Category: Recommendations

Time is limited, and since I am usually moving several projects forward at any given moment, I tend to use what Oliver Burkeman refers to, in his excellent book “Four Thousand Weeks,” as radical incrementalism. For me, this means writing in small increments of time, usually an hour or two. Sometimes it’s just a few minutes spent capturing ideas in IOS Notes during a liminal part of the day. As a creative process, this actually works well because breaks are essential to my clarity of mind, particularly during revisions, which make up the bulk of the work. Typically, when revising my work I go back over the previous sessions of work before starting a new section. This is an effective way of capturing errors—choppy flow or snags in readability. In this manner, it’s possible to produce book length works without bailing on everyday life.

Other than Notes, one of my favourite apps, I work in Scrivener (v3.4). Scrivener allows me to pull a project apart, so the pieces are laid out like a plastic model kit. I am not one of those magical writers that can hold it all in my head so I need a trusted repository. For this reason Scrivener is well suited to the incremental approach. It’s much easier to face a single chapter, with a synopsis and notes on the same screen, than a Word document with its crushing column of 100K words. I have tried many other writing apps, but I keep returning to Scrivener.

We lost David Lynch this week. His death could not have come at a worse time. But it was the times that took him. I read this morning that he died from complications resulting from being moved due to the LA fires. Poignant news given that fire was such a critical aspect of his vision.

I never met David Lynch, though it was not for lack of trying: Thank you for sending this very thoughtful request. Unfortunately, Mr. Lynch would like to politely decline participation in this project. However, he wishes you the best of luck, and thanks you for thinking of him. Thanks for understanding. I would wager he never saw my proposal, but it’s fun to day-dream about the what if. Lynch’s daydreams gave me, and so many others, touchstones on the journey of creative expression. His aesthetic spoke to me from the first. I grew up in a heavily industrialized area and the sounds and visuals of Eraserhead felt immediately familiar. The Elephant Man was profound, and even Dune, which he later distanced himself from, had a powerful effect on my developing artistic sensibilities. I can think of no other artist, except maybe the Brothers Quay, that so excited and gave me hope. Lynch’s view on creativity was, and remains, refreshing and liberating.

• Richard