I’m Warren Ellis and This Is How I Work

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Warren Ellis is a writer. You may know him from Transmetropolitan , his famous cyberpunk comic book series about the gonzo journalist, or his novels such as Gun Machine . And then there are TV shows, film projects, and magazine columns, many of which comment on our relationship with technology and the future.

Getting your imagination to work doesn’t seem like a problem for Mr. Ellis, but how does he get the words on the page? We spoke with Warren to find out a little about what tools he uses, his writing habits and how he works.

Location: Southend-on-Sea, South East England. Current Gig: Writer, many different things. My next two serialized graphic novels, INJECTION and TREES , will begin publishing in mid-May. I maintain a monthly technology column for Esquire.com. One word that best describes how you work: constantly. Current mobile device: The regular iPhone 6 just arrived and finally replaced the iPhone 5 that I beat to death. 6 experimentally lives in Anker’s battery compartment until I decide if it’s worth increasing the size of an already huge thing. Current computer: Lenovo T440 touchscreen . Dell XPS 13 2015 Chromebook Pixel Original.

What apps, software or tools can’t you live without? Why?

How is your workplace arranged?

The first hour or two days I spend at a table in my garden under a sloping roof, either with my phone, or with a Dell, Pixel, or laptop, whichever day it is. (I ‘m looking forward to Textblade , which can make things easier, especially when away from home.) The rest of the day is spent in a small room at the back of the house that I declared my office twenty years ago. I am sitting at the same old heavy wooden table I bought from an old shop twenty years ago. I am not submitting a photo, because now it is a bloody mess, which makes me look like a collector, because a couple of months ago, a bunch of junk was dropped here, and it has not been processed yet.

I have a 21-inch ASUS screen on the riser behind my laptop. Personally, I would have liked five more big screens and a wifi amplifier – the router downstairs, and this is an old house with thick walls that probably also contain metal and bones, so I am not getting a good signal here. … The big screen usually launches MetroTwit , the Twitter desktop app that has been “shut down” but is still the best Windows Twitter client if you read a lot of lists, or Grasswire , or Netflix, or streaming TV news. When the Reverend Dan Catt launches Guardian Ambient Headline News again, he will appear on the big screen. Sometimes I run the Google Trends visualizer on it. The screen is also used to rewrite books and TV show scripts – I can throw away the annotated version on the big screen while I rewrite the text on my laptop screen.

What’s your best time-saver or life hack?

In all honesty, the best thing I’ve ever done was set up a “public” email address that I check once a day, and a private work / personal email address. My morning mailbox increased from 200 to less than 50 overnight, and has remained that way.

Use of a combination Mailstrom and Mailbox for the first time has allowed me to gain control of my mailbox .

What’s your favorite to-do list manager?

I always have a notebook on my desk with a pen attached to it. I call this a diary and this is my to-do list. Though I am considering clearing a corner of the office and hanging up the board. This year is going to turn into a jumble of short attention blocks, not a long ocean cruise to write a novel, and I need to better manage my time and memory.

Oddly enough, I have never been able to use my phone as a device for making a to-do list.

What device, besides a phone and a computer, can you not live without and why?

Probably my Kindle Paperwhite. I dedicated myself to digital books a few years ago because I filled the house with paper books. This is also how I handle “long reads” – the Send to Kindle button on my browser toolbar does a lot of work.

However, it would be terrible to live without my Sony NWZX-1060B 32GB MP3 player and my Sony XBA-4iP headphones , which together form an important part of my travel kit.

What tools do you use for writing?

Depends on the job.

I write books, articles and other long fiction in Microsoft Word. Sometimes they start with Google Docs – the Chromebook Pixel is a great machine for writing the first draft of a prose, but it should always end in Word for publishers.

Likewise, I write television in Final Draft because most networks and studios have built their workflows around that. (AMC bought me my first copy of Final Draft for this very reason.)

I usually write comic scripts in Open Office with four macros I wrote for this purpose – I used to write scripts in RTF many years ago because everyone was on different systems and RTF was guaranteed to open on all of them. …

Two Windows machines are the hardware for this. The T440 lives on my desk and Dell travels with me – so thin and light it even fits into the rear compartment of a Maxpedition Jumbo Versipack shoulder bag. They sync via Dropbox.

And, as already mentioned, a notebook and a pen are always at hand. As noted, sometimes I first write drafts and developer documents in Notepad.

Are you always working on something? Or when you finish a project, do you take the time to let your mind wander without worrying about what comes next?

Always working on something. There are always several vacancies. This is not always a bad thing: if I am not in the mood to work on one particular case on any particular day, then there is a good chance that I have it for another. So I always produce. Working in several different areas keeps me fresh and allows me to train different muscles. I have a comic strip script, TV pilot’s plan, and an article on deck this morning. If I start a comic strip script in five minutes, then I know I’ll be exhausted in about five hours. I can take a lunch break and then move on to a plan, stop there, and then probably spend the last couple of hours of the day gathering arguments for an article. There will be a couple of twenty minute breaks to write emails requiring more than one line of responses.

When I need to give free rein to my brain, I just break the deadline. Haha. No. Don’t print this. Shit.

What are some of the things you do best in everyday life? What’s your secret?

Sleep. I can sleep anything. I can sleep longer than most cats. I can sleep at the Olympic level. I probably have a brain tumor.

What do you listen to while you work?

Usually it is ambient music of one shade or another. At this point, Bandcamp pretty much owns my soul. I even cull snippets of changing playlists with new music into the SPEKTRMODULE podcast, which I post every few weeks on spkmdl.libsyn.com . The Drone Zone on Soma FM is incredibly useful too, as is the Ambient Sleeping Pill that I get to via the TuneIn radio app.

As well as music podcasts. Mantis Radio , The Black Dog , Radio Etiopia , Sadayatana , etc. Always look for new ambient / drone / electronic podcasts.

As I start the day, I tend to do more news podcasts: Economist Radio , Today , In Our Time , Start The Week and Analysis , Covert Contact . I use Downcast for podcasts, which syncs between instances on my phone and an iPad 2 that sits on a stand on my desk as a second (third?) Screen.

Right now, everything is working through a small but powerful set of Altec Lansing inMotion speakers, which I’m sure they don’t even do anymore. I need to update this.

I cannot and will not work in silence.

What are you reading now?

I always have a few books close at hand. Right now, ” Landmarks” by Robert McFarlane, ” Networked Exploration” by Christopher Vitale. Destruction of Merlin by Elliot Murphy.

Magazines currently on the shelf: The Wire , Paris Review , Lapham’s . The London Book Review , The Times Literature App, and Foreign Policy go straight to my Kindle.

I currently only have about a hundred websites in Feedbin / Reeder. People are giving up RSS, and I feel like mourning the disappearance of the cave paintings or pigeon posts.

Are you more of an introvert or an extrovert?

I once took one of those online tests and it said I was an extrovert, but the only way I can get my job done is by sitting alone locked in a small room for sixteen hours a day, so what the hell knows.

How do you replenish?

Travel. The trip is always rejuvenating. Airplanes, trains and a hotel room are my Walden: I meditate, I relax, I read a lot

What is your sleep routine?

Ideally, I go out before 3 am and try to get up before noon. Using a horrible, nasty “horn ” alarm on my iPhone can help with this, because it’s the only alarm I’ve found that I just can’t sleep.

Fill in the blank: I would like _________ to answer these same questions.

Fred Armisen. Once I was sitting across from him on a plane, and the huge amount of work the guy did in two hours of flight (with headphones) looked incredible. Amber Case , deceased of Geoloqi and Esri , is now writing a book on “quiet technology.” Rene Redzepi , Danish chef.

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

When I was a child, Paul Gravett told me that the most difficult thing in the world is to convey a story so clearly that everyone can understand it. I’m still trying.

What else would you like to add that might be of interest to readers and fans?

You can subscribe to my weekly newsletter at orbitaloperations.com and it’s not always as boring as my responses to this interview. I try to write publicly on morning.com’s computer when the mornings aren’t too cold to type. I usually tweet as @warrenellis .

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