Outside the Lines

When I took my first workshop with the poet who became my thesis adviser, his first advice to me was to get a bigger notebook. Like, a really big one.

I had a thing for poetry in very short lines and was totally overusing the line break. I really didn’t think my notebook had much to do with it (That’s just how I write. Short lines! It’s my thing!) and couldn’t see the logic in carrying around a giant drawing pad for the purpose of writing poetry.

Still, I tried it. And it changed everything. All of a sudden, the page was so big that I wasn’t seeing the page anymore. I was seeing unbounded possibility.

When Editorially was first announced, my heart leapt. The fact that someone was trying to reinvent writing on screens for screens and was doing it so thoughtfully—well, it just made my heart sing.

I tried it out first in my work with Brian on Uncommon. It took a moment or two to readjust to working in a new way, in a new kind of space, but oh, it was such a clean and beautiful space, so I kept going.

I was such a Pages person for a while and then a Google Docs person. But lately I’ve been writing everything I can Editorially.

The collaborative aspects work really well, and Markdown makes the editing process about a million times easier. But the thing that really sold me? No page breaks.

Have you ever tried writing on an infinite page? Well, let me tell you, it is a wonderful thing. In fact, let’s scrap the idea of “pages” altogether, shall we? It’s so freeing to write and edit a piece as a whole, instead of worrying the whole time about the page count.

It’s as much fun as coloring outside the lines and then just tossing out your coloring book and painting on the walls.

P.S. Speaking of coloring outside the lines and painting on the walls, have you seen what Elle’s working on lately? Amazing.