Writing class I would like to teach (Editing and Iteration)

`1:02:13`

say in it is that you would work with students to take a piece that's say five pages and then they distill down to one page and then one paragraph, one sentence, and then maybe even one phrase. Why would you focus on that idea for for the class? To me distilling and editing Actually, you know, I prefer the word distilling more than editing in a sense. Distill it it's an exercise in distilling something down. It's it's very easy to just for some people may not be easy in a sense, but you can always add more words to things. Like got another hour, write more words. You can write more words. Even if you they're bad words, you can add more words. It's harder then to take this thing and chop it down and not lose too much meaning. You're going to lose some meaning along the way. You might gain some for a while

`1:03:00`

and then you're going to lose some. So I kind of this I like this idea of five paragraphs whatever might be two paragraphs too long. So we need to the three paragraph version or whatever or what pick a number. It doesn't matter. It could be five to four to three to two, whatever it is. There's a point it's like a kind of a bell curvy thing where it there's a point where like this is actually getting better and then there's also a point where you've gone too far. And so I want people to experience all of that which is getting better and then going too far and realizing that it's still a good exercise. Like can I boil this down to one sentence? Can I boil it down to one word? Um even though it's not practical, it's still a good thing to go through. I just like in all the writing classes I ever took which was not that many. It was just the required ones in high school and college or whatever.

`1:03:46`

It was always just write, write, write. And then like do a second draft, do a third draft, whatever. And whatever it was like the formal process. It was never about make this tighter, briefer, shorter, more concise, more Um more pointed. It was never about that and I always wondered why not? Like isn't that really what we should be aiming to do? Um so that's why I thought this course should exist and it's the one I want to write or one I'd want to teach if I ever taught one. Um or I mean again, I like wrote this in a way like go ahead, you teach it. I I don't this isn't my I mean it's I don't know if it's my idea wherever it was, but like go take it. I hope someone else does this. Yeah. Um cuz I think it's important. And also another one I wrote another one about iteration um which is a similar idea.

`1:04:32`

if I was to teach just any class at all it would be about iteration. It'd be take something, a project. Pick a project. I don't care. It could be about rocks. It could be about trees. It could be about furniture. Turn it in. The whole semester is just making it Versus in school for the most part at least in my experience it's like turn the assignment in, onto the next assignment. Turn the next assignment onto the next assignment. Turn the assignment in onto the next assignment. But if you're working on something in life, you're typically kind of working on the same thing for a while and you want to keep making it better and better and better. So the idea of teaching iteration, giving people practice in iteration is kind of what the writing class is, but it's also a broader idea of working with this thing a little bit I mean you've been doing Basecamp for what, 27 years? 25 years. Basecamp

`1:05:18`

itself's been 20 years. The company's been 25 years. Yeah. But yeah, 20 years of Basecamp. Multiple versions along the way. Um and we've made other products since, but yeah, Basecamp has been iterated on and iterated and It's a true joy and pleasure to really hone something like that. To really get something right like that. Um and to like take a piece I always think about it in terms of a piece of furniture. Like you take a piece of wood, you got this piece of lumber and you sand it down and you sand it down and you feel it and how does it feel? How does it look? And you hold it at different angles and you can can make this better. Can make this better. And you just keep doing that until it's in that case it might be done. Software doesn't really have the same end point perhaps as as a piece of wood. Some point it's all gone if you sand it all the way. But this idea that you can keep working this thing

`1:06:04`

uh and and not just like put it aside move on to the next thing. The other thing that I like about it, so there's two things actually. The first thing is it forces you to understand the essence of what you're trying to say. then the other thing is when you do that, I think that you stumble on things that you wouldn't have found had you not been forced to compress. And I think that you did this in your once letter. You said once upon a time, once, once, once. Yeah. That is in one word, that is the one word description of what I'm going for. And you also could have said you could have titled that like against the church of recurring revenue and actually not even had those words in the piece, but against the church of recurring revenue would have been a one sentence summary of what's in the piece and I'm trying to make a point

`1:06:50`

here which is that often the distillation is like an emergent property. It it's it's not just taking the parts and making them smaller. You could have the distillation words not even be in the piece. Yes. That's often times what a what a headline is. And this is actually one of the most interesting things through when I was writing for Inc. magazine. I didn't realize this, but I didn't get to write the headlines. I knew this eventually, but editors write the headlines. And the headlines are often like not in the piece. And it was kind of cool to see that which is someone else's distillation of this thing you wrote that's this long. Now it's this long. And and this is what they think it is. Now of course there's like link bait and there's all the other things that kind of poison that world and that well to some degree. Um but I think it's a great point. Um

`1:07:36`

you you are sort of squeezing something out and and in some ways what's what what remains and what comes out are different things. And the drop that comes out could summarize the whole thing and maybe that's the one liner or the one word. You know, yeah. And it could be a different word that does not represent it. I like that. Right. It's a good point. Sap to syrup. Right. It takes a 40 gallons of sap to make syrup and syrup is just distinctly different from It is. It is. Good point. They're two S words, too. Tell me about how writing is in your hiring process. It's actually the first thing we look at. The first First thing. Oh, how about that? I don't look at resumes. We look at cover letters. The first thing. Now of course, if someone's going to apply and like for a programming role and they're