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Narrative reflections:
transmuting Ruby code
into storytelling gold
Travis Turner
Editor, Evil Martians
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How to begin this talk?
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About Creative Writing Degrees
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RITE AID parking lot, sometime in 2014
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RITE AID parking lot, sometime in 2014
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#2 Context
Who are you speaking to? What do they need to know?
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The EM Writing Way:
•Not required
•Freedom + Creativity
•Value/interesting for readers
•Developer/author happiness
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The EM Writing Way:
•Not required
•Freedom + Creativity
•Value/interesting for readers
•Developer/author happiness
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Why bother? A very brief case for writing
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•Contributing to the community
•Connecting with friends/like-minded people
•Finding contributors for your open source
•Fame
•Promoting your product
•Sharing your product
•Skill development
•Career development
•Documentation
•Future-proo
fi
ng your career
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Let’s get locked
in for writing
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#1 Recognition
and collection
Recognize when something is interesting to you, valuable, or just
just worth your attention in some way.
Collect the relevant artifacts.
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#1 Experience
Reading how someone solved a problem or implemented a
feature can be both enlightening and inspiring. Plus, it’s unique to
you.
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“In this post, I’d like to share my
fi
rst experience with
packaging a Ruby program (Ruby Next) into Wasm via
ruby.wasm and making it available online.”
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#2 Gems,
features, products
in other words, something you want to share.
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Skooma: a Ruby library for validating API
implementations against OpenAPI documents.
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AnyCable: realtime server for reliable two-way
communication.
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#3 You think
something should
be a certain way
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Technical meetups offer something so real and unique,
and are truly the best way to connect with people who
have similar passions. So, let’s bring them back! As a
practical example, let me summarize how we organized
one of our recent events: our SF Bay Area Ruby meetup.
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#4 Etc.
Setups, cool stu
ff
, or anything you
fi
nd valuable or interesting.
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Sharing a con
fi
guration / setup /
toolkit
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Sharing a con
fi
guration / setup /
toolkit
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Sharing an experiment / something cool
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Writing about your book
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#1 Recognition
and collection
Recognize when something is interesting to you, valuable, or just
just worth your attention in some way.
Collect the relevant artifacts.
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Story:
•Beginning
•Middle
•End
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#2 Context
Who are you speaking to? What they need to know?
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#3 Read aloud
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“There was a wisteria vine blooming for the second time that summer on a
wooden trellis before one window, into which sparrows came now and then
in random gusts, making a dry vivid dusty sound before going away: and
opposite Quentin, Miss Cold
fi
eld in the eternal black which she had worn
for forty-three years now, whether for sister, father, or nothusband none
knew, sitting so bolt upright in the straight hard chair that was so tall for
her that her legs hung straight and rigid as if she had iron shinbones and
ankles, clear of the
fl
oor with that air of impotent and static rage like
children’s feet, and talking in that grim haggard amazed voice until at last
listening would renege and hearing-sense self-confound and the long-dead
object of her impotent yet indomitable frustration would appear, as though
by outraged recapitulation evoked, quiet inattentive and harmless, out of
the biding and dreamy and victorious dust.”
— William Faulkner
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#4 Think of the
work as a whole.
You want to get a feel for the full text.
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Edit
• Iterate
• Refactor
• Debug
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Edit
Find a friend or co-worker, or wait for “fresh eyes”.
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#5 Edit
Cut stu
ff
out.
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#5 Edit
Cut stu
ff
out.
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Pitfalls,
…or as I
like to call
em’:
sinkholes
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DO NOT WORRY
HORSE WAS RESCUED!!!!!!!!
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#1 “Caring” too
much / Overthinking
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#2 “I don’t know
how to write”
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#2 “I don’t know
how to write”
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#2 “I don’t know
how to write”
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#3 Going too
big out the gate
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#4 “I don’t have
enough time” /
a “thank you”
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Challenges in the future…
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rubyflow.com
r/ruby
r/rails
Sharing your work
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evilmartians.com/blog
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Parting thoughts
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Actual parting thoughts