Writing

I read a short dialogue with the previously-mentioned Frederick Hess, in which he complains about researchers intentionally obfuscating their ideas behind a wall of jargon. He argues that plain writing, using diction that is clear and precise, is the ideal way to present ideas. Anything else is grandiose and an attempt at an appeal to authority. While I don’t agree with several details in that discussion, or the flippant attacks hidden among the core of his argument, there is insight worth exploring. ...

Two authors have had an outsized impact on my continued desire to hone my writing craft: Kurt Vonnegut and George Saunders. At the end of 2023 I read Lincoln in the Bardo and completed Liberation Day to begin 2024, both by Saunders, so he is front of mind. ...

I’ve created a new website, markrichard-fiction.org. I’ll reference any stories or other writing I post there on this blog, but they’ll mainly be hosted there. It’s using the Write.as service, which is a sleek and quick spot to make an incredibly simple blog. I wanted to separate what I write here—almost exclusively blog and essay fare—from stranger projects I hope to undertake.

Today I discovered that Google Docs has supported pageless documents for over a year and a half. I learned this at precisely the right time, and now I’m rethinking how I handle many of my digital documents. ...

I just completed my NaNoWriMo project for 2023. I wrote three stories for The Last Question world in thirty days, totaling 30,984 words. You can find the drafts on the NaNoWriMo page of this blog, with the caveat that they are indeed drafts. Let’s get into how this all went. ...

I’m behind my 30,000 word goal, which is why I’m writing this post as a fallback instead of something longer and unrelated to NaNoWriMo. It’s still possible for me to maintain a pace that gets me done on time, but I haven’t been making as much progress in my free time as I’d like. My biggest issue this year is that I’m still not allowing myself to write freely. I’m thinking a little too much in the moment, trying to self-edit, and not just getting a story out there that can be refined at a later date. ...

I’ve done something for National Novel Writing Month each year since 2019. That first year was the only time I’ve “won” by getting to fifty thousand words, but I’ve always appreciated the exercise and change of pace required to make a reasonable attempt. November is just around the corner, so it’s time to consider my plans for this year’s effort. ...

I switched back to Ulysses and refined the Writing homescreen on my iPad. I have no idea how long this particular setup will last considering the short time spent since I previously discussed this, but it feels stable, all my writing can live in a single app, and I can drop the dance I’d tried with iCloud to make iA Writer work across all my devices. ...

I’ve finally decided to go back to using iA Writer on my iPad. This has several knock-on effects, with the most notable being that my drafts will all be synced via iCloud. I say “drafts” because my plan is still to use Dropbox as long-term storage. I now have a monthly reminder to copy completed blog posts over to the proper spot in Dropbox1 and will only use iCloud for in-progress work. ...

Last week I released Episode 257 of Comical Start, Pockets of Conversation. Its publish date is just a few days after the 5th year anniversary of our first episode, Multiverse. Grant was unable to record with me, so here is a lightly-edited transcript1 of the 25 minute monologue that I did off the dome. ...