John August

John

Come to the Arlo Finch launch

Arlo Finch, Los Angeles, Projects

If you’re in the Los Angeles area, please come to the launch event for Arlo Finch in the Lake of the Moon. I’ll be signing books and answering questions about the series. I may even be allowed to share some cool news.

Invite for LA book signing

The LA event is at:

Chevalier’s Books on Larchmont
Saturday, February 9th at 12:30
[website](https://www.chevaliersbooks.com/john-august-2019)

You can also [order the book online](https://read.macmillan.com/mcpg/arlo-finch/) or purchase it at many US bookstores.

First week sales are a wonderful thing, because they help more readers discover the book. So does sharing it on social media (#arlofinch) and leaving a [review on GoodReads](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31180257-arlo-finch-in-the-valley-of-fire). (The review page for book two is [pretty light](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39073390-arlo-finch-in-the-lake-of-the-moon?ac=1&from_search=true) because it just came out today.)

As I post this, I’m in St. Louis, where I just finished two days of school visits. Tonight, I fly to Seattle, for two more days of school visits and a live Scriptnotes. Then it’s a day in San Francisco before heading home.

The second half of the tour comes in April, when I’ll be headed up and down the East Coast for events at schools and bookstores. For more details, you can check out my [Arlo Finch](https://johnaugust.com/arlo-finch) page.

Hiring a coder

Apps, Bronson, Geek Alert, Highland, Los Angeles, Weekend Read

We’re bringing in a new person to help us update some of our older Mac and iOS apps. Maybe that’s you!

Requirements:

– Experience with Mac and iOS development (either professionally or on your own)
– Familiarity with web APIs
– Proficiency in Swift
– Ability to read (and understand) Objective-C

For the right candidate, it should be an interesting assignment. You’ll be rewriting existing Objective-C code as Swift, and bringing a 2019 perspective (and technology) to previously-solved problems. You’ll be working beside Nima Yousefi, who coded Highland, ((Fun fact: Highland 2 is almost entirely Swift, except for some very low-level stuff dealing with PDFs which goes all the way back to the original Highland.)) Weekend Read and a lot of other useful apps for writers. He’ll show you the ropes and help guide you through the process.

This is a contract gig, maybe 40 hours of work altogether, but there’s always the possibility of future projects. We’re looking for someone in Los Angeles who’s available on Tuesday and Friday afternoons for some in-person discussion.

The right person might be transitioning from another field, a college student, or someone on a gap year. You can look at this as an educational experience, intern-like, but definitely paid. If you’re a hobbyist coder considering becoming an indie app developer, it would be a good introduction. That’s how Nima got started.

Interested? [Drop us a note](mailto:assistant@johnaugust.com) to introduce yourself and your work. Please include links to stuff we can check out, especially Github and sample code.

My writing setup, 2019

Apps, Follow Up, Geek Alert, Highland, Writing Process

On Twitter, @londonsquared [asked for an update](https://twitter.com/londonsquared/status/1090921403015139328) on my writing setup, which I’d last [written about in 2016](https://johnaugust.com/2016/my-writing-setup-2016).

Honestly, very little has changed in the past three years. I still have the same computer, desk, mouse, keyboards and headphones. I print so little that today was the first time in years that we needed to buy a new toner cartridge.

My only real piece of new hardware is the [iPad Pro](https://www.apple.com/ipad-pro/). While I don’t love the squared edges — it feels thicker than the old ones — I find myself using the redesigned pencil all the time. On the whole, I like it a lot.

I’m hand-writing much less than I used to. Most of that is because I’ve been writing the [Arlo Finch books](https://johnaugust.com/arlo-finch), and it’s so many words that I just can’t keep up with paper and pen. But I also do [#writesprints](https://twitter.com/search?q=%23writesprint) a lot, using Highland 2’s built-in Sprint feature.

write sprint list

I write absolutely everything in [Highland 2](https://quoteunquoteapps.com/highland-2/). I’m the main beta tester. ((Version 2.5, coming soon, has some pretty amazing new features in it.))

For other software, I’ve started using Apple Notes in place of Evernote, and switched back to OmniFocus and Mail.

Back in 2016, I wrote:

> My mail setup is a mess. The right combination of rules would probably allow me to sort out the wheat from the chaff, but I haven’t invested the energy. Plus, getting it to work properly in iOS would be a big challenge. Increasingly, the iPhone is where I’m doing email triage.

If anything, it’s worse now. I set up a rule to shunt anything with the keyword “unsubscribe” to a special folder, but that’s just hiding the problem rather than addressing it.

On the whole, I’m honestly surprised I haven’t changed more things over the past three years. I’m generally an early adopter and experimenter. But until we start using goggles instead of screens, I suspect this is going to remain my basic setup.

We’re all starring in our our show

Directors, Genres

The first episode of the final season of Broad City is told through a social media story shot on the characters’ phones. It was a [huge challenge](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/broad-city-final-season-premiere-inside-social-media-episode-1178853):

> The opening episode came with a unique script and was filmed entirely on the iPhone (using six iPhone Xs that were constantly swapped in and out) over a four-and-a-half day shoot that saw the crew canvassing Manhattan, much like Abbi and Ilana do in the final product. They filmed in September and then entered into an edit that wasn’t completed until early December.

> “It looked very different than our other scripts. There was more post work with lots of emojis and text where you could thread the story through other means besides just live-action footage, which was very different and freeing in a way,” said [writer-creator-star] Jacobson.

I suspect we’ll look back on the late 2010s as an inflection point when scripted comedy incorporated new comedy grammar, from jump cuts to close-ups to emojis. Explains director Nick Paley:

> “In the edit, I went into it asking, how do you make a joke land and how do you time it? Then I found adding the titles and visuals to be really liberating and a way to add jokes and story beats organically and move the story along. The expectation with social media stories is that time is jumping moment to moment, and that is a gift in terms of storytelling, because it lets you get to the most interesting part of a scene.”

The episode is terrific. It manages to maintain the conceit of being an Instagram-like story while still feeling like an episode of the show. The direction and editing are great, but the main reason the episode works is the writing. Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson have a sharp eye for how modern life has become weirdly performative. We all want to be the stars of our own shows.