Sawyer Paul's Blog, page 45

Hey, check this out

In the past several years, I quit Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr. I went back to all of them, usually after a few months off. I either found where they could be useful, or I found that after some time away, these places didn’t hold the same power over my attention.

Why did I go back to any of those places? Well, maybe I have nuclear fomo. Maybe I’m just a little weak to the whole machine. Maybe the little bit that is fun about these places is sometimes enough to suffer the crap. And maybe that’s untrue, but it’s aspirational.

But I also found that these places have become less friendly over time, and I’m definitely not the only person to notice that. As Nicole Dieker writes:

I used to compare it to hanging out in a library with friends — the sort of thing where you’d look up from whatever you were studying and say “hey, check this out!” — and now it feels like stepping into a room where everyone is shouting at each other. Even when the arguments are important, they still feel unproductive and unhealthy.

I keep these things around now as a sort of social shorthand. And I still prefer chats to email, and a lot of chats are connected to these places. But maybe this blog will be the place where I “hey check this out” my stuff, and those places should more be about telling people to come here.

The urge to blog

I’ve been having the urge to blog more lately. Maybe it’s that I finally found a blog service I like. Maybe it’s all the articles I’ve been reading about how social media should be more of a sometimes food. Maybe I just want a place to type at.

But I’ve had this urge before. I usually do it for a little bit and burn out. The greatest stretch I had was in 2013 with The Heart is Raw, but that emptied me out to such a degree I barely blogged again for three years.

So, I’m trying again with some basic rules. Try to write every day, even if it’s just a line or two. Do my best to not make each post better than the next. And try to write every day, even if there’s no good way to wrap it up.

I Know Your Real Name Now: Initial Descriptions of Main Characters

I used to enjoy adding little bits of first-draft writing to my old blog, so I’m going to do it again with this new book. These bits aren’t edited and will almost definitely change as the book progresses, but they make for a nice bookmark as to where things are now.

I Know Your Real Name Now has four main characters. Here’s my initial descriptions for each.

Hall

“Aw, I remember the old you,” Banks said. And then she framed me with her hands. “A skinny kid with quick metabolism about to run out, as if you might get your freshman fifteen before making it to college. 170 pounds, 5’9”, white kid with okay-cute dark features. But you picked and chewed your nails. You did not know how to take care of your fingers. Straight hair, cut just below his ears, black. Black eyebrows, somewhat thick, not like it is now. Dark brown eyes, but a strong, angular nose, the only chiseled thing on you at the time. Your skin was only halfway healthy, and a little bit freckled, but only if you looked really close. You parted his hair down the middle, like the singer from Savage Garden or the kids from Hanson, but a bit shorter. And you put gel in it to slick it down and it looked halfway like it belonged in 1997. You started combing it back with your fingers almost as soon as I broke up with you. You wore Hawaiian shirts. You only owned two pairs of shoes: one of them were girls shoes, but you wore them to prom because they were your only nice ones.”

Banks

Banks was 5’4”, curvy, 130ish pounds. Black and luminous. She was born in Toronto, and so were her parents. She’s third generation, she told me. Her grandparents were from the US. She had the bright cheeks, full light pink lips. She loves those frosted pink Lip Smackers from Claires. Her hair is tight up front, her thick hair tied into two buns, except for on nights when she straightens it (like dances [but not tonight?]). She liked earrings, thin ones that dangled down. She kept her eyebrows thin, her Grey-brown eyes perfectly placed. She wore thick mascara on dance nights, so her eyes would dazzle more. She had glowing skin that radiated under party lights. She liked showing off her shoulders. She usually danced shoulder first.

Ram

Ram’s light brown eyes were close together, and she had a thin nose for her face. She slicked her hair back with thick gel, and would regularly change her hair’s colour from dirty blond to the wrestling teams deep blue with manic panic, but she wouldn’t wear the cap properly and so a bunch of the stuff would always be smeared on her neck.

Her laugh was conquering. She was the strongest person she knew and it gave her impenetrable confidence that she wore like a fur coat. She never hunched, and always took up as much space as she could in any car.

Her muscles weren’t defined in the way you’d see in magazines and on pro wrestling. They were defined like you’d see in strongman competitions and the beefier hosts on the nature channel. You didn’t see glisten and torque when she flexed, but she could pick up the back half of your car and pull it a while.

Fourth

Fourth was a somewhat squat girl at just over five feet. She had wide thighs and thin shoulders, big brown eyes and black choppy hair. She wore old converse to every occasion. She owned three pairs and they were they only shoes she had. In the winter, she wore high top chucks. She wore a beautifully flowy and layered dress that, if you didn’t know any better, you’d swear it was lit from her belly. It glowed white and yellow. But she still just had the street shoes on. She’d be the most comfortable punk at the dance.

Fourth smiled at me. She had wide cheeks that made her face seem somewhat football shaped, like a cute chipmunk. She credited this on her Japanese grandmother. Glasses only furthered her optical illusion as one of the rescuers, or a Disney animal from the early seventies. It was a face they all loved, and she found herself beloved by people she’d never actually spoken to. Her face warmed the heart and disarmed the teenage cynicism that would carry through for this generation until they died.

I Know Your Real Name Now - Introduction

I’ve been writing a new novel for the past six months. It’s the first book I’ve written that didn’t have a title right away. No Chinook and A Record Year for Rainfall had titles within the first week. Skypunch started out as a title only for the longest time. My Lover’s Phone was the only title that made sense for that short story. But this new book was just called “new book” in Scrivener this whole time.

I Know Your Real Name Now is a story about four characters experiencing the events of three parties decades apart. The first one takes place at the end of high school, the second in their mid-20s at a housewarming, and the last twenty years later, on a party boat, celebrating a major life achievement. Through the three parties, I’ll express how these characters grow apart and find one another again, how betrayals lead to new relationships, and how one person’s memory of events can be very different than another.

A great party is a sort of heaven. One full of people you want to talk to, whose experiences you absorb, and come out feeling like you couldn’t have possibly spent time better. On the flip side, parties can be volatile. Some of life’s greatest moments of drama happens at parties, and everyone is there to see it. Those are great in another sense: pivotal, evocative, and remembered forever.

It’s already my favourite thing that I’ve written.

Summer 2017 Update

Photo by Patrick Hendry on UnsplashTiny Letter

I’ve been updating my blog at sawyerpaul.com every three months or so, but I haven’t actually put out a new Tinyletter in four years. I want to get back into it. You can subscribe and get updates sent to your inbox here. (unless you’re already reading this as a Tinyletter.

Summer 2017 Update

Tiny Letter

I’ve been updating my blog at sawyerpaul.com every three months or so, but I haven’t actually put out a new Tinyletter in four years. I want to get back into it. You can subscribe and get updates sent to your inbox here.

Lattice

In 2013, I put out six issues of a serial called Lattice, which was a monthly publication of new writing. It was pretty cool: people subscribed in an iPhone app or through their Kindle and new stuff showed up as soon as I hit “publish.” Unfortunately the company that published the app went under and I was left without a platform. I put a lot of work into them and they should really exist somewhere. By the end of the summer, my website will have it all up, readable and downloadable.

New Site

sawyerpaul.com has been a couple of things over the last few years. I haven’t always known what I want to do with it. I’ve got a plan now. It’s still a work in progress (cue 1997 graphic), but it’ll be beautiful before the summer is out.

Podcasts

I’m beginning a new season of International Object episodes. If you’re interested in being on the show, send me a DM on twitter.

New Novel

I’m writing a new novel. It’s about parties, and the drama, sex, and nonsense that happens at them. It’s going to be a comedy. I’ve put parties in all my books and they’re my favourite parts of them, so this is the natural next step. It’s barely begun, but I’ve got some outlining, a few characters. I want to hear party stories from people. I’m looking for inspiration.

Of course, that begs the question. Wasn’t I already writing a new book? Wasn’t it almost done?

Skypunch

Skypunch just isn’t the book I wanted it to be. It’s a lesson for me. The process I used to write the book was a new one for me that involved piecing together several story ideas into one, and it just doesn’t work. There is good stuff in there, but it’s definitely a failed novel. I don’t plan on continuing working on it, but I’ll release it under an “unfinished” label, so the curious can get in there.

As for the different stories, Skypunch was the result of trying together several novels I’d begun and not finished between 2012 and 2015. That includes all the writing found in Lattice. Instead of leaving all of it as unfinished first drafts, I tried tying it all together as a saga. Needless to say, it’s a mess. But it’s a book about divorces, so “mess” is kind of built into its DNA.

This happens. Not every novel works. I’m not beat up about it, and I’m excited about the new one. I mostly write for myself, but I make these things available in case anyone else gets anything from them. Skypunch actually helped me a great deal. It’s just not that great a book.

Old Novels

Everything We Haven’t Lost, No Chinook, A Record Year for Rainfall, and Skypunch will all be available on this site for free in the next month. You’ll be able to read it in a browser, chapter-by-chapter, or by downloading a file to read on your ebook reader or phone. No Chinook is (and will likely remain) the only title available in print. I’ve been meaning to update this stuff and there’s no reason for it not to be out there.

Updated Behance

If you haven’t taken a look at my creative portfolio on Behance in a while, now’s a good time. I’ve recently added two of my freelance clients, Osgoode Hall Law Review and Lakehead Law Journal, as well as some of the podcast art I’ve created over the last two years.

New Business

I don’t usually advertise, but I’m currently looking for new projects. If you work for a publication that could use a layout designer, send them my way. I’m open to freelance, part-time contracts, as well as larger ongoing publications.

Fun stuff coming

Subscribe to this blog or the newsletter. I’d really appreciate it. After a few years of tearing apart my online presence, I’m slowly building it back up. There’s going to be good stuff. I hope you like it.

Skypunch – Alpha Release

Since the summer, I’ve been working on a revised first draft of my new novel. It’s complete, and I’m calling it an “Alpha Release,” and making it available to a select few. Here’s what that means:

I might start asking people to read it.I might let you read it if you ask me.I might post some excerpts on my blog/facebook/twitter, etc.

If you’re interested in reading the Revised first draft, let me know and I’ll send it to you. Of course, I’d love to hear your input as you read it. This kind of stuff is really important to making a great book. For a more technical background of the first draft, read this.

This is slightly different than what I did last time. With my last book, A Record Year for Rainfall, the “beta” release was the stopping point. I wrote it, edited it myself, and released it, and you can still read it for free. I’m not going to do that with this book, because I want to try some new things, like:

Editing it properly, preferably with professionalsSubmitting it to agents & publishersEnjoyed by people who might not necessarily know me

These are big goals, and I’m going to take the winter to work on them. Thanks so much for your support.

Skypunch - Alpha Release

Since the summer, I’ve been working on a revised first draft of my new novel. It’s complete, and I’m calling it an “Alpha Release,” and making it available to a select few. Here’s what that means:

I might start asking people to read it.
I might let you read it if you ask me.
I might post some excerpts on my blog/facebook/twitter, etc.

If you’re interested in reading the Revised first draft, let me know and I’ll send it to you. Of course, I’d love to hear your input as you read it. This kind of stuff is really important to making a great book. For a more technical background of the first draft, read this.

This is slightly different than what I did last time. With my last book, A Record Year for Rainfall, the “beta” release was the stopping point. I wrote it, edited it myself, and released it, and you can still read it for free. I’m not going to do that with this book, because I want to try some new things, like:

Editing it properly, preferably with professionals
Submitting it to agents & publishers
Enjoyed by people who might not necessarily know me

These are big goals, and I’m going to take the winter to work on them. Thanks so much for your support.

How to publish a podcast on the cheap in 4 steps with lots of compromises

Here is my current podcast workflow, and it should work well enough for most basic shows:

If your podcast is conversational, record the audio from Skype using a recorder app. I use Callnote Pro, which costs $10 a year. There are free or less expensive options, but I’ve been using it for years and it works for me. Otherwise, talk into literally any speaker. If you have a phone from this decade, it’ll probably sound passable.Edit the audio in Audacity, a free app on Windows, or Garageband, a free app built into Macs.Upload the audio to two places: Soundcloud and Mixcloud. Keep the file backed up somewhere (I use Onedrive, but there are lots of options).Tell people on Twitter and Facebook to listen to the audio on Mixcloud.

That’s it. It’s the simplest workflow I’ve ever seen for podcasts, and it costs next to nothing. If you’re trying to get into podcasts but a) don’t really know what you’re doing, and b) don’t really want to sink any money into it, this is all you really have to do.

But there are compromises. If you don’t care about those, stop reading and go make some shows. But the next few sections of this blog will go into detail on that.

Setup Time on Soundcloud

Obviously you’ll need to setup accounts at Soundcloud and Mixcloudd. Both are pretty quick, but one aspect that will take some time is setting up an RSS feed at Soundcloud. This is the thing that makes your audio a podcast. Otherwise, you’re just posting audio to the web.

Wait, why is RSS important?

A bunch of audio files does not automatically become a podcast until an RSS enclosure is used. By allowing a file to be embedded in a post on a blog, listeners can subscribe and download the enclosure to a device. Depending on the app they use, the listener can see what episodes they’ve listened to, download older episodes than the first one, share episodes with others, etc.

Why I don’t only use Soundcloud

The most important thing to remember about Soundcloud is that it’s only free for a certain amount of time. The site gives you a bucket of about three hours. That bucket is reusable, so you can delete old episodes and then upload new ones. If you want this setup to be simpler, simply pay Soundcloud some money and they’ll give you more storage. I’m not, which is why I also use Mixcloud.

Why Mixcloud?

Mixcloud’s primary purpose is mixtapes. Ideally, you record a DJ set and upload it and then people can hear your presumably sweet mixes. But Mixcloud is fine with your podcast episode existing there, and there are no fees or upload limits. If you’re wondering why I don’t just use Mixcloud, well, they didn’t have one major limitation: they don’t offer RSS feeds, which basically means you can’t actually use them to make a real podcast. So I treat Mixcloud as an archive for older episodes.

My previous podcast workflows

I’m absolutely what you’d call a consumer podcaster. None of my shows have ever had more than a thousand listeners, and most don’t break a hundred. I mostly podcast for myself and my friends, so I’ve never tried to turn it into a business. This is entirely for fun.

I’ve been recording and distributing podcasts for ten years, and I’ve had three different workflows during that time. From 2006-2009, I used iWeb, which was an app that used to come built into every Mac. With a dot.mac account, you got a certain amount of storage you could fill up with iWeb pages. One of iWeb’s features was a simple drag-and-drop attachment format for it’s (very limited) blog page, which let you put audio files (or images, or PDFs) in the blog. When rendered in RSS, this file would become the “episode” that podcast apps could download.

Dot.mac/MobileMe was $100 a year. It wasn’t terribly expensive, but it didn’t actually give you a ton of space, and I ran out. So I went looking for a better solution, and found one with an unlimited hosting server plan.

This is where it became a business for a little while. I set up something called the Gredunza Podcast Network. I charged as little as I could and invited other podcasters to host their shows on my network. This was the most complicated option I’ve ever used, as I needed to setup a custom WordPress install for every show. It was a lot of work, and anyone can tell you that maintaining more than a dozen WordPress installs on a custom server is more work (and money) than is worth the trouble. In 2013, I shut down the network, because the time and cash commitment was too much.

All of my podcasts ended up on Squarespace, which is probably the simplest solution out there today. In addition to all the really great stuff a Squarespace site offers, their podcast implementation is incredibly easy. If you are fine with $10 a month for a website, don’t bother with anything else and just use them. You might have to pay a little more for the unlimited storage options if you have a lot of episodes, but that’s it.

But earlier this year I decided to pare down my recurring online billings. I was not using Squarespace to its potential, so I built a blog on Github (where you’re reading this), and moved my podcasts to Mixcloud and Soundcloud. It’s slightly more work than Squarespace, but it saved me $130 a year.

No podcast setup is perfect

Depending on how you want to go, podcasts require either a lot of time or a lot of money, and sometimes both. You really can’t make them happen for no money or time, so be prepared to shell out at least one of those things. It’s still a blast, though, and I’m looking forward to making more.

How to publish a podcast on the cheap in 4 steps with lots of compromises

Here is my current podcast workflow, and it should work well enough for most basic shows:

If your podcast is conversational, record the audio from Skype using a recorder app. I use Callnote Pro, which costs $10 a year. There are free or less expensive options, but I’ve been using it for years and it works for me. Otherwise, talk into literally any speaker. If you have a phone from this decade, it’ll probably sound passable.
Edit the audio in Audacity, a free app on Windows, or Garageband, a free app built into Macs.
Upload the audio to two places: Soundcloud and Mixcloud. Keep the file backed up somewhere (I use Onedrive, but there are lots of options).
Tell people on Twitter and Facebook to listen to the audio on Mixcloud.

That’s it. It’s the simplest workflow I’ve ever seen for podcasts, and it costs next to nothing. If you’re trying to get into podcasts but a) don’t really know what you’re doing, and b) don’t really want to sink any money into it, this is all you really have to do.

But there are compromises. If you don’t care about those, stop reading and go make some shows. But the next few sections of this blog will go into detail on that.

Setup Time on Soundcloud

Obviously you’ll need to setup accounts at Soundcloud and Mixcloudd. Both are pretty quick, but one aspect that will take some time is setting up an RSS feed at Soundcloud. This is the thing that makes your audio a podcast. Otherwise, you’re just posting audio to the web.

Wait, why is RSS important?

A bunch of audio files does not automatically become a podcast until an RSS enclosure is used. By allowing a file to be embedded in a post on a blog, listeners can subscribe and download the enclosure to a device. Depending on the app they use, the listener can see what episodes they’ve listened to, download older episodes than the first one, share episodes with others, etc.

Why I don’t only use Soundcloud

The most important thing to remember about Soundcloud is that it’s only free for a certain amount of time. The site gives you a bucket of about three hours. That bucket is reusable, so you can delete old episodes and then upload new ones. If you want this setup to be simpler, simply pay Soundcloud some money and they’ll give you more storage. I’m not, which is why I also use Mixcloud.

Why Mixcloud?

Mixcloud’s primary purpose is mixtapes. Ideally, you record a DJ set and upload it and then people can hear your presumably sweet mixes. But Mixcloud is fine with your podcast episode existing there, and there are no fees or upload limits. If you’re wondering why I don’t just use Mixcloud, well, they didn’t have one major limitation: they don’t offer RSS feeds, which basically means you can’t actually use them to make a real podcast. So I treat Mixcloud as an archive for older episodes.

My previous podcast workflows

I’m absolutely what you’d call a consumer podcaster. None of my shows have ever had more than a thousand listeners, and most don’t break a hundred. I mostly podcast for myself and my friends, so I’ve never tried to turn it into a business. This is entirely for fun.

I’ve been recording and distributing podcasts for ten years, and I’ve had three different workflows during that time. From 2006-2009, I used iWeb, which was an app that used to come built into every Mac. With a dot.mac account, you got a certain amount of storage you could fill up with iWeb pages. One of iWeb’s features was a simple drag-and-drop attachment format for it’s (very limited) blog page, which let you put audio files (or images, or PDFs) in the blog. When rendered in RSS, this file would become the “episode” that podcast apps could download.

Dot.mac/MobileMe was $100 a year. It wasn’t terribly expensive, but it didn’t actually give you a ton of space, and I ran out. So I went looking for a better solution, and found one with an unlimited hosting server plan.

This is where it became a business for a little while. I set up something called the Gredunza Podcast Network. I charged as little as I could and invited other podcasters to host their shows on my network. This was the most complicated option I’ve ever used, as I needed to setup a custom Wordpress install for every show. It was a lot of work, and anyone can tell you that maintaining more than a dozen Wordpress installs on a custom server is more work (and money) than is worth the trouble. In 2013, I shut down the network, because the time and cash commitment was too much.

All of my podcasts ended up on Squarespace, which is probably the simplest solution out there today. In addition to all the really great stuff a Squarespace site offers, their podcast implementation is incredibly easy. If you are fine with $10 a month for a website, don’t bother with anything else and just use them. You might have to pay a little more for the unlimited storage options if you have a lot of episodes, but that’s it.

But earlier this year I decided to pare down my recurring online billings. I was not using Squarespace to its potential, so I built a blog on Github (where you’re reading this), and moved my podcasts to Mixcloud and Soundcloud. It’s slightly more work than Squarespace, but it saved me $130 a year.

No podcast setup is perfect

Depending on how you want to go, podcasts require either a lot of time or a lot of money, and sometimes both. You really can’t make them happen for no money or time, so be prepared to shell out at least one of those things. It’s still a blast, though, and I’m looking forward to making more.