This Is How We Do The Thing

Everything is fucking terrible.  Let's acknowledge that thought and then let it pass by, because there are still good things in the world and they deserve our attention more.  Hello from out here on the Thames Delta.  I'm writing this on Friday, looking at the weekend weather forecast and considering spending the weekend sitting out in the garden reading books.  I have an ale in the fridge already.  It's got to be a better call than joining the millions of people apparently spending their days trying to get a Mastodon account.  I can't even be bothered to open my RSS reader most days.

Here's a book worth revisiting in the current climate..  Learn more about this fun book here.

ADVENTURES IN PRODUCTIVITY

So, first off: Julian Simpson is a great writer and a really nice guy but he has a big problem.  He is a lunatic about productivity process.  Go here, scroll down until you hit the links, and then start reading right after the links.  His productivity process involves lots of apps and is baroque and byzantine.  It's a fascinating read in the same way that, say, reading Apollo programme spacecraft procedures would be interesting.  

At some point, Julian's process and mine completely diverged.  This is mine.

I've redacted everything on the boards, for obvious reasons.  But this is my system.  Five cheap whiteboards and a paper calendar.

The big board is for what actual writing work is on deck right now.  The Pending board is things I'm waiting to hear about: deals, start dates, project elements, that sort of thing.

The board next to the calendar is Status: things that are currently in train, like casting, or design, or money that's in the banking pipe.  TO DO is things I need to do outside of what's on the big board - a project I need to generate, a thing I need to think about.  Things will sometimes lurk there until I absolutely have to get them on the big board, because the big board is only for what's on deck and needs to be written right now.  CALLS is pretty obvious - they get scheduled in Google Calendar, and the office generates call sheets for me, but I need to be able to glance up at a simple list too.

Also visible: a Lordess Foudre print, paintings my daughter did when she was tiny, and a 21-inch monitor that sits on a box behind the laptop that is apparently screening WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES.  Also a stack of very old VHS tapes.

The point: I've been working this system for years, and it's all I've ever needed.  Whiteboards and marker pens, plus a few magnets to hold some bits of paper, all suspended by self-adhesive Command Hooks and some judiciously hung large paper clips.  This is, in total, probably not even forty quid's worth of kit.

I think Julian has probably just died of horror at this shambles.

Also:

Breakfast: oats, berries, oatmilk, plant protein powder and cacao in some combination: usually overnight oats or a smoothie.

Lunch: high protein, ideally a two-egg scramble with some shredded meat, and tomatoes or bell pepper or spinach or spring onion.

Mid-afternoon: cheese, walnuts, apple.

Overall: Two litres of water. Do not skimp on this.

Because productivity isn't just moving things around on screens and boards.  It's staying fuelled properly.  It's not exactly the Rock's diet, but it stops me getting foggy and slow. Find what works for you.  Maybe it's a Mission Control's worth of screens and applications.  Maybe it's five cheap whiteboards and some sticky wall hooks.  I once knew someone who mimicked my setup with Post-It notes stuck to the inside of the home cubicle they worked in.

WORK: am halfway through writing the PROJECT WRITTLE 2 podcast serial, taking calls from producers on another thing  (oh my god I hate Zoom WE ALL HATE ZOOM the first thing everyone says is I HATE ZOOM WHAT WAS SO WRONG WITH A PHONE CALL), scheduling the next few months, waiting on a few things - had some really good news mid-week, otherwise things are ticking along well. Hence considering a weekend outside. 

BOOKS/FICTION

THE WORLD GOES ON

THE WORLD GOES ON by Laszlo Krasznahorkai, translated from the Hungarian by John Batki, Ottilie Mulzet, and Georges Szirtes, is a collection of short stories, and probably the most accessible of Krasznahorkai's works.  My favourite Amazon review of this book is as follows:

Long, drawn out, and difficult to read. Mistake to propose for book club

Old Laszlo is not the cheeriest of souls.  He has co-written two of the best films of the century: WERCKMEISTER HARMONIES and THE TURIN HORSE.  He is, in fact, difficult to read, because he's one of that school of writers who will write a sentence that's twenty pages long.  There's less of that in THE WORLD GOES ON, because he's writing short stories and has a point to get to, where his novels tend to be long journeys where the voyage has more value than the destination.

Let me be clear, though: I would stand the first section of his BARON WENCKHEIM'S HOMECOMING, with the mad hermit in the woods living inside a house made entirely of polystyrene packing material, against anything written in the last fifty years.  I don't know why he doesn't have a Nobel Prize, but, then again, they didn't give one to Borges either.

There is Borges in him, and Beckett.  A section of THE WORLD GOES ON is dedicated to Beckett, and there's an echo of Beckett in the title itself - "You must go on. I can't go on. I'll go on.” - but that section, and much of his other work, also has the murk of Kafka to it.  The man himself once said:

Anyway.  Twenty one short stories framed by statements of a narrator.  Each one, at its root, a modern fable.  Each one a darkly surreal sketch of an emotion (or a tangle of conflicting emotions), a philosophical premise, a human conundrum, a story of life out on its blurry forbidden edge zones.

Consider it an introduction to a very particular, very peculiar view of life, the universe and everything, beamed out from a hideaway in the Hungarian hills by a mad scientist of literature.  All told with a grim smile and tools he invented in his own secret lab. 

Krasznahorkai is a furious thinker, and every piece of his work is a journey of discovery. Sometimes it's hard, sometimes you just flow with it, but it's always worth it. If you're ready for a hard book by a giant of literature who thinks differently this winter, start here.

THE WORLD GOES ON, Laszlo Krasznahorkai (UK) (US)

CURRENTLY LISTENING

WINTERLONG

Marking the passing of Mimi Parker with one of the greatest winter songs of all time.

Stay warm and dry, sit by the light for a bit, drink a good drink and hold on tight.  You're doing fine, and I love that I still get to write to you.  Thanks, and see you next week.

W