Snow Leopard intermission
15 years ago, noted computers company “Apple” released an operating system that they proudly touted as having no new features. Instead, they focused entirely on bug fixes, refining what they’d put together in the past to make for something faster, more stable, and more secure.
I think of this often. Not enough weight is given to the idea of editing, of refinement, of stepping back & making the craft nicer. And I’ve spent a lot of 2024 thinking about all of this as we navigate the definitive conclusion of quantitative research and I slowly run out of new things to say when it comes to store design.
I love my job, and I’m proud of what I’ve put together over the years. I’ve written over 50,000 words a year since 2013. Four books, a resource library, and two mailing lists are, effectively, half of my job. And I haven’t once stepped back to assess what I have and how I can make it all better.
I’d like that to change within the next couple of months. Draft needs its own Snow Leopard moment, where I write as little new stuff as possible and instead refine what we’ve already got. Some of it might appear new to you, of course, either because you’ve never happened on it before, or it got reworked so much that it may as well be “new.” But I have a very large library, and I need to stop and rework it.
That does not, for the record, mean I’m taking time off. It means I need to devote my precious writing time to something I seldom do and absolutely need to do more of, which is editing. I’ll be editing both on conceptual levels (what’s missing?) and tactical (messed up a comma, etc). I’ll be editing on a structural level, too: what goes in the blog? How do we introduce new readers? This all takes time & focus, and I’ve come to the realization that I can’t keep writing while I do all of that. I have limits; this is one of them.
You may be wondering why I don’t just hand this all off to someone else while continuing to make the clackity noise, and the answer is that I don’t think an editor is even appropriate at this stage. My writing always needs one or two edit passes by myself before I hand it all off to an editor. And an editor may rub out the things that make my voice my own, which has happened often in the past and rankles me like you wouldn’t believe.
In Draft’s first few years of existence, we were able to take intermission, where we paused all client work for a month to do all of this. We haven’t taken intermission since Draft Revise launched 11 years ago – which itself came from an intermission. As I see it, either I pause all of my retainers & other client work, which is a very bad idea, or I find another way to make the time for a Snow Leopard moment.
I have several goals during this period:
A book editing & compiling the best of text, as well as a few all-timers from Letters that didn’t make it into Draft Evidence.
An overhaul of Draft’s blog to focus exclusively on profitable qualitative insight & value-based design.
An evergreen email course to introduce new readers to our whole deal over at Draft.
Reworked content strategies for the unpaid newsletter & membership community, alongside a year of planned content for each.
A fully edited website for the business. Possibly our first redesign in Draft’s history, too?
Here’s what I’m envisioning, although none of this is set in stone:
I’ll continue to write text, although I have no idea if I’ll be able to stick to the typical thrice-a-week schedule. I’ll probably edit a lot of classic text and post that anew, since all of it will need to be edited at least a couple of times in advance of any compilation book.
I’ll update Letters with our progress, although no new links and no blathering about new developments in design.
Paid members will receive early access to all (re)finished work.
I plan on starting this either mid-November (if we don’t elect a fascist) or mid-January (if we do and I have to rapidly make a bunch of personal decisions). Either way, expect it soon.
I’m going to make a similar announcement on Letters when we know the exact timeline, which won’t be for a couple more months. You get it early because this idea is not fully refined, and it makes more sense to get some replies and co-create it with kindred spirits.
Regardless, all of this is long overdue. My unedited work makes me cringe. We need to fix it. We need to hold ourselves to a higher standard around here. The current speed of publishing is structurally unsustainable. I know I’m capable of deep work, but I’ve let the other arms of my practice move me away from it.
So I’m excited to do this, but I’m also profoundly terrified, in case that weren’t abundantly clear. Multiple income streams are at stake for me. I’m about to make my main list go largely dark for the first time in our history. I’ve never done anything like this before.
I humbly plead for your collective patience & support as I try to sift through a true Borgesian nightmare of a body of work, and am grateful, as always, for your support & understanding. I know for a fact that I’ll have something awesome to show for all of this. I just need the space to do it. So I’m taking it.