The Tolkien Editor: Unleash your inner creative writer

Or How to make an irritating monkey your very best writing companion

http://tolkien.theproductiveprogrammer.blog

Video Demo

Have you ever wished you had someone to help you write better? A writing companion of your very own? How about a cute little monkey that bounces around your room, chattering uproariously as it scatters your drafts left and right and rips your hard work to shreds?

Ok. Ok. I how that sounds. You're thinking it's a nightmare! And yet - astonishingly - it turns out that this pesky monkey is the most perfect gift a writer could ever have!

Of course, I don't expect you to believe me. It looks a bit loony but give me just a few minutes to convince you. First let me set the stage. Who am I and why should you be listening to me in the first place? Well, I am an engineer by training - and having spent my life writing technical documents meant to be read only by other engineers I found that when I started to write for the general public, my words were not only incomprehensible but - worse - completely boring! They were so bad that I would fall asleep just reading my notes back to myself!

So I discovered, humbly and painfully, the lesson so many of you know: that writing is hard. And let me tell you that it is doubly hard for an engineer - used and trained to the cold hard impersonal terseness of tech-speak. But I wanted - needed - to share my ideas and stories with others. I could not bear them to live inside of me alone. And so I decided one solitary morning, that I needed to master the difficult art of writing, whatever it took of me.

I took up writing seriously. I started with blog posts. Then I wrote web copy. Marketing copy. Sales copy. I tried my hand writing short stories. I wrote and I wrote and I wrote. Then I wrote some more. Much of it was poor. More was just shy of pathetic. But I persisted. And I improved. I won't lie to you - it was a slow and painful, often humbling, process.

One day, I came across a book - The Robert Collier Letterbook. It was recommended by a few authors that I liked and so I hunted it down and read it. And I found, like so many other writers, that reading this slim little volume suddenly improved my writing a hundredfold! In it I learnt that the process I had been taught in school of "writing bullet points" and "outlining" were actually more hindrance than help. Using them was like using a life jacket to swim - it will keep you afloat at the cost of never being able to swim with grace or speed. If you wish to cut through the sparkling water like a fish instead of bobbing up and down like a cork you must abandon these crutches. There is no other way.

To be a truly great writer that connects with your reader, you must realize that great writing flows from your creative self. Not from the plodding, stodgy, step-by-step, color-by-number part of your mind but the deeper wellspring which is dances in you and that you are so afraid to bring to the light for fear of everyone's criticism. It is this deep part of yourself that you do not want to disturb - that you may not even know that well yourself and that you find hard to trust. The ancients called this "the muse" and they insisted loudly that you had to find it in order to produce the art you were born to produce. And they were right.

To do this, first we must give up the illusion that we can write. We must surrender to the muse and whatever gods there be with humility. We then allow our writing to be guided so that the end result is a surprise - even to us! During this writing process, we must be totally present in the moment to moment flow. Let go of worrying about the past or the future - neither the previous sentence nor where our writing is journeying should concern us. We must learn to trust the inner voice - our inner muse.

If you allow it, words will flow out of your fingers and onto the page. And do not stand there frowning and checking them as if you are the security guard at the party or the toll collector at the highway. Trust yourself. Let yourself write.

The way to write:

The way to write is simple (although not easy). It consists of just five steps.

1. Set a Goal. Know what you want out of the writing. Breath deeply and allow it to sink into your mind.
2. Connect with your reader. Sit down next to her and make her real in your mind. Your writing must speak to her directly or it will be no good.
3. Now let go of everything - doubt, plans, strategies - everything. Be present in the moment and simply write whatever comes to you. Do not edit, or second-guess, or even stop to think about what is happening at the moment. Just let go. Let go and write. You will find your voice begins to sing.
4. When you are done, take a break. Then go back and edit your writing. Rewrite. Rewrite again. Do it simply and with joy. Polish your rough words. Tune your phrases. Paint different pictures. Play.
5. Stop and deliver. You will never get it perfect so at some point just stop. It is good enough. And it is good. You can do better but you will do that next time.

The Monkey

Now, besides this invaluable method of writing, I found the most interesting nugget in the Letterbook where the author described, almost in passing, that one could drop words, even entire sentences, reorder paragraphs and if you came back to it a week later it would read just as good!

How strange, I thought. How wonderfully remarkable if true. And so interesting that I felt I just had to try it out. Why not? I do not know everything and there are more things in heaven and earth than I can dream of, as Shakespear would say.

And so I did try it. The first time it did feel unnatural. The cluttered and unreadable monkey sentences I found oddly upsetting. But, strange to say, as I progressed I began to find it wonderfully freeing. And - even more important - I found I enjoyed writing a lot more!

You may not be convinced yet. Perhaps you feel this nonsense will not work for you. It feels too complicated. Well it may well be - I can only say what my experience has been. You would have to try it out for yourself and see if it fits you as well. If it does, you will find new enjoyment in writing and your writing will elevate. But it is up to you.

Because of my technical background I created this application that "acts like" our pesky primate. I am calling it Tolkien - who I hope will take it in the spirit of a tribute from a disciple to a master in the field (and not an insult in being compared to a monkey). With Tolkien at your side, trying out the technique is a breeze. If you would like to try and instantly improve your own writing, just give it a shot and see how easy it is!

Using Tolkien

Just point your browser to:

http://tolkien.theproductiveprogrammer.blog

And you're good to go!

Video Demo

If you want to host your own open source copy - Tolkien runs in two versions:

1. A Web Application that you can use from any browser
2. A Command-Line version that you can use with any good text editor

Running the Tolkien Web Application

To use Tolkien on the web simply start up the server:

    node .

then and point to it from your browser and you're ready to go!

    http://localhost:8080/

Running the Tolkien Command Line Application

To use Tolkien on the command line you need a good modern text editor where you can edit plain text files (MSWord and Pages will not work for now).

1. Download this application and point it to the file you are working in:

    node cmdline.js 'My Writing.txt'

2. Now every time you save your file, Tolkien will monkey around with it. So you need to save the file and immediately reload it. Many editors automatically detect this change and will ask you to reload the file. If it does not, you need to find how to 'refresh' your file from disk. (For example, in vim you can be save(:w) and reload (:e)).

And Yes, it is safe to use

I know what you're thinking - what? I should let this monkey tear up all my work? My sweat and tears? "Of course," you say, "Some of my writing can be improved but I have taken the trouble and produced some real gems here! This is no way write winning prose if it is snatched out of my hands even as I type."

It's all very well to experiment - but you naturally don't want to waste your efforts.

You are, of course, completely right. And our smart little monkey knows this so it keeps our original writing intact and instead provides new alternatives just below them. In order to get a 'clean' draft you need now to only delete the monkey's contributions and you get back your own writing.

Now this may sound like a lot of work for dubious gains. Why get chimpanzee-d prose thrown in our faces that we just have to get rid of it and go back to our own work? It sounds silly and it clever people would say it can't do anything at all to our writing. Yet it does. It just works. There is something alchemical about seeing the alternatives and the bad sentences and the odd words. It builds an exhilarating freedom that feeds on itself. As you glance through, shaking your head and deleting the primitive attempts your monkey pal has made you will find something triggers in you. You can rewrite more freely and occasionally a whole train of through will open up that leads you down a new and beautiful adventure.

A monkey can make us a better writer. Who would have thought?