Writing

I was in Spain for three weeks. I had planned to blog while I was there. I didn’t because my mac book pro was misbehaving when I tried to connect to three or for Wifi networks. Last night I tested it with another wifi network and I had similar issues. I think that there is an issue with the wifi device n the machine.

When I tested it using my mobile phone as an access point it behaved as expected, but that’s when there is less than a meter separating the laptop from the wifi hotspot.

The Absurdity of AI in Creative Writing

I find it absurd that someone would spend billions teaching AI to do creative writing. The reason this is absurd is that reading takes time and humans already generate more content than we can consume. The result is that creative disciplines, such as writing, video making, and other forms of creativity or art, need to find an audience and people willing to pay for it.

November has Arrived. With November so does NaNoWriMo. NaNoWriMo is the US National Novel Writing Month. This is the month where people spend every day writing 1,667 words per day, so that by the end of the month they have a draft of a novel. I have tried the challenge several times and completed it just once.

The challenge is to write, and ignore the inner censor. It’s the idea of thinking “This is crap” and “this is rubbish” and continuing to write anyway. The goal of NaNoWriMo is not to come out with a polished turd. It’s to get into the habit of writing, and ignoring the reflex of stopping. It’s about allowing ideas, and concepts, and more to flow, and to get to 50,000 words.

For three hundred and sixty six days I have written a blog post daily. In some cases I wrote two posts, and scheduled the post to appear the next day. This is when I was driving for thirteen hours, or if I knew that my morning was busy. In the process I have definitely given myself a writing habit. The question I ask myself now is whether to continue, or whether to change the posting frequency.

For three hundred and sixty two days I have struggled to find a topic to write about. In that time I have, more than once, felt, during my walk, that I had a great idea for the next day, only to deflate the next morning.

On CloudNeo

Yesterday as I was running I considered writing about the On CloudNeo Shoes. They’re shoes that you pay for, monthly, rather than weekly, and you can get them replaced every 90 days. If you browse to the site you will see a count down for when to get them replaced.

November is the month when a group of people try to write 1667 words per day for a month. they have write-in events, word sprints and many other gimmicks to encourage them to break the challenge into less daunting challenges. I didn’t even consider participating this year for a simple reason. This is my 360th day in a row of writing a daily blog post.

The Daily Blog Challenge

My challenge was less ambitious. My goal was to write at least three hundred words per day, every day, without taking days off. I didn’t allow myself to count a photo as a blog post because that would be too easy. I wanted to give myself a productive challenge.

I have written at least one hundred and one blog posts in one hundred and one days. During this time most blogs have gone by unread. Blogging could be seen as futile but it isn’t. Having the discipline to write every single day, despite having no inspiration is good. It forces us to stop, think, and develop inexistent ideas.

In different times I would not write one hundred and one blog posts about nothing but we’re in a pandemic that is being ignored by the people with the power to get us out of it. This means fewer conferences, fewer meetings with people to do sports activities and more. It means less freedom to find covid safe work. It means living with the constant risk of getting long COVID. Switzerland is living in denial about the pandemic and this is frustrating.

I am old enough to remember a teacher writing on a board or piece of plastic for an overhead projector. “Why don’t you just give us photocopies of what you’re writing instead of asking us to copy down what you’re writing. “Because you will remember it better if you write it down.”

At the time this seemed stupid and a waste of time. Years later I think that we could have been taught to take summarised notes rather than literal notes but that isn’t the point. The point is that learning is as much about writing as it is about understanding the material Every day for weeks in a row I have taken the time to write a 300 word post and it’s difficult. Not only do you need to come up with an idea but you need to develop it into something that is at least three hundred words long.

Time for a new discussion to take place. Reading time. Do you read through articles or do you skim them. Is reading the headline enough or do you read every word of the article? I ask because in the age of chatGPT and GPT3 I would ask the same question as I asked about social media.

If you want to discuss ROI for businesses and PR firms or advertisers then you need to discuss ROI for users too. Facebook, Instagram and Twitter wanted to control the timeline by using a “home” feed. The Home feed is an algorithm driven feed that shows you popular content, rather than content by friends, that you and they would converse about. The result is a lonely social media experience. The ROI goes down, That’s why I took a break from Twitter to play with Mastodon and revive my blogging habit.

I have managed to neutralise the inner censors. I have accomplished ninety five days of blogging in a row, once again. During the first 100+ days of the pandemic I did the same. At the time I thought that this would provide a document of how life was for the pandemic. The pandemic has lasted over 540 days and I eventually lost inspiration, and inspiration for new things to write.