When Tom Chandler of The Writer Underground offered to profile me for his new series, “Working Writers,” at first I was honored and thrilled — and then I got nervous.
When was the last time I actually stopped to think about things like my workflow, my tools, my preferences? Or even the reasons why I chose them in the first place? I am a creature not so much of habit, but of efficiency; when something doesn’t work, I find something that does, and then I use it until it doesn’t, at which time I find something else that does. How do you make that process sound even remotely interesting?
In a sense, I am a fanatic about the tools I use. But in another sense, I’m not really. I don’t have to have the best, or the newest, or the most powerful. Instead, I look for the most reliable, the most dependable, the most well-designed. And then I work the hell out of it.
I’m a nut about efficient design. My tools are all like Charles Emerson Winchester III: they do one thing, they do it very well, and then they move on. I’m one of those people who takes it personally when a tool stops working.
And because of that, I don’t have a lot of new things to share. Everything I have to say about Rollabind, for example, I’ve already written on this blog. I still use the system every day and I rely on it as much as ever, but how many times can I say, “Yep, still usin’ it!” and still be interesting?
So I really thank Tom for the opportunity to sit and look at my systems and my processes, to see if the original logics still hold. Check out the interview here: “Working Writers: Paul Lagasse.”
Oh, and one thing has changed since the interview — I recently stopped using Path Finder. The search for alternatives was a very instructive lesson in workflow management. I will write about that here soon.
If I have anything interesting to say about it, that is.
