Inscribe is the weeklong Inkhaven that runs in Europe. It’s hosted just outside Barcelona at Casa Tilo, a palatial venue with an odd origin story: namely, a TPOT postrat got money from his Twitter friends to create the “ideal human habitat.” It’s much smaller than Lighthaven, but it also has a pool, so it’s impossible to say which space wins.
People were less stressed than at Inkhaven, partly from the pool and partly from five blog posts being not that hard to come up with. The shorter length also invited a wider demographic; some participants even had — gasp — jobs!
Communal meals brought everyone together; I felt that many among them could become lifelong friends, but that one week was violently short to know them … I recommended the organizers run future iterations for two weeks.
As is usual when you bring a bunch of bright people together, conversations were great fun. You will be able to guess who I am in this photo:
I wrote six pieces in five days.
First was I’ve seen Hell and it’s in Switzerland. I moved to Europe straight out of high school to save money on college and have adventures, and I’ve done both to my satisfaction. Now that I’m fed up and moving to the Bay I thought to write a farewell, as well as voice some of my growing frustrations with the continent. I’m not sure I did either of those in anything other than subtext but I’m pretty happy with the piece! It was my first attempt at ‘travel writing.’ and ended up dominated by one anecdote, but people seemed to really enjoy it. I foresee myself writing much more in this vein.
Second was The Slush and the Sauce. Working on Inkhaven 3 has been my first time doing “slush pile” work, and I weirdly love it — just sampling a wide variety of artifacts in volume and feeling how they taste against the tongue. I’m pretty sure it’s making me a better writer, and I’m definitely sure it’s making me a more confident writer … when I was first accepted to Inkhaven I was over the moon, sure that I had squeezed in only because I’d mentioned a friend on the application, but now I’m realizing that no I was actually just a strong applicant with good writing samples! Feels nice.
When asked at the start of the week what I wanted to write about I said “the near future.” Halfway through I realized I’d done nothing of the sort, and coincidentally saw “Go East” advertised:
this October, we’re taking a small group of writers, technologists, and people who move between the two worlds from San Francisco to Chicago aboard the California Zephyr, with several days set aside for focused writing, conversation, and reflection on technological progress.
Applications were due that day, so I thought I’d two bird one stone it and write some futuristbait; The only two future jobs are hipster and heroin addict was the result. It’s probably the piece from the week I’m most proud of, though it must be said I burned six blog post ideas to write it so if I don’t get chosen to ride the train I will be sad.
The next day I had to resort to Speech-to-Text for Rambling flat on my back in pain. This is the sort of post where everyone comes up to me and says they liked reading it but I have to ignore the reward signal because posts like these add very little to the world. Though maybe people liked it because it was unmannered, and I should be less deliberate / loosen up more often? Something to consider.
Once the painkillers kicked in I banged out Truth, knowledge, artificial intelligence, and TVTropes the same night. I was frustrated with the result because it felt poorly-justified and a completely antirigorous just-so theory. Possibly the idea doesn’t deserve a better treatment though.
The bad taste in my mouth continued throughout Conqtra Conq (or: why plagiarism will save the human soul), which fought me so much that I published a 500-word draft at midnight and continued working past 2 AM to bring it to heel. I’m still unhappy with it.
All in all, I’m proud of the first three posts and not of the last few. I’d dipped my toes into the tech-future-essay-thing before at Inkhaven with “posthumanism is the opposite of fascism” but hadn’t been satisfied there either; it’s like I can’t feel the bottom of the pool with these. I write them because they occur to me as a possible perspective and feel fresh and interesting, but I never know if someone like Robin Hanson has already written the subject to death. Maybe these are eye-rollingly infantile and I’m just saying trivial things everyone has already thought of!
Two more examples: the slop illusion, which feels incomplete to me (ought to be one section of a much longer post?) and The future is spying on us. The latter I wrote at a friend’s place and showed him afterwards, whereupon he said: “I don’t understand why you’re doing this, I don’t think it’s true, and I don’t think it’s good writing.” But then a few months later someone singled it out as a piece they specifically enjoyed, so who knows.
I think I should probably continue writing these & just push through the sickly uncertainty whether I’m producing anything good or worthwhile — resilience is a good quality — but the last couple pieces of Eurohaven left me so dissatisfied I’m reconsidering whether daily posts is still a good strategy for me to improve; how long I can roll under the hits to morale, that sort of thing. Maybe more time and effort per piece would serve me better. Just thinking out loud.
I’m alive, I’m writing. Big things are coming. All in all, life is good.