Writing

NaNoWriMo, the organization, is on the ropes, or perhaps entirely dead, after a change in focus and an AI-related public relations snafu. None of that affects my plan for participating in the core of the event: writing at least 50,000 words in a month. I initially wrote this post with the intention of delaying NaNoWriMo until February. This November will be hectic: I’m transitioning roles at work, we have visitors for two long weekends, followed immediately by a trip home for Thanksgiving. The likelihood that I will write 50,000 cohesive words in November is slim. ...

Each time I commit to sharing my writing process, I jinx myself to undergo a radical change within a month. Yet, my hubris tells me that this update is different. ...

I discussed morning pages just over one year ago when I was one month into the practice and, as it turned out, one month away from dropping it. My last set of morning pages was July 27, 2024. I’ve been in a creative rut over the last couple months, often writing blog posts last-minute, not making progress on other projects, and not even taking time to read consistently. It’s hard to pin down a cause but that doesn’t mean I couldn’t try a treatment. I’ve written 1000 words of morning pages each day of the past week, having made two changes that I hope will help it stick. ...

This delightful contest celebrating the command of language by constructing concise opening sentences to hypothetical novels bursts into my awareness each year as internet denizens share the best (worst?) entries. Nominees display subtlety and nuance by brazenly breaking as many written and unwritten literary rules as possible with fewer than 200 characters. This contest appears built for social media, despite starting in 2001. It drives to the core of good and bad writing by isolating a single sentence, perhaps two, given only the context that it begins a book you’ve just plucked off the shelf. The analysis of each worthy submission is deep and, most importantly, funny. ...

I rejoined SABR a couple of years ago and focused my volunteer work on fact-checking articles for the Games Project. These accounts of past MLB games are notable in some context of the author’s choice. They could be historically impactful, meaningful within a player’s career, highlighted by a rare event, or any other such factors that make an otherwise mundane day in baseball history something worth remembering. Last month I decided to try writing one of these articles. I trawled through the archives of Minnesota Twins history for interesting seasons and landed on an early game in 2009 that defined the year for Jason Kubel. ...

I initially drafted this story as part of a broader writing effort related to The Last Question. All the idiocy happening in the US government and in the world of large corporations encouraged me to finish it. You can also find it on my fiction writing site. ...

I gave Claude (3.7 Sonnet) the same prompt I provided ChatGPT two years ago: Write a short article in the satirical style of The Onion, titled “Optimistic AI Just Happy to Be Here”. I also went back to ChatGPT to see how it has improved. Claude’s attempt. ...

These are two essays by a couple of “guys on the Internet” whose work I enjoy. John Gruber created Markdown and now works in the Apple/tech media space. Merlin Mann used to be Merlin Mann, one of the first modern productivity gurus. Now, he’s essentially a comedic personality. Both are tremendous writers, and these two essays are supremely affecting and have unique styles that show the authors flexing their muscles. ...

Well, I did it. I was on the ropes a few times but always found the time, energy, and creative hook to keep my story, It’s Like Jazz, moving along and hitting the requisite 50,000 words. ...

This has been a great experience so far. I had a great start, followed by a few rough days after a five-day trip to Denver. I caught up this past weekend and am back on track, though I’m looking to keep pushing hard because going home for Thanksgiving will only complicate my attempts to write. Even with that said, I’m proud of what I’ve done so far. Compared to 2019, I’ve started building a better story. I’m more thoughtful about creating characters and pushing a plot forward. I certainly won’t have told a complete story by the end of the 50,000 words, but that’s not necessarily the goal. ...