The middle is where the work is
Every project has a long, unglamorous stretch after the idea stops being interesting and before the end is in sight. That stretch is the job.
4 min read
Tag 8 posts
Craft
The parts of making a thing that nobody photographs.
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What the stonemason said
Nineteen years on one cathedral, and one sentence that reorganised how I think about a desk.
4 min read
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Interviewing people who go slowly
Fourteen conversations in, a method has emerged, and most of it is about the first hour.
3 min read
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A desk that disappears
Six years of subtracting things from a workspace, and the three that earned their place.
1 min read
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A quieter kind of ambition
Wanting less on purpose, without pretending that wanting nothing is a personality.
3 min read
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On finishing things badly
A finished draft you dislike is worth more than a perfect one you are still describing to people.
1 min read
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The letterpress test
An hour setting one line of type by hand, and what it does to the way you cut a sentence.
1 min read
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Three things about deadlines
Two of them are obvious. The third took me about eleven years and a broken promise to a publisher.
1 min read