Alan Jacobs on how he uses Instapaper:
Whenever I see something online that I think I want to read, I put it in Instapaper — and then I try to leave it for a while. Often when I visit Instapaper the chief thing I do is delete the pieces I only had thought I needed to read. So for me it’s not just a read-later service, it’s a don’t-read-later service. But that only works if I don’t go there too often. I try to catch up with my Instapaper queue once a week at most.
Stealing this move.
A while back I found myself in the middle of doing something and thinking, Why on Earth did I agree to do this?
There’s a question that helps you avoid accepting invitations you’ll later regret: “Would I do it tomorrow?”
Here’s David Plotz to explain (who learned it from his wife Hanna Rosin, and her friend, New Yorker staff writer Margaret Talbot):
That’s it—those five words. Not: Would I do it on some theoretical day in the future? This is the crucial question: Would I upend whatever I am doing tomorrow so that I can go there and do that?
Are they paying you enough to skip your daughter’s soccer game tomorrow? Is the panel interesting enough that you don’t mind asking your colleague to cover for you, tomorrow? Is the conference important enough to your career that you would blow off your college roommate’s visit, which is tomorrow. When you get the invitation, pay no attention at all to its far-flung date: Move it mentally to tomorrow.
Tomorrow makes decisions simple…
A little extreme, maybe, but it helps me just a teensy bit more than Derek Sivers’ Hell Yeah or No. (I posted this on Twitter and James Kochalka responded,“ If I lived by that creed i’d just never do anything, I think. And also be happier.”)
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Related reading: the “Learn to say no” section in Keep Going.
The outside edge of a book’s pages opposite of the spine is called the “fore-edge.” Like many things that are neglected or overlooked, it’s a place of great creative potential. Check out this video with fore-edge painter Martin Frost:
I don’t usually do all that much with the fore-edges of my books, except for my notebooks, which I sometimes index by rubbing ink or pencil over the page edges of some sections and labelling them. (See the logbook above.)
Most recently it occurred to me that I could use fore-edge indexing as a way to track the structure of a book. I was reading a book and it was going splendidly and then all the sudden I got bogged down. I suspected it had something to do with pacing and chapter length. So I did a fore-edge index and soon I had visual evidence of my suspicion: swelling chapters broke up the flow. (I could probably find similar evidence based on where I happened to dog-ear a page.)
This might be a good exercise for writers: make a fore-edge index of some of your favorite books, and see how they are structured and paced. For books that alternate narratives or subjects, you can use different colors. (See above.)
Filed under: marginalia
To celebrate Independent Bookstore Day 2022 and the 10th anniversary of the Steal Like an Artist, my publisher Workman and I produced a free 12-page glossy zine called “Read Like an Artist,” with 10 tips for a better life with books.
Here is a very short list of the bookstores who ordered a ton (250+) of copies:
There are literally hundreds of bookstores participating, so check with your favorite local indie to see if they got copies!
If you live in Austin, Texas or nearby, on Saturday, April 30, I’ll be at two of my favorite bookstores here in town, signing and drawing in my books and hand-selling my favorites.
10AM-12PM – I’ll be at Bookpeople, our flagship store in town. Get there early — they should have around 100 zines.
2PM-4PM – I’ll be at Black Pearl Books, my hyper-local neighborhood shop. They’ll have about 25 zines, so they might be out by the time I show up.
Our friends at Bookwoman should have about 100 copies, too, so that might actually be your best bet for snagging one in the 512 area code. (If you’re down south, I just found out that Reverie Books has a handful, too.)
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In a letter to a friend, Beatrix Potter wrote about her recent adventures in “proplifting,”
Mrs Satterthwaite says stolen plants always grow, I stole some ‘honesty’ yesterday, it was put to be burnt in a heap of refuse! I have had something out of nearly ever garden in the village.
Elsewhere, she said she was relieved when people offered her plants. “I don’t feel like such a robber of the village gardens.”
(h/t @brookemackey, Source: Beatrix Potter’s Gardening Life)
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