Unformation

Pen vs. Keyboard?

Ben Elijah — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 23:04:55 +0000

Thoughts on why a typist's writing changes when using a pen.

The quality of art

Ben Elijah — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 12:19:20 +0000

Why, far from drowning us in mediocrity, the internet and access to creative tools will make art better.

Shootin' blanks

Ben Elijah — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 23:28:54 +0000

Exploring the difference between amateur and professional artists. Why it is the act of shipping that makes all the difference.

Flesh out

Ben Elijah — Sun, 11 Sep 2011 13:15:11 +0000

Following up "Bootstrap your book", explore how to develop emerging narrative elements into the raw material for your text.

Thoughts on the SVO method

Ben Elijah — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 10:29:06 +0000

Dive a little deeper into the logic of developing a text by iteration. Write better words by taking advantage of the way your brain is tuned to the workings of a sentence.

Bootstrap your book

Ben Elijah — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 07:47:49 +0000

How to take a spark of inspiration and turn it into epic text. This post explores the first part of this process by showing how you can maximise the amount of information that can come out of a flash of inspiration.

Dangerous nouns

Ben Elijah — Thu, 02 Jun 2011 22:04:33 +0000

Why we should refocus our creativity away from the noun and onto the verb. Why obsessions over titles and roles inhibits our sharing of ideas and tools and how processes can be shared across people and professions.

The information

Ben Elijah — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 20:59:49 +0000

James Gleick has explained the meme better than anyone since Dawkins. If you’re interested in information you need to buy this book.

Hyperpaper: The eBook

Ben Elijah — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 19:59:57 +0000

Hyperpaper took me so bloody long to write that I figured it’d do it justice to make it available as a free eBook.

This unholy marriage of Helvetica and Maven Pro should look quite nice on a smartphone or a tablet.

Download it here.

Hyperpaper

Ben Elijah — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 21:40:05 +0000

If you read for pleasure you might get a great idea randomly. If you read for enlightenment it’s deliberate. You’re very likely to want to do something with the information. Reading for enlightenment might also take the form of research for mastering a subject. Relevance is important.

Typing is war

Ben Elijah — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 16:10:56 +0000

After my last post lauding Ommwriter I sent them a tweet suggesting they include heavy gunfire as one of their keyboard sound effects. Did that make more sense than I thought at that ungodly hour?

A bad ode to Ommwriter

Ben Elijah — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 00:42:30 +0000

Using Ommwriter is a surreal experience. It sort of assumes that the writer works best in a zen-like state of concentration which I imagine is correct some of the time. Stream of consciousness stuff.

Much ado about noting

Ben Elijah — Sat, 22 Jan 2011 16:15:03 +0000

Visual thinkers aren't so lucky as verbal thinkers. Verbal thinkers can read a book or listen to a conversation and recount it point for point. Great chunks of text in books and articles aren't always easy for visual thinkers to absorb.

Thresher and Hopper

Ben Elijah — Sun, 28 Nov 2010 23:44:40 +0000

Creative output is rather like making bread. You can't go from wheat stems to buttered Panettone at one fell swoop.

DNA of a document

Ben Elijah — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 10:53:44 +0000

Outlining is a powerful way to capture notes. When reading I think it's one of the most effective ways both to absorb a concept and to create one. It's also a great technique for everything from revision to planning.