I Would Love to Work With You

I suppose if I have a single skill that I could say "this is what I'm good at", it would be telling a story. I don't know why I have this skill, I just do. I remember when I realized I had it, too: it was my first year in college as I stared down at an essay I wrote and saw a big red "A" circled on the front page. "See me" was written under it.

I did as instructed and walked slowly up to the professor after class. Back in those days, we turned our essays in on actual paper, and mine was rolled up in my right hand with a bit of sweat starting to dampen the pages.

Yes, sir? You wanted to see me?

I do Rob. I have to ask you about this paper. Is this your work, entirely?

Yes, of course. My mom is an English teacher and would never forgive me if she thought -

That's OK, I believe you. It's just... this image you've created here with this sentence... It's wonderful. I'm still thinking about it.

What my professor was talking about was a phrase that hit me as I as I was trying to explain my childhood predilection for playing with words, especially ones that sounded funny, like moist or pamphlet. To try and explain this, I said that I "liked to pound round words into square sentences". The idea of a "round" word had to do with the way it sounded in my brain, and a "square" sentence was a clunky one, so to spice things up I would... well you get it.

At the time, I honestly didn't think was that profound; it was a one-off idea I had and just rolled with it. My professor loved it, and told me that I have a way with telling a story that he enjoyed, and that I shouldn't stop writing.

That's what a good teacher can do for you: help you see the skills inside that you never thought you had.

Taking the Time Makes the Difference

I need time to create a story, however. I'm not exactly skilled at improvisation and, indeed, it's gotten me in to trouble more than a few times. I like to toss the ideas and concepts in my mind, breaking them apart as I said above. No idea is ever fully-formed, and is usually a collection of other ideas repackaged. I like to rip off the packaging and see what makes the idea tick.

That was my job at Microsoft for the last 6 years. It was also my job before that, when I worked on my own, creating books like The Imposter's Handbook and A Curious Moon and video productions like Take Off With Elixir and SQL in Orbit.

That's only the first part of telling a story, however. The other part is you, sitting where you are right now, reading the words I'm putting together. Not the pluralized "you", meaning everyone out there reading this. No, and hopefully this doesn't sound creepy, but I'm thinking of the singular you and how these words are settling into your eyes (if you've made it this far).

Thinking about the audience was what made working on This Developer's Life such a cursedly wonderful side project. I would explore, play, try something new, rerecord... because I knew you might be listening.

Take the idea of fonts, for example. Most people (you included) probably don't think too much about them. Maybe you know one or two, and almost assuredly have one or two you hate (Arial, Comic Sans, etc).

So how do I spin the notion of fonts into a story? Good question, and here's the answer:

2.0.5 Typo

Who cares about typefaces and why should you? Well, these guys do and you should start caring. Rob and Scott explore the world of reading online with one of the godfathers in the world of typeface and fonts.

This Developer's Life

I'd write more about that episode (and fonts too), but I have to get back to this post. It's starting to wander some.

Omit Needless Words

I'm a fan of Stephen King, and this is going to sound weird, but not because of his books, though I like many of them. I love his ability to weave a narrative and keep people guessing. That's really his trick: always keep people guessing.

I've read his book On Writing perhaps 7 times over now, and I always hear something different. That's a good writer right there: he's kept me guessing to the point where I need to read the book repeatedly to see what else I've missed.

King echoes William Faulkner's famous line (though no one can be sure who really said it first) in On Writing that I just love:

Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.

It's the literary version of laying off a large percentage of your workforce, I suppose.

Another bit of advice that King echoes is from Strunk and White's The Elements of Style:

Omit needless words

I suppose I could apply that to this post, but I would rather apply it to my resume, if I'm honest.

If I trimmed my resume as much as possible, killed every darling in there, and omitted every needless word, I would be left with this:

I tell stories people like

I can do other things too, of course, but what I love to do is just this: think about you, the reader or viewer, and tell you a story about what I'm working on.

If you can use this sort of thing, here's my resume. I would love to work with you, to tell the story of your company and why it does what it does. Maybe you founded it, or perhaps you lead a small project within. No matter what: there's a story there to be told and I would love to help you tell it. That, and I need a job.

Change can be extremely hard, especially when it's the destructive kind. I'll be OK. In fact I'll be more than OK, I'll be working with you. I hope.

With love and appreciation,
Rob