Frank PournelleThis homage to becoming a writer comes to us with permission from a long time reader of ChaosManor.
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The Wordsmith
by James Bonang
Could it be? Had it actually happened – a Black Swan event so improbable as to rival winning the Pulitzer Prize? Impossible! Yet, as my eyes regained their focus, there it was – no mistaking it. Right there on the web page – my letter, with my name – and with commentary no less. Dr. Pournelle had published one of my letters in Chaos Manor Mail. Jerry Pournelle had read something I wrote. (Jerry Pournelle!) For an instant, the flow of the mighty Mississippi had reversed direction.
Well, okay. Perhaps not quite so momentous, not quite a Pulitzer, but it sure felt like it.
I had read Dr. Pournelle’s Chaos Manor column (in one or another of its many guises) for most of my adult life, beginning with his famous “User’s Column” in Byte magazine, so many decades ago. Beginning in 1980, Jerry’s column chronicled the personal computer revolution almost from its inception, transforming arcane, even mundane, technical problems into gripping adventures. Apparently, crafting many of the greatest science fiction novels of all time works wonders for one’s technical writing skills. Like Isaac Asimov, another polymath and legendary science fiction author, Pournelle mastered both fiction and non-fiction writing. When I later read several of his novels, beginning with King David’s Spaceship (fantastic!) followed by West of Honor (a must read for every junior officer, as I did prior to heading out on an overseas deployment) the computer magazine columnist I new so well astounded me with flights of imagination utterly different in style from the author I knew. His fiction and non-fiction resembled each other, though, in their ability to fascinate and entertain. How could the same mind produce both? How was that possible? Could there be some underlying secret to writing transcending genre? If so, did he leave us any clues?
We all write, not necessarily best-selling novels, but certainly email letters, web logs, user’s manuals, advertisements, proposals, articles, term papers, essays, theses, Internet Relay Chat messages, perhaps even a textbook. Writing prevails as our most important communication medium, fending off the telephone, radio, television, YouTube, and Zoom, as well as the long-vanquished spoken word. Our writing can make or break our careers. From the Code of Hammurabi to Pournelle’s “The View from Chaos Manor” (arguably the world’s first web log or “blog”), writing changes how we think; it changes the world. We best get good at it. You don’t have to be a Pournelle or an Asimov (though that sure would be nice); you just have to be, as Dr. Pournelle would say, “Good Enough.”
How to Get My Job
But how to we get “Good Enough?” Dr. Pournelle let us in on the secret in his well-known essay “How to Get My Job”, first published in the December, 1996 edition of Byte magazine (and later on his website with amendments in 2006 and 2007) (https://www.jerrypournelle.com/slowchange/myjob.html). He directs his advice at those intending to write fiction, but it’s helpful no matter what you’re writing. And he did more than just give us advice, more, indeed, than he realized, as we’ll soon see. First, the secret revealed:
“The secret of becoming a writer is that you have to write.”
A bit anticlimactic, but there’s more to it. He points out that “… being a writer is hard work. Surprisingly, it may be only hard work; that is, while some people certainly have more talent for writing than others, everyone has some.”
Encouraging. But here’s the rub:
“You have to write a lot. You also have to finish what you write … “
And by a lot, he means a lot: “you should be prepared to write and throw away a million words of finished material. By finished, I mean completed, done, ready to submit, and written as well as you know how at the time you wrote it.”
Well okay then – I’ve only got 980,000 more to go.
Pournelle’s 1,000,000-Word Rule echoes the 10,000-Hour Rule from Malcolm Gladwell’s 2008 bestselling non-fiction book Outliers: The Story of Success. Gladwell maintains that to achieve world-class expertise at any skill, you must practice for 10,000 hours. If you write one word per minute on average (not type, but think about, type and edit), you’ll reach 1 million words in a little over 16,000 hours – more than 10,000, but in the ballpark. Interestingly, one word per minute is approximately Dr. Pournelle’s pace. He once posted that he “managed 700 words in the monk’s cell today.” In the Monk’s Cell, a room where he could concentrate exclusively on writing with minimal distractions, an eleven and a half hour day works out to about 1 word per minute. Of course, chronologically, Gladwell echoes Pournelle, but I digress.
While Pournelle may not echo Gladwell, his writing advice certainly does echo that of Robert Heinlein, a grand master of Science Fiction who generously delivered it as personal advice to the then novice Pournelle. (The advice suggests Heinlein readily spotted a promising talent, too.) Heinlein later disseminated the same guidance in his “Five Rules for Writing Success” laid out in his James Forrestal Memorial Lecture presented to the Brigade of Midshipmen at as the US Naval Academy in 1973 (available here: http://technologydesignconsultants.com/
InterestingDocuments/RobertHeinleinSpeechAtAnnapolis.pdf ). (Heinlein was a naval officer (and graduate of Annapolis) which undoubtedly accounts for his ever so slightly eclipsing Army veterans Pournelle and Asimov as a writer. This observation, of course, also provides a hint as to the branch I served in.) Only the first three rules concern us here. (The latter two involve publishing; please consult Heinlein’s speech if you intend to write fiction professionally.)
Heinlein’s rules are:
First: You must write.
Second: You must finish what you write.
Third: You must refrain from rewriting except to editorial order.
Dr. Pournelle lived by these rules. (His version of the third rule is “stop mucking with it.”) They’re harder than they look. The first one presents no difficulties, but the second two – well, let’s just say I have “difficulty executing.” Interestingly, the third rule provides a means to achieve the second. When writing, I bog down when what I’ve written falls short of ideal. I rewrite. I want my writing to be worthwhile to the reader. So I polish before the piece is completed, and then polish some more. Then I lose interest and don’t finish. Rule Two goes down in flames because I don’t comply with Rule Three.
So, how to avoid the rewriting traps?
Dr. Pournelle’s “How to Get My Job” essay provides an answer. Use a grammar-checking tool (and a spell checker). When written back in 1996, he recommended a checker called Grammatik, which ended up being incorporated into the WordPerfect word processing program. WordPerfect remains available, and it still incorporates Grammatik. As Dr. Pournelle points out, that checker can help you get it right the first time, and that may help you avoid the rewrite syndrome that so plagues me.
It ruthlessly points out passive voice, needlessly complex sentences, silly clichés, too many adjectives, and repetition. Now, of course, good writing will contain some passive voice, complex sentences, a few clichés, and adjectives; but it won’t contain a lot of that, and until you’re aware of just how much gubbage you routinely throw into your writing, you won’t get a feel for just what good writing is. (https://www.jerrypournelle.com/slowchange/myjob.html)
Of course, you’ll need to add “gubbage” to the spell checker’s list of valid words.
If you’ve forgotten the material from grammar school and need a refresher, or, like me, are more or less impervious to instruction, consider the free grammar lessons and exercises on the Grammar Monster website. (https://www.grammar-monster.com)
Microsoft Word does not fare well in Dr. Pournelle’s essay, but it too contains a grammar (and spelling) checker.
I pay so little attention to the grammar program built into Microsoft Word — the text editor I use — that I do not know whether it is any good for learning grammar. I do know that Grammatik was well worth its cost.
(https://www.jerrypournelle.com/slowchange/myjob.html)
Word’s grammar checker and Readability Statistics (available after running the grammar checker) help me, but then I’m no Pournelle. (The difference being that when Dr. Pournelle broke the rules, he knew it; I need the checker.) The Readability Statistics include the total number of words, paragraphs and sentences in your document, the words per sentence and sentences per paragraph, the percentage of sentences that are passive (I run around 5%), and the Flesch Reading Ease value.
Writing in the Flesch
The Flesch Reading Ease value is a pure number between 0 and 100 inclusive, with a score between 60 and 70 considered acceptable. (29 or less is very confusing and 90 or over is very easy.) The value is a function of the average sentence length in words and the average number of syllables per word. Dr. Rudolph Flesch proposed the formula in “A New Readability Yardstick”, published in the Journal of Applied Psychology in 1948. It’s the most widely used method for determining readability (it’s incorporation in Microsoft Word more or less guarantees that) and it is also a standard readability formula of the US Department of Defense, among other US government organizations. J. Peter Kinkaid later added a grade-level calculation, and in this form it’s called the Flesch-Kinkaid score. If the Flesch score is too low, the document’s sentences are too long or the words too sophisticated (with many syllables). Shorter sentences and plain English will fix this post-haste (Woops; I meant to write “fix this quickly”). If the score is too high, it’s time for 30 Days to a More Powerful Vocabulary. That book helped me, though Dr. Pournelle preferred building his vocabulary with the Encyclopedia Britannica (the entire Encyclopedia Britannica).
Using grammar checkers and readability scores induces some rewriting; after all, you need to make corrections. But this is de facto rewriting to editorial order, where the grammar checker serves as the editor. Indeed, Pournelle explicitly states the need for rewriting in his “How to Get My Job” essay. Fortunately, as Dr. Pournelle points out, it’s a transitory phase.
Eventually, you won’t need the program. Then for a while you’ll write by the rules, and what you write will be correct, but not as interesting as it might be. Then you learn to break or bend the rules, and by the time you’re an accomplished writer, you’ll produce stuff that Grammatik will hate; but it won’t be finding the same problems you had when you started.
You’ll still need to rewrite to editorial (and grammar checker) order, but that will decline with practice. In the meantime, writing reasonably good, grammatical material the first time builds your resistance to rewrite syndrome.
Readability Programs and Natural Language Processing
More sophisticated formulae than that of Flesch abound, though they are not as popular and may not be as effective. They’re interesting nonetheless. Dr. Pournelle reveals a tool that he used to analyze his writing in the September 8th, 2009 “Computing at Chaos Manor” column. He begins, though, with a fascinating glimpse at his past interests.
When I was an undergraduate I became interested in language analysis.
…
One of the things we did in those days was to investigate authorship by means of linguistic statistics. Two primary tools were type/token and verb/adjective ratios. A type/token ratio is the ratio of unique words to the total number of words; verb/adjective ratio should be obvious. Those turn out to be surprisingly invariant for a given author, and we hoped to solve some of the great authorship mysteries with those and other tools.
(http://www.chaosmanorreviews.org/oa/2009/20090908_col.php)
If great authors have verb/adjective and type/token ratios that are “surprisingly invariant”, perhaps there’s a sweet spot – an ideal ratio for good writing?
Perhaps. While Dr. Pournelle didn’t use the Microsoft Word Readability Statistics, he did at one time use another readability program.
During the 1980’s there was a rash of programs intended to analyze text for readability. One of the best was Scandinavian PC Systems Readability Program. … It identified long sentences, choppy sentences, foggy sections with far too large a ratio of bricks to mortar, and various other patterns that affect readability.
Bricks/mortar is the ratio of total unique words to the 450 most common words in the English language: if that gets too high, either explanations or vocabulary adjustments may be in order. Too many long sentences affects readability. So does a series of short choppy sentences. The SPC Systems program diagrammed my essays, much as screen writers look at paragraphing from a distance to see if a scene is likely to play. (Big blocks of speech in general don’t play…)
The Scandinavian PC Systems program was later renamed Corporate Voice. It has all but vanished from the Internet, only a few traces remain. The analyses it performed included types of sentences, bricks/mortar, sentence type cadence, long word cadence, consecutive long words and consecutive short word, word length counts, unique words/total words (type/token ratio), sentence lengths, and comparisons to a number of readability standards. Dr. Pournelle points out one of the standards of particular interest in a Chaos Manner Mail Bag comment:
The original Scandinavian Systems software had comparisons of your text’s readability to a number of standards. One of the standards was technical magazine writing, and the basis of that standard was, I learned, my BYTE columns. I don’t think there’s anything quite like Corporate Voice available now, which is a pity; I do wish someone had adapted that program to Word for Windows.
http://www.chaosmanorreviews.org/oa/2009/20090119_mail.php
Perhaps someone can; or at least they might create a reasonable facsimile, by making use of a book recommendation from Dr. Pournelle : Natural Language Processing with Python by Steven Bird, Ewan Klein, and Edward Loper, published by O’Reilly.
if you go through the whole book working out all the examples you will know more about the subject than many professors of linguistics: at least you’ll know how to build Confusion Matrices, determine the entropy of labels, and have some understanding of Bayes Classifiers.
I very much wish I had this book (and a computer I could run Python on!) when I was an undergraduate. It would probably have changed my career.
I have never seen anything quite like it. Recommended, provided you have a strong interest in the subject.
High praise from an expert like Dr. Pournelle couldn’t have hurt sales. No small percentage of Dr. Pournelle’s readers are also programmers (okay, software engineers); they’re the sort of people for whom building software tools to help improve their writing skills would be preferable to buying a readability app. (Come to think of it, I might give this a try.)
Word Processors
Dr. Pournelle wrote the first published book using a word processor on a personal computer, in 1977. (The word processing program was called Electric Pencil.) Later, he recommended WordPerfect, because of the Grammatik grammar checker, and used it for a while, but forever after stuck with Microsoft Word, for practical reasons
I continue to use Word, although I may experiment with Scrivener.
Scrivener almost gained traction with him, but not quite. He did observe that the Mac version is in use by many “selling writers” and that it has some “interesting features.” If Dr. Pournelle even considered Scrivener, it’s at least worth investigating.
He rejected the popular Open Office (Libre Office) open source office suite for reasons of commonality with his collaborators. Indeed, he ultimately rejected all other word processors:
I’ve seen just about all the alternatives to Word, but I haven’t found one that has sufficient attraction to cause me to use it.
The bottom line: Microsoft Word is “Good Enough.”
Organization
Word processors work miracles with spelling and grammar, but what about higher order constructs – paragraphs and organization? He advised his sons to use the following process when writing essays and term papers:
Write everything you can think of about the subject. Everything.
Now go through and list the topic sentence of each paragraph. If you find paragraphs that don’t have a topic sentence, you have a problem: fix that.
Once you have that list of topic sentences, decide if that’s really the order you want to present the information in. It probably won’t be. Organize the way you want it.
Fill in the gaps, expand points that need expanding, and do one final rewrite pass.
He also found that even some professional writers were not completely clear on topic sentences and paragraphs; on one occasion he offered this explanation:
“A paragraph,” I said, “is a group of sentences organized around one complete thought which is stated in the topic sentence.”
To Dr. Pournelle’s guidance on paragraphs, topic sentences, and macroscopic organization, I would add the need to incorporate transition sentences, like this one:
Not only must you be able to organize your writing, you need to organize your writing routine so you can be productive no matter the circumstances, even when you’re on the road. (Not bad, eh?)
Road Warrior
A touch typist until suffering a stroke late in life, Dr. Pournelle produced prodigious output. He posted web log entries almost daily (he considered the amalgam “blog” an ugly word), wrote monthly columns and often a column-like summary of interesting email letters he received with commentary, not to mention novels (alone and in collaboration) and the occasional non-fiction book (such as The Strategy of Technology). He still had time to read widely, along with a whirlwind of other activities. His writing guidance remains invaluable; so does his example. He had to be efficient. How did he do it?
Long before Apple’s iPad and Microsoft’s Surface exploded into ubiquity, Dr. Pournelle incorporated tablet computers into his routine when away from Chaos Manor.
Sometimes I travel light. When I do, I carry Lisabetta the TabletPC. A tablet is perfect for working in flight when the chap in front of me has his seat all the way back and there’s no room to open up a laptop. The handwriting program works pretty well, and editing email with a pen stylus is really quite simple. I can deal with a lot of email in flight. My answers tend to be short, but that’s probably a benefit. If by chance I actually have room to pivot the keyboard and set up Lisabetta as a normal laptop, that works too. (http://www.chaosmanorreviews.org/open_archives/jep_column-310.php)
The primary value of a TabletPC is to be used with Microsoft OneNote and a high speed Internet connection. The combination allows you to do extensive research, annotate and organize it, and in my case build a kind of plot outline through sheer organization of the notes on what will be encountered in the upcoming scenes. It’s a great way to work …
(http://www.chaosmanorreviews.org/oa/2009/20090813_col.php)
He eventually substituted a Lenovo X60 TabletPC, dubbed Leonardo, for LisaBette, his older but beloved HP TabletPC. He took Leonardo with him on a visit to a medical clinic with a working draft of one his novels (the second novel in the Inferno series) loaded onto it “on the theory that I would not find a table or desk to work at.” (http://www.chaosmanorreviews.org/open_archives/jep_column-322-c.php)
He configured Leonardo as a tablet and reviewed a couple of recently written Inferno 2 chapters. He reported it recognized his handwriting remarkably well (and this was in the days of Microsoft Vista. Remember Vista? Anyone? Anyone?).
I can insert words, change words, and it’s almost like doing it in pen and ink on a printed manuscript. Then I came to the end of the text. I thought of a sentence, and began writing it. That worked. I did another.
By the time he left the clinic he had written about 500 words and edited two chapters of the novel.
Dr. Pournelle also used Microsoft OneNote on his Windows laptops for taking notes when attending conferences. He frequently remarked on the effectiveness of OneNote as a research and note taking tool and was disappointed to find it was not available for the Mac. This didn’t deter him from adopting the svelte, stylish, ultra-portable MacBook Air for mobile work.
He became quite fond of his MacBook Air, which he christened Khaos (the Greek goddess of Air), carrying it with him nearly everywhere and paying it the ultimate compliment: “It is the computer you will have with you.” Like his tablet, he used the Air to churn out material in a medical clinic waiting room.
For maximum efficiency, ensure you have the tools to write in less than ideal circumstances, such as waiting in a medical clinic. The “computer you have with you” must allow you to write, perhaps not as well as your “main machine” with its large monitor, but well enough. So, not only must you write, not only must you finish what you write, not only must you avoid counter-productive rewriting, you must be able to write just about anywhere, whenever free time presents itself.
Take Note
In 2008, Dr. Pournelle reported he underwent radiation treatment to destroy a brain tumor detected near the Broca’s Area. He revealed that the 50,000 rad of hard X-rays administered over six weeks resulted in memory problems that lingered. (http://www.chaosmanorreviews.org/oa/2009/20090109_col.php)
Of course, Dr. Pournelle believed that “despair is a sin” and immediately developed a solution.
I still have some short term memory losses which I’m learning to overcome by keeping a better log book.
Now, I have similar memory problems but they’re not due to radiation treatment, age, or vitamin deficiencies, but just plain old lack of ability. I started keeping a logbook as Dr. Pournelle suggested, not as detailed as his, but adequate for my more modest needs. If you don’t want to lose that great idea to be incorporated into your next article, keep a logbook.
Jerry’s logbook took a number of forms, the most visible being his weblog, or daybook as he preferred to call it: “The View from Chaos Manor.” Dr. Pournelle’s log entries seem to emerge fully edited from his fingertips and make interesting reading even now, especially if you’re in a nostalgic frame of mind. The View is available at a number of locations on his website (dutifully maintained by the Chaos Manor Staff) with entries stretching back to at least 1998 and up to September, 2017.
https://www.jerrypournelle.com/chaosmanor/page/4/
https://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/view.html
https://www.jerrypournelle.com/view/vview1.html
For more immediate note taking, he carried a physical Boorum and Pease logbook (which comes in various models; Jerry preferred the Composition Book model 09-9132, available on Amazon:
In addition to his composition book, he also carried a small digital voice recorder so that he could record notes on the go, even when engaged in activities such as photography.
I also carry the Olympus WS-100 voice recorder for annotation: I can have it running while I take pictures, so that I record my notes if I’m doing a photo-journalism essay, or simply making notes about fiction. Sometimes I do both: something will inspire a thought about a new scene, and a picture plus a short dictation will record that.
Of course, he had an iPhone too. For most of us, this might suffice in lieu of the recorder and (maybe) the composition book (and the camera) – perhaps not as good, but good enough. It’s more likely to be with you, too.
While he could take notes on the go, anywhere, anytime, writing was a slightly different matter. Sometimes, only certain places would do.
The Monk’s Cell
Within the Christian monastic tradition, a monk’s cell, a small sparsely furnished room, serves as minimalist living quarters. In Dr. Pournelle’s case, the Monk’s Cell served as a quiet refuge for writing. The name suggests a cloistered existence, and may reflect Pournelle’s interest in medieval history. (Pournelle recommended the Brother Cadfael historical murder mystery series by Ellis Peter (a pseudonym of linguist Edith Pargeter) in his March, 1999 column (https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reviews/bookmonth.html#Mar1999) Cadfael is a 12th century Welsh Benedictine monk residing in an Abbey in western England.) Dr. Pournelle describes the Monk’s Cell thusly:
I do much of my fiction in a room I call the monk’s cell. It’s an upstairs bedroom in the old part of the house – Chaos Manor has two upstairs, and they don’t connect – that used to be Alex’s room. There’s nothing up there but old high school textbooks, and research materials for current projects. In particular there are no telephones, Internet connections, or games. When I am up there I have little I can do but write. (http://www.chaosmanorreviews.org/open_archives/jep_column-312-b.php)
He elsewhere notes that the room contained “an exercise pad on the floor, and a room air conditioner” along with a Microsoft wireless sculpted Comfort Curve keyboard which had a key layout that he judged “just right for me” and on which he wrote he could “type nearly as fast as I can think.” He would carry a laptop (often Orlando, his T42p Thinkpad) containing his latest work up to the Cell and connect it to a large monitor and the Comfort Curve keyboard. (Microsoft still sells Comfort Curve keyboards; they’re available on Amazon.)
Even more interesting, though, is why he viewed the Monk’s Cell as necessary.
Few writers like to write. We like to have written. There are exceptions, notable among them my late friend Isaac Asimov, but most writers really hate to sit down and work. The key to success is to force ourselves to put fingers to the keyboard and tailbone on the chair.
This is not a new phenomenon. Somerset Maugham, one of the great writers of the last century, hated writing so much that he would go out on his veranda at 9 AM and sit, pen in hand and tablet on lap, writing “W. Somerset Maugham” over and over again until 1 PM. This was so boring that he would begin to write to escape the tedium. In my case the monk’s cell serves the same purpose. (http://www.chaosmanorreviews.org/open_archives/jep_column-312-b.php)
Writers hate to write? (That next 979,500 words is gonna hurt.) An interesting admission, but perhaps there’s more to it.
[In the] daytime the phone rings, people send me emails, people come to the front door – and while I can write columns and non-fiction and keep up my web site under those conditions, I cannot possibly write fiction that way
Clearly the Monk’s Cell was more than a means to force his putting “fingers to the keyboard.” It served as a sanctuary, a refuge from distractions fortified against interruptions. Younger writers might dispense with a Monk’s Cell, as Pournelle discloses, but those of us further along better reserve that spare bedroom.
It wasn’t always thus. I wrote my first published novel, Red Heroin, while life went on around me. Sometimes I’d take my IBM Selectric typewriter (surely some of you remember typewriters! And carbon paper, and Sno-Pake, and…) into a bedroom, but I did a lot of work out in the living room. Over the years, though, I have become a bit more sensitive. Now when I write fiction I retreat to the Monk’s Cell.
And some of us, even further along, and more sensitive still (ahem), might need to look into that monastery.
The Tibetan Rituals
Now, about that exercise mat in the Monk’s Cell. In the July, 2006 addendum to his “How to Get My Job” essay, Dr. Pournelle describes how it fits in to his writing routine.
My writing routine consists of retiring to the monk’s cell, a place where there’s nothing to do but write; working for a couple of hours until I am tired; then doing the Five Tibetan Rituals, preferably 21 repetitions but as few as five will have a beneficial effect.
That frees up enough energy that I can work for another hour or so. They also have the beneficial effect of pretty well eliminating back problems. I still do some of the Anderson stretches as well, but the Tibetan Rituals are an excellent source of energy and a remedy to arthritis
(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Tibetan_Rites)
The Five Tibetan Rites, believed to have originated more than 2,500 years ago, were unknown to the western world until allegedly revealed to author Peter Kelder by an unidentified British army colonel who at one time was stationed in India. Kelder described the rites in The Eye of Revelation, published in 1939. Like Tibet, Chaos Manor too has its lost treasures waiting for intrepid explorers to find them (and writers to write about them).
The Lost Treasures of Chaos Manor
Dr. Pournelle read widely in fields spanning economics, political science, history, current affairs, management, aerospace, most branches of the physical sciences, mathematics, operations research, mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, historical novels, and, of course, all manner of sub-fields related to computers (including programming). He would typically review and recommend one or two non-computer books in the Winding Down section of his monthly column along with one or two computer books. A trove of non-computer book recommendations excerpted from his monthly columns from 1994 through 2006 may be found, organized chronologically, on this web page: https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reviews/bookmonth.html
Even when extracted from the column, these reviews make good reading (and serve as good writing examples); the reviews won’t lead you astray either. The non-computer books haven’t gone out of date, though many are out of style . I’ve never been disappointed taking up one of his recommendations.
His ”Computing at Chaos Manor” columns from 2006 to July 2011 also contain Winding Down sections with both computer and non-computer book reviews; these columns are available on the Open Archives pages: http://www.chaosmanorreviews.org/open_archives/
(These columns are not directly accessible from the old Chaos Manor home page; you need to use the above link.) The columns have begun to show their age on the technical front, but continue to be worthwhile. He had tremendous perspective on the computer industry at that point and it’s fascinating to see him spot trends you know will eventuate.
Jerry’s columns represent superb technical writing. Fortunately, the Internet Archive makes available old issues of Byte magazine, giving us a treasure trove of Dr. Pournelle’s columns. (https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine) The content, though dated, makes for an interesting study of the history of technology. You’ll enjoy looking back and surprises await you. I chanced upon the September, 1995 column to find a fascinating discussion of distance learning – a quarter of a century old yet as apropos as can be.
Reading and writing go hand-in-hand. Dr. Pournelle never stated this explicitly in his advice on writing, but clearly voluminous reading is a precondition for great writing – provided, of course, you read the right stuff. Dr. Pournelle’s book recommendations will ensure you encounter thought provoking material.
Books alone, though, won’t suffice. As a writer, you’ll also need to keep up with current events on a broad scale; Dr. Pournelle baked that into his daily routine.
Reading Routine
Dr. Pournelle enjoyed reading The Wall Street Journal every morning at breakfast. One of the world’s great newspapers, it covers business extensively, but also has an excellent technology section and book review section. If you miss Dr. Pournelle’s column, with its myriad product reviews, consider Joanna Stern’s entertaining technology column (she also makes great product review videos). (https://www.wsj.com/news/author/joanna-stern). The Bookshelf section of the Wall Street Journal (https://www.wsj.com/news/types/bookshelf) examines books on eclectic topics; the reviewers are themselves exceptional writers. Indeed, the writing is universally superb; reading Stern’s column and the Bookshelf will help your writing. They’ll also help fill the painful void left by Dr. Pournelle’s passing. (And, to let you in on a secret, my hope is this essay will help you in that regard as well.)
TL;DR
When I first encountered the expression TL;DR, I thought it might be some strange sideways ASCII emoji. but later discovered it stands for “Too Long; Didn’t Read.” Dr. Pournelle’s columns were rarely short, yet we read them. They didn’t seem long. Of course, there’s a bit of self-selection here; if you read Jerry Pournelle, a short attention span isn’t one of your problems. Concise writing with a high information density is to be lauded, but that doesn’t always correlate to length. Indeed, there are short articles I’ve abandoned after a paragraph or two. Despite their brevity, the writing just wasn’t that good. When you’ve become accustomed to Pournelle, you get a little picky. The last section of Dr. Pournelle’s columns, “Winding Down”, is my favorite one, but I was often unhappy to arrive at it. I didn’t want the column to end.
You’ve come a long way since beginning this essay; you’ve learned a lot. Here’s the short version of what you’ve covered, collected as Pournelle’s Habits of Highly Productive Writers.
Pournelle’s Habits of Highly Productive Writers
- You must write.
- You must finish what you write.
- You must avoid counter-productive rewriting.
- You must use a grammar checker (as an expeditious means of learning good grammar).
- What you write must be grammatically correct (until you’re really, really good).
- You must write coherent paragraphs with topic sentences.
- You must be able to write anywhere, whenever a free block of time presents.
- You must be able to record notes wherever and whenever ideas occur to you.
- You must have at least one place (a Monk’s Cell) free of distractions where you can be maximally productive.
- You must read – a lot, with the corollary that what you read must be excellent.
This is the abbreviated “cut-to-the-chase” version that the “TL;DR” folks prefer; I like Jerry’s luxuriously long columns much better (but the short version makes a nice summary).
Dr. Pournelle’s guidance improved my writing (I had nowhere to go but up) and will help you too. Thanks to your industrial strength Pournelle-reader attention span, you’ve already got a leg up on many of the habits. Indeed, by adopting these habits, you may become the next Jerry Pournelle. (And if you do become the next Jerry Pournelle, please make your generous thank you check payable to …)
And now, in honor of Jerry’s closing segment, it’s time to wind down this essay.
Winding Down
Dr. Pournelle always closed his columns with a “Winding Down” section wherein he would give book recommendations, usually a computer book of the month, a non-computer book of the month, a (computer) game of the month, and a movie of the month.
The books of the month are two of Dr. Pournelle’s lesser-known titles; neither is written in collaboration. These are the first of Jerry’s books I read and I found them superb. Both may be classified as military science fiction.
King David’s Spaceship, 1980 (earlier version serialized in Analog 1971-1972)
West of Honor, 1976
Jerry served as an artillery officer in the Korean War and maintained an interest in military history, a subject now nearly vanished from academia despite its importance. (Predictions to the contrary, history didn’t end and military history hasn’t even slowed down.) His background clearly influenced his fiction. Be careful, though; they’re page-turners. Both books are available in Kindle editions.
The computer book of the month is Natural Language Processing with Python: Analyzing Text with the Natural Language Toolkit by Steven Bird, Ewan Klein, and Edward Loper, 1st edition (June 12, 2009), published by O’Reilly Media and available for the Amazon Kindle. Dr. Pournelle recommended this book enthusiastically. The book requires a basic understanding of Python programming, but that doesn’t hurt much, and learning about linguistics can’t but help our writing skills. Who knows? You may end up developing an app that improves everyone’s writing. (And if you do, please again remember to make your generous thank you check payable to …)
Jerry enjoyed strategy games, especially turn-based strategy games, now a small but still vibrant segment of the computer gaming market. Two of his favorites were Sid Meir’s Civilization and Master of Orion. Civilization, in the form of Civilization VI is still a going concern, it’s latest version, Civilization VI: Gathering Storm, being released in 2020. Civilization remains as addictive as Dr. Pournelle described – “just one more turn …”
Master of Orion is equally addicting. Its 1990’s era graphics reveal the space strategy game’s age but don’t detract from the fun. It’s available as a DOSBOX game from Good Old Games.
Of course, you’ll be too busy writing to spend much time playing computer games, but when you need a break, “Civ” and “MOO” provide engrossing escapes.
The movie of the month is … is … not a movie at all. Watch Jerry’s advice to writers on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKIvdDnAwJA .
Okay. It’s time to put your fingers on the keyboard and get started on your first million – words that is (the million dollars comes later).
Now, if I could just get this essay published on the new Chaos Manor website. … Say, that looks like an acceptance letter from the Pournelle family… Pulitzer! (I know; I know. But it sure feels like it. )
About the Author
Jim Bonang is a software engineer and aspiring non-fiction writer. He has just 978,000 more words to go. (Yep; real soon now.)
Copyright © 2020 James Bonang – all rights reserved.