Join.me as I write this column right before your eyes

WIRED: For the past month I've been writing my copy in full view of the public by making a corner of my PC screen viewable online

I’M AFRAID, reader, that for the last few weeks I’ve been practising an experiment on you. Well, to be honest, it’s more an experiment on myself.

Writing is a lonely trade, most of the time. Even when you are out and about collecting quotes and facts, you’re preparing for the time when you will skulk away in some corner and scribble what is required (or can no longer avoid writing). It’s like speaking to yourself for an hour or two every week. No wonder so many writers are crazy.

For the past month, though, I’ve been writing this column in full view of the public. Every week, before settling down to write my copy, I’ve set up one corner of my computer screen so that it’s publicly viewable online, and moving my word processor window into that zone. I’ve been a public exhibit in a columnist zoo of one.

For the first few weeks, I used an online service called Join.me( https://join.me). Join.me, which is run by long-established PC remote-control company LogMeIn, offers an app to download that lets you selectively share a desktop screen or part of it. By sharing a link, you can allow others to view your screen on the web, and even control it with their own mouse and keyboard.

I set everything up so that anyone could come by and watch, but not edit, my word-processor screen. While they couldn't really participate in writing for The Irish Times, Join.me has a chat function, so they could certainly heckle.

Writing and editing is a dull enough pursuit even when it’s my own copy I’m fiddling with. I wasn’t entirely sure who would be bothered to watch the metaphorical paint dry on my slowly developing prose.

I posted the link to Google+, hoping that would at least catch people with a vague interest in novelties and an unhealthy interest in my trivia already.

The first week, I got four or five bystanders. They didn’t say much.

Afterwards, in the comments, one said she was a writer herself, and was professionally curious about how others go about their business. A couple more were friends of mine who dragged my word-processor window into a corner of their screen and then, I suspect, largely forgot about it.

The next week, I had a few more. It was a different crowd. My column was about Google+’s real-names policy, a controversy that many of the audience knew something about. My proto-readers began chipping in with suggestions and links, many of which I incorporated into the piece. As I was wrapping up the column, one viewer pointed out that I had misspelled one of the key players’ names. It was an error that I’d hope, but can’t guarantee, I would have uncovered on my own.

The week after that, the audience were a bit muted – as was I. Sometimes writing a column can be a bit of a struggle. Bravely, I usually hide such pain under a veneer of nimble final prose. Like a stumbling stand-up, it’s much harder to cover up such fumbling when you have a crowd sitting on your shoulder waiting for your every stumble. Then again, no one booed onscreen. Indeed, it was this pack of strangers who encouraged me over my mental block, and gently shamed me into not slipping off to read blogs or my e-mail. The show, after all, must go on.

Finally, we come to this week. Bizarrely, I’m writing this column hunched over in the passenger seat of a car driving through Los Angeles on the way to California’s Central Valley. I’m still sharing what I’m doing with the public, this time via an internet connection on my mobile.

There’s no way Join.me could share a whole screen across the US’s terrible patchwork mobile data connectivity, so I hacked together my own version of it, which just broadcasts the raw text rather than the graphics of my terminal screen.

Right now, I have about 20 people wandering into my cage and peering at me as I type this sentence. Hello there!

Some might think it’s vain to think others would want to watch you type. I don’t think it’s quite as arrogant as believing that thousands might want to read the finished article in the newspaper. As far as that goes, I’m already ruined.

Rather than just sate my egotism, I think this little experiment has kept me on my toes. For me, it makes sense that public oversight would force one to be a little more responsible, and a little more focused. That may not be true for everyone. Then again, we in the press claim transparency is good for everyone else, so why shouldn’t we apply it a little to ourselves?

(If you too are curious to see how the sausage is made, you can follow me at gplus.to/dob. I'll announce when I'm writing in public there, and you can watch the results at thepub.endofgreatness.com. Tell me I sent you.)