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