Why are we more comfortable talking about output than art?
Writers are often less comfortable talking about aesthetics than productivity.
I’ve had this feeling about NaNoWriMo for a while, which is why this year I switched to a daily time goal rather than word count. And I didn’t write 50,000 words… but I didn’t need to. What I needed to do was reach the end of my book, which I did. I’ve gotten a lot out of NaNo, including dear friendships, and have nothing to prove anymore.
But I think this is interesting analysis of why it’s proven so successful: it’s easy to measure how much or how long you’ve written. It’s not possible to measure quality. And capitalism drives us towards quantification, towards the tangible.
If people won’t respect your qualitative creativity, maybe they’ll at least respect your quantitative output?
It ties to imposter syndrome, and the fact that honestly IMO it takes about ten years to learn how to tell a story and write a complete work that works, but that’s a long time to feel like you’ve got nothing to show. At least if you have word count that feels real, versus recognizing the shift in your storytelling abilities, learning what writing method works for you, and learning to recognize what is good and what needs work, to be able to recognize your own strengths and weaknesses.
We invest a lot of our identities in the things we make, so it’s not enough to be a writer: we must be a good writer, otherwise we’re wasting our time, under capitalism. And we can’t weigh what makes a good writer, so metrics let us feel more comfortable in the identity.
it’s important to remember that time spent in front of your computer, the number of drafts written, the number of words written… none of those actually mean anything by themselves.
This makes me think too of my feelings about website analytics, and how the ubiquity and normativity of tracking leads us to fall into the trap of tracking stats we don’t have any need or purpose for. What we can measure becomes our focus, because it’s concrete, and leads to the presumption that more is better. It’s easy to be distracted from our ultimate goals by more quantifiable factors.
8 replies on “Writing Metrics and Capitalism”
Replied to The Presence Prison by Jason Fried (world.hey.com)
I really hate the status indicator. It’s a dumb system that guesses what I’m doing based on if my mouse is moving enough or my calendar says I’m booked. It’s a tool that doesn’t work for the style of work I do: largely unscheduled days I spend making things and making things happen, communicating primarily via email, and doing knowledge work that needs long blocks of uninterrupted time.
I especially hate away. I think of the description in Bird by Bird of what counts as writing – when she’s bouncing on her sitting ball looking out the window, it looks like she’s doing nothing. Only when she’s typing does it appear to be work. Yet the real writing happens as she’s sitting, thinking, looking out the window; the typing wouldn’t happen without the thinking part. (Scalzi too.) We only interpret the loggable, measurable action as work, when much of what we do and make would probably be improved by stepping back to think more before doing.
But the status indicator is dumb. It wants busy. Only production is fruitful.
And it’s true, process is important, and showing up is needed for forward progress… but the system isn’t smart enough to know when we’re doing something outside of the computer. Thinking, sketching, brainstorming, proofing, planning, making lists, taking calls… all things I do off the computer. Real work, made invisible by the dumb status light.
This Article was mentioned on tracydurnell.com
What’s an effective process for completing creative work? Last updated 2023 October 27 | More of my big questions Sub-questions How do reading, writing, and thinking fit together? How do I decide what to work on? How can I make progress on multiple projects at once? How can I make progress on long-term projects while…
How can I write an engaging novel? Last updated 2023 October 15 | More of my big questions Sub-questions What makes a story engaging? What makes characters compelling? What process should I follow for writing? Bookshelf Related books I’ve read since 2021. Links go to my book review. Intuitive Editing by Tiffany Yates Martin 2023-09-26…
How can our economy shift to better support people and the planet? Last updated 2023 October 27 | More of my big questions Sub-questions How can we make work better? How can workers be empowered within capitalism? How do new technologies impact workers? What are the problems with how business operates and workers are treated…
I just realized that generative AI pushes the same buttons for me as Roy Lichtenstein (fuck that guy): an elite using the work of the plebs to enrich himself.
Lichtenstein claimed his works, which reproduced panels from comic books at bigger scale with minor changes, were fair use. “Lowbrow” works created by or for the working class exist to serve the elite’s needs; elites, whether in tech or art, feel entitled to the works of those “beneath” them because they believe what they create using it is more valuable than the original works. Comic art is not respected in the fine art world / by the elites; his works were “fine art” while the reference material was commercial pulp.
Likewise, corporations (and society in general) don’t value writing or art or craftsmanship, so they’re 100% on board with stealing the intellectual property of millions to make a product designed to put those same people out of a job. Generative AI models could not exist without training data; the “feedstock” of other people’s creations are integral to the production of generative AI software. Every new version of ChatGPT is better because it’s been trained on more unlicensed, unauthorized training data used without permission or compensation.
Tech doesn’t make our lives easier. It makes them faster by Brett Scott We live in a mega-scale corporate capitalist economy, and in such a setting technology is never used to save time. It’s used to speed up production and consumption in order to expand the system. The basic rule is this: technology doesn’t make…
[…] With its emphasis on word count, National Novel Writing Month trains writers to focus on arguably the least challenging aspect of writing a novel. (I speak as a 10+ time former participant.) Like people who believe only the physical act of putting words on page counts as writing time / work, NaNoWriMo poses the risk of reducing writing to typing. […]