A penance post.

It's been five days since my last post. At this rate, I won't achieve my five-per-week goal. What keeps me from writing?

Excuses abound. It's true that I've been busy with holidays, work, other obligations. But that doesn't matter. Jotting down a few thoughts doesn't take long enough for any of these to justify not doing it. If I can spend several hours playing video games in the evening, I can damn well carve out time to write.

Maybe I think I have nothing to say. That's never true, but I frequently manage to convince myself it is. Sometimes I don't know (or remember) what I want to say until I start writing. My brain needs to warm up, especially with the amount of context-switching and information processing it does all day.

Nobody reads this blog. That's okay; I haven't told anyone about it. This has been a sort of trial period. That's the whole point: I need to write even when nobody is reading. Even if I'm tired and emotional. Especially if my ideas aren't refined. Regular writing makes my ideas better.

Success starts with effective habits. What's been working?

I like the neatness of the Blogger interface. I get distracted easily with complex tools and busy screens. Blogger is easy to look at, and despite its limitations, it serves its purpose well. It doesn't do more than it needs to. I can't overthink it.

Listening to music helps as well. Right now I'm checking out Imagine Gold by Frameworks*. It's very smooth but upbeat electronica with some samples and very few lyrics. It keeps me energized without distracting me too much (i.e. without me involuntarily singing along). And an album is about the right length for a good writing session.

Setting out to write immediately after work usually seems effective. A bit of residual productivity helps kickstart the process. Even if I walk away to eat dinner, it's easy to come back once I've already set up my space.

Of course, writing about writing is a cop-out. It works in a pinch, but I'd like to cover topics that are more broadly interesting.

As I was writing this, I got to thinking about my musical tastes to the point of writing several more paragraphs about that topic. My next post will be an exploration of that.