What I've been building

It's been busy times 'round these parts. After finishing my novelette, I fell into a bit of writing spell – it's been a fantastic creative outlet for me, replacing the zatz I got from doing improv (and arguably a better fit for my narrative-heavy brain, which would sometimes go haywire when people took scenes that were very clearly developing in one way and just torching them).

So where this post in the past might have exclusively focused on software (and don't worry, there's plenty of it), I now also want to include some of the writing WIPs, because I'm learning as much through working on those that's applicable to "building," broadly, as I am on the code side.

The first lesson/takeaway that's been the most useful (and, regrettably, the first thing they tell you when you start to build software) is build for yourself, not for others or hypotheticals. This actually came as a result of the feedback I got from Out Loud.

I have been absolutely blown away by the reception it's gotten (my gobs are thoroughly smacked; my gasts, flabbered), with hundreds of reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, currently sitting at somewhere north of 4.25 stars. I have no idea how that many people are even aware of it, but I'm just overjoyed that people are reading it and enjoying. I've even had people emailing me about it, which mostly surprised me because they didn't sound like bots!

A dear friend, who was the first to read it, said she loved it but immediately harangued me for leaving the ending where I did (they get together but don't kiss or go on a date). This was similar to what I heard from other friends who read it, so I immediately set out to expand it to a "proper" ending.

And it didn't work. At all.

I sent the extra chapters to the same friend who confirmed my suspicions, that I wrote the same chapter twice and the whole thing didn't hang together. I rewrote it, twice, and then just kinda let it sit because it still didn't feel right to me. It wasn't until I saw a two-star review on Goodreads ("Overuse of parentheses. Very tiresome!") that it clicked: this wasn't the story I wanted to write.

To be clear, I believe that is a perfectly valid review of the book! It does overuse parentheses, and absolutely could be super tiresome. But I didn't write the book for that person. I wrote it for me – the story I wanted to read, in the voice I wanted to read it in. And that story ended exactly where it did (with them holding hands, about to go on their first date). It's not that I'm not interested in the rest of the story, or wouldn't mind finding out about it ... it just wasn't the story I wanted to write. And I think both I and the book are better for sticking to the parts that really sing to me.

It also helps immensely that I am not writing as a career. I have no delusions that this is ever going to be anything but a fun hobby project, and I actually love that I don't need to worry about market pressures or writing for a specific audience. I'm sure if I ever get around to publishing another finished work and it doesn't go crazy well like this one I'll feel disappointed, but I'll also hold onto the happiness I felt just having finished the work and being proud of it once completed. That internal, intrinsic validation/motivation is where the real value lies, at least for me. Everything else is just a huge, unexpected but very welcome bonus.

With that thought in mind, I've also been honing some of my tooling. I built a writing app, Writtle (if you want to write a little, see), because I got tired of trying to keep track of individual Markdown files for chapters and I wanted a more integrated experience with story bible/metadata.

It also has some of the nerdy deterministic (no AI, thanks!) metrics I like to use to evaluate my prose (reading level, sentence length, vocab diversity) living right alongside, because to me pacing and word choice are just as important as the ideas. It's still very much being iterated on, but the important features (that it never loses work and it allows you to save whole drafts as versions inside the .writtle file) are already in place. I love writing in it, and am working on extending it so I can publish directly to here from inside it.

I've slimmed down some of Brainkeep's features, removing the bits I barely used (the iOS browser was particularly cumbersome, UX-wise) and improving the parts I use regularly (including needing to do an overhaul of podcasts/audiobook playing when I got on a 5-hour flight and realized I couldn't actually start audiobook playback without an internet connection 😬). I also wrote an Android app for the RSS/Read Later/Epub features so I can use it on my Boox ereader.

Also appearing in this photo is my first hardware project, KaityKeys! I use 1Password religiously for all my passwords, but I get extremely frustrated by having to install it on every machine where I need to login (it's cumbersome, insecure if it's not my machine, and impossible if I'm on a Smart TV or work computer that doesn't allow it). So I took a little ESP32 board (with a screen, why not) that advertises itself as a generic HID keyboard and wrote a little iOS app that connects over Bluetooth Low Energy to beam passwords (copied and pasted), and can also just serve as a virtual keyboard in a pinch.

I also very much want to create a janky version of a YubiKey with the same principles (passing it through my phone) but it's unclear whether any real providers would support my passthrough passkey device without certification, which costs in the thousands to tens of thousands of dollars and at that point I'll just buy a damn Yubikey.

And then I also have the aforementioned five or six different novel ideas that are in various stages of ideation, in addition to the one I'm still procastinating on the editing for. It's been a busy few months! I hope to get some new book reviews in soon, but I'm trying to relax my own expectations for output and just go with what feels right for me.