As I mentioned previously, I was offered the fantastic opportunity to give Neal Stephenson a lift to Oakland airport on his way home after a panel session at UC Berkeley. Rather than asking him about something particular to his work, I thought I'd ask him about how he gets stuff done. It's a topic that I'm continuously fascinated with - being both a complete data junkie and a pathological procrastinator. As an author who is clearly very productive, I was curious as to how he does it. Accompanying me was Constantin, a PhD student at UC Berkeley.

Work Environment

Turns out the treadmill desk in REAMDE wasn't entirely fictional - Neal actually uses one of these to work on. Apparently a low walking speed makes it possible to type and work. A wrist rest is necessary to dampen the side to side rocking of your wrists as you walk. For work where he's handwriting, he uses a standing desk (since it's not possible to handwrite while walking).

I previously noted the curious coffee shop culture in the US and was curious if Neal adhered to the cafe-author stereotype. He mentioned that he didn't - preferring an atmosphere of quiet and to stay in one place (I recall libraries being mentioned). If he needs to use a lot of his notes and materials, he needs to be at home with a desk to lay things out.

Schedules

Generally he doesn't like travelling to speaking arrangements since it can be quite disruptive to getting work done. Not only the actual time spent travelling and speaking but also the communication overhead that goes into organising an event.

He works in the morning normally - and stops as soon as he feels his alertness tailing off. Most of the time he writes a paragraph well enough the first time. As he said, 'editing a work of literature is like performing surgery on a human body. There are always scars and seams left over.'

Medium

All of his work eventually hits a computer - either in LaTeX or, lately, using Mac writing application Scrivener. Occasionally he'll handwrite work - work that is handwritten tends to be better thought through since there's a longer buffer between his thoughts and putting them to paper (since handwriting is slower).

On Notifications

I asked him how he felt about this world of push notifications - where we are pinged quickly with every new bit of information - tweet, news article or email. He says that he just has those turned off since his job doesn't require continuous notification. I would suggest that that's probably true of most jobs - we're just addicted to the small dopamine hit that accompanies each notification. Perhaps that will be the next life hack I try to implement.

Organisation

With such incredibly intricate story lines and characters, I was curious how he organises his research. Supposedly he doesn't have a definitive scheme, preferring to keep notes organised randomly. This is apparently useful to allow ideas and notes to cross-pollinate others as he searches for the notes he wants.

Backup

Finally, I was curious how he keeps his work from getting eaten by his computer. Supposedly he backs up to a RAID in the basement and to a USB stick every two weeks.


On a final note - it was a pleasure to meet the man himself. I took a hiatus from reading serious amounts of fiction for most of my late teens, as I became more immersed in my cycling hobby. As I left Cambridge, I started reading fiction again and started off with his novels. I've not stopped since.