[A]s of today, I have written for 400 of the last 402 days, beginning back on February 27, 2013. And, while there were two days that I missed since starting (both while I attended the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop last July), my streak of consecutive days of writing stands at 256 days, or seven-tenths of…
[I] have been hacking one heck of a tough time with this story that I’ve been working on. I started the story months ago. I got through about 70% of the first draft before realizing there were some serious problems. Over the years, I’ve developed a fairly standard process for how I work on my…
[I]n case anyone was curious about how I generated the models and charts in the previous post, I used Mathematica. It took only a few lines of code to calculate the models and generate the charts. Here is the code I used: data = Import[“C:/Users/rubin/Downloads/WritingWalking.xlsx”][[1]]; data2 = Import[“C:/Users/rubin/Downloads/WritingWalking.xlsx”][[3]]; data3 = Import[“C:/Users/rubin/Downloads/WritingWalking.xlsx”][[4]]; sleepdata = Import[“C:/Users/rubin/Downloads/WritingWalking.xlsx”][[5]]; lm…
[O]ver the last 5 days or so, my writing has been going pretty well. Writers have different explanations for this phenomenon. My “muse” is alive. I’m firing on all cylinders. I’m in the zone. But these are all vague, unscientific explanations for an explosion of creative brain activity. It can be helpful to isolate patterns…
[B]ack in 1997 or maybe 1998, I took a customer service training class from a fantastic company called Ouelette & Associates1. The class focused on customer service for technical people, IT, etc. It was a seminal course, taught by an amazing instructor, Anita Leto, and it lead to a completely new way of thinking about…
[S]ometimes, when I feel like I need an extra jolt of inspiration in my storytelling, I resort to re-reading my favorite stories. Reading a good story does two things for me. First, there is the pleasure I get from the story itself. Second, it gives me an opportunity to think carefully about why the story…
[I] began my efforts to write every day on February 27, 2013. That means that as of yesterday, one full year has passed. In that year, I managed to write every day, except two. I put together a diagram of what this looks like. It will look small but you can click on it to…
[I]’ve always been fascinated with the behind-the-scenes process of writers I admire. While reading Isaac Asimov’s autobiography once, I remember thinking a lot about a passage he wrote reflecting on the night he sat down to write what became one of his most famous stories, “Nightfall,” I put a piece of paper in the typewriter,…
[I] suspect that I can come off as making writing every day sound pretty easy. In concept it is, once you figure out what works for you. But the act of writing, and storytelling, depends on a lot of things coming together. Three of the most important ingredients for me are desire, energy and inspiration.…
[I] managed to sneak in about 250 words before dinner this evening, and while I’ll likely add to that total later, it means that I have now officially written for 200Â consecutive days, and for 343 out of the 345 days. My daily average has been down slightly lately because I’ve been so busy. My 7-day…
[S]ince I just finished my writing for the day, and had a few minutes to spare, I figured I’d post my numbers for the month. It’s hard to believe that January is already over. It seemed to be an incredibly busy month, and I was almost certain my overall writing numbers would be down. It…