• But that’s not a Peter Davison story. What can I say, I’m a man of contradictions
• Why is it your favorite? Because it’s set in Paris, it’s got name actors (Julian Glover, Catherine Schell) who are clearly having a great time with it, and it’s actually a pretty decent mystery story in its own right, and plus there’s that great bit in the art gallery with John Cleese and Eleanor Bron
• Who? Eleanor Bron
• Huh. Never heard of her. I know
• OK, then. Favorite Peter Davison story: Kinda and Snakedance
• That’s two. Yes
• … …
• Anyway, moving on. Favorite reboot story: They’re all great stories with terrific acting and magnificent special effects that reward viewers who pay close attention
• You don’t really like them, do you? Not really
• Why not? Because they’re all great stories with terrific acting and magnificent special effects that reward viewers who pay close attention
• I don’t get it. In my opinion (probably shared by absolutely no one else, but I’m OK with that) Doctor Who was at its best when all the alien planets looked like they were the same old quarry ten miles outside of London, with plots and costumes to match
• Why? Because then the kids watching the show could go to the old quarry behind their own houses and play Doctor Who with their friends
• But the new show isn’t aimed at kids. (*makes see my point? gesture*)
• So you’re some purist who thinks the old show is the only real show then. Not at all, the show changes over time and brings in new audiences, just like James Bond and Star Trek, and I’m totally OK with that
• Why? Because I’ll always have Paris

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Recently I was thinking back to a post and discussion about Microsoft Word over on Writer Underground. In particular, I was thinking about how writers define usability when it comes to software. And an idea wandered through my head:

Usability is much ado about learning.

As in, once you learn how to use Word, you can use it quickly and by extension efficiently. How is a learned design discernible from a “usable” design? “Hey, he’s able to do this task quickly. That must mean that the design has good usability.” The first time you sit down to use any piece of software, you don’t know where anything is and you have to poke around to find things. A good design might make those things easier to find, sure, but even then, once you find things, you have to learn how to use them together. And the more practice you have, the better tool it is for you. I mean, can you imagine a usability expert signing off on the design of a violin?

As much as I don’t like using Word, I have to say that, for me, it is usable — I use it every day to do the things I want it to do. That Word is deeply counterintuitive, that it gives you many ways to do those things incorrectly and only one way to do them correctly, and then buries that one correct way deeply in submenus or obfuscates it behind opaque design principles, is an absolute given. But once you learn that’s how X is done — and once you manage to remember the Twister-like dance required to conjure X — and assuming that Word actually doesn’t crash or return an inconsistent result trying to do X — then you get X when you push Y.

Which then leads to my codicil: a lot of the blame lies with the user not taking the time, or even wanting, to learn how to get X. How many times have I come to the aid of someone sitting in front of their computer like a pouting child, pointing at the screen and saying “All I want it to do is X! Why won’t it do X!” People who try to break Word to their will shall always be carried out on their shields. It’s that flippin’ simple. But who’s fault is that? I mean, when people get chewed up and spit out by Photoshop, they feel humbled and chastened because everyone knows it’s a complicated piece of software that takes a long time to master. But Word — well, isn’t everyone supposed to be able to use Word? That’s not a design issue, that’s a sales and marketing issue.

Pilots get into this sort of thing all the time. Old-time Douglas pilots still wax nostalgic about how the DC-8 and the DC-9 were real “pilot’s airplanes,” authentic hands-on, seat-of-the-pants, stick-n-rudder planes, while Boeing pilots argue back that they were ergonomic nightmares. (And everybody rips on Airbus planes.) But you know what? They all haul self-loading freight like you and me from one airport to another every day, and if the pilot knows how to FTFA, then the plane works. It’s usable.

And so is it with Word. Or whatever your favorite software is. You don’t have to convince anyone else. If the tool works, use it. If you use the tool, work it. Until it doesn’t. As my mentor Chips Woodruff (WWII fighter pilot, first-generation jet bomber pilot, and Curtis LeMay’s poker buddy) used to say, “Always trust your instruments. Except when they’re wrong.”

But then again, in a previous life, I probably flew Douglas.

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Something is amiss at 4 Times Square.

At first, I wasn’t sure if I was really seeing a pattern. But now, a few issues into it, I’m pretty confident that I am. Quietly, without fanfare, the editors of The New Yorker have been making over the magazine — and the results are impressive. Issue by issue, we’re seeing an injection of articles of substance and consequence, written with real style.

There’s been marquee expense-account reportage, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the glory days of Sy Hersh (“Buried Secrets,” by Patrick Radden Keefe). There are gut-punch stories written in aggressive New Journalism-style prose (“The Return,” by David Finkel). Even the general-interest stories are more meaty and meaningful, while still being eminently readable (“Cape Fear,” by Alec Wilkinson).

As these pieces swagger through the magazine, they are pushing aside the tweedy pop-psych puffery, the vapid shopping excursions, the cocktail-party gossip, and the hipster handwringing that have been hanging out in the halls for far, far too long.

It looks like editor David Remnick has decided to make a bid for the kind of readers who have been increasingly turning to places like Byliner, the Atavist, and Kindle Singles for their fix of quality long-form journalism — no doubt many of whom used to pay The New Yorker for that sort of thing too. The decision seems to be that The New Yorker doesn’t want to fall between the cracks anymore trying to be a quasi-literary, quasi-society, quasi-general reader magazine. It’s trading in the Varvatos for some Belstaff and wants to hang out with Esquire and Rolling Stone and Harper’s as a magazine of real consequence again.

The message is pretty clear — we think journals can still do journalism.

Pay attention to what they’re doing up in 4 Times Square. It’s pretty exciting.

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Right now I’m reading Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success. It’s written by Ken Segall, a veteran creative director who has run many quality ad campaigns for some very big corporate names, so he knows whereof he speaks. But there was one thing he said that I found myself disagreeing with, and I thought I’d flesh out my thoughts a little bit here.

In his book, Mr. Segall argues that the “evil twin” of simplicity is complexity. When I read that, it brought me up short. Something about that equation seemed off. They didn’t — and they still don’t — feel like natural opposites to me. Once I thought about it, I realized why: it’s an apples-and-oranges comparison. Simplicity is a design concept. Complexity is an engineering one. Furthermore, I’d argue, not only are simplicity and complexity not good-vs-evil opposites, they can and often do complement each other.

See, the opposite of simplicity isn’t complexity — it’s clutter. Apple is obsessed with removing clutter. To make an uncluttered design usable, however, requires complexity on a virtuosic scale. The simpler the visible interface, the more complex the invisible processes required to make it work simply.

The overarching principle of Apple’s design philosophy, I contend, is not simplicity, but usable simplicity. And there’s a vast difference between the two.

So as I’m reading the book, wherever I encounter the word “complexity” I mentally replace it with “clutter,” and the resulting sentence is much more effective. Otherwise, I’m in agreement with Mr. Segall’s perceptive and engaging analysis.

Oh, and another thing — by the same token, “complex” and “complicated” aren’t always as synonymous as they look.

POSTSCRIPT: 3/14/15:
Just came across this quote by Sir Jony Ive that captures the same idea:

“Simplicity is not the absence of clutter, that’s a consequence of simplicity. Simplicity is somehow essentially describing the purpose and place of an object and product. The absence of clutter is just a clutter-free product. That’s not simple.”

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