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Now Making: Editorially

I was raised to be an editor, but I always wanted to be a writer. My father is a lawyer, and his red pen and proofreaders’ marks were a constant, sometimes painful, reminder that the first draft of whatever story I was writing was never final. I’d sit with him and defend my choices, then concede that his changes might improve my writing (Even today, he insists that his changes were always for the better.) So I knew what an editor was before I knew anything about publishing, and I learned to respect their work and how important it is for the writing process.

Words have prospered in this most recent burst of new technology companies. Publishing and distribution have already been completely rebuilt, and writers have far better tools today than the electric typewriter, but good writing—beyond the typing—is collaborative, and the editorial process hasn’t scaled with this flood of new writing.

There is simply no good analogue today for my dad’s red pen and our ensuing discussions, no beautiful common space for writing and editing, no sensible way of watching a document evolve and nurturing it to maturity. So today, we’re announcing Editorially—a tool that gives writers and editors the collaborative space to simply write better.

I consider myself seriously lucky to be working on a problem that has nagged at me since I was a kid and reinvigorated my love of writing. More than that, I have hit the holy grail of teams. With me in the quiet trenches since the middle of last year are four amazing folks: Mandy Brown and Jason Santa Maria of A Book Apart, both of whom I’ve watched respectfully for a very long time; Ethan Marcotte, who gave life to Responsive Web Design and taught me to take GIFs seriously; and Rob Brackett, who knows all about meaningful work from his time at Code For America. These are people who care deeply about words and writing, and this thing we’re building together, I promise you, is amazing.

Sign up over at editorially.com to learn more. We’ll be raising the curtain soon.

U.S. Voters’ Rights: tl;dr

Okay, so, U.S. people: You have the right to vote. The rules around those rights might sound complicated, but here’s the short version (and a number to call, 866-OUR-VOTE, if it gets confusing):

1. If you know you are registered to vote in your district and have ID if required in your state, you should insist on your right to a regular ballot. Provisional ballots are rejected more often than regular ballots—know your rights to a regular ballot and assert them as needed.

2. If your vote is challenged, or you are not listed and you know you should be, insist on your right to an affidavit or provisional ballot.

3. If you encounter any resistance at the polls, or believe your right to vote a regular ballot is being violated, call 1-866-OUR-VOTE. I’ve worked with Election Protection in the past—they are hard-working, smart, and non-partisan.

Your best bet is to know your specific rights before you walk in the door of your polling station. Check out http://www.866ourvote.org/state to learn about ID requirements and more about your rights as a voter.

Share as needed, vote tomorrow, and stay informed.

Update 9/6: Ensuring that you’ve filed your ballot if your vote is challenged is important, but if you believe you have been intimidated or see others intimidated based on race, color, national origin, or religion, contact the Department of Justice. Election Protection should help you do that, but you can and should follow up with a call to DOJ.

Jump

In April of 2007, my friend Raul approached me about a side project. It was about the art world, he said, and if it worked, it would be fun. He introduced me to Jen Bekman, and they agreed that building this thing was both possible and exciting. Five months later, we launched 20x200. 

There’s nothing I love more than a small business with a mission, and we have a great one: “Art for Everyone”. That sounds both happy and easy, but it’s not, because collecting art can feel intimidating, extravagant, and confusing—but it’s not. Our job is to stand with people at that cliff, give them a really good harness, and (very gently) get them to jump. You teach people to feel confident as they grow; to push back at voices (real or imagined) that question their decisions and tastes; to live with a work of art instead of looking at it—not five seconds, five decades. Five years.

Today is my last day at 20x200. I’ve worked at a few young/small/startup businesses, and I can say I’ve both given and received more here than at any job I’ve ever held. It’s been thrilling, overwhelming, intense, and gratifying; five years later, I’m a different person. I’ve learned a ton, worked with some amazing folks, helped some artists make a living (in many cases, by buying their work myself—much of which I’m taking home today), christened thousands of new art collectors, and had an amazing ride. I had no idea what 20x200 would become, but Raul really pinned it over dinner that night—it has been so much fun. 

The culture of startups is overflowing with mythical personae of pirates and ninjas, but I’m not a pirate—I’m an evangelist and a plumber. I love building things that help people grow—preferably in ways I need to grow. Building 20x200 with this team has taught me more than I’d ever thought I needed to know about how products and companies work, and I’m grateful to Jen and the extended 20x200 crew for teaching me; I hope to make them proud as I move on to build a new company—and a new product—that suits this particular evangelist plumber.

What I’ve tried to teach collectors and coworkers here, I’ve ended up learning myself: confidence, taste, persistence, how to stand at the edge of a cliff and check your harness. I can’t wait—I’m thrilled—to jump.

June 8th, 2002, was a Saturday

Ten years ago today, at ten-thirty p.m., I was taking a nap on the couch in my living room. I had planned to meet friends from work that night, but I was exhausted and ready to call it off. At eleven, I sat up and decided to go out anyway, which is good, because that is how I met Laurea.

The universe of ways I could have crossed paths with Laurea, even when you set aside the infinitesimal luck of her and my even existing, was tiny. She was from California, here on vacation, meeting a casual friend—the girlfriend of one of my coworkers—just for the night. Sometime shortly after eleven o’clock on June 8, 2002, from a block away, I saw her waiting in front of a bar on Ludlow Street; when I closed that distance, she gave me a really hard handshake and said two words: “I’m Laurea.” That was the last moment in my life that I did not know her.

We spent the summer together, decided cautiously when she went back to California to stay together “as long as it felt right”, outlasted a two-and-a-half-year long-distance relationship, built a life in New York with each other, hiked twenty-four miles through the Ventana Wilderness with seven Power Bars and two Cup o’ Noodles, got married (woo!), traveled the world, and became two sides of a personality that I’m really proud of.

In 2008, six years after we met, I started my wedding vows by saying, “When I first fell in love with you, I had this thrill of knowing you existed.” Let’s not even discuss the being-with-each-other, the commitment, the long-distance video chats, the co-ownership of cats, or the wedding rings. It is hard for me to believe that somebody as amazing as my wife ever came to be; it takes my breath away that we met at all, and I pinch myself daily as a reminder.

That thrill I feel at our co-existence (amazing!) has flourished with time, and when I woke up this morning, I looked into Laurea’s eyes, still as big and open and loving and demanding and confident and caring as the ones I fell in love with in the summer of 2002, and said, “Ten years.” I like a wedding anniversary as much as anybody else, but a handshake’s a handshake, and I gotta say: This has been a pretty amazing decade.