On writing and building at the same time

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People keep asking me to pick a lane. Novelist or founder. Storyteller or builder. The honest answer is that I’ve never been able to tell where one ends and the other begins.

Same job, different medium

A novel and a product are both arguments about how the world could be. You build a small, convincing version of it, hand it to a stranger, and watch what happens. The feedback loop is slower with a book and faster with software, but the work rhymes:

1. Notice a problem nobody else seems bothered by.
2. Make the smallest honest version of a solution.
3. Put it in front of real people.
4. Listen harder than is comfortable.
5. Cut what doesn’t earn its place.

Why not choose

Because the two halves keep paying each other back. The discipline of shipping software makes me a less precious writer. The patience of writing fiction makes me a calmer founder. I’d be worse at both if I only did one.

More on this in the non-fiction book I’m drafting, Functionally Unemployable. For now: what’s the false choice you keep being asked to make? The comments are open.