Looking back at your own writing is hard. It made me take a day’s break (that and lack of sleep) and wonder about whether life (on Tech IT Easy) was worth continuing. It made me question my ability to maintain this blog. Etc. etc. Recaps = hard. You get the idea.

But the other thing I noticed with June’s Recap (and noticed before on my recaps for S+FnR, but forgot), is that it enables you to draw a thread between your thoughts. Blogging every day means that, often, you don’t have the time to reflect much on what you wrote about before. But subconsciously you do, of course, and I like how I was able to relate different topics to each other. The same applies, incidentally, to living too hard…

The opposite of blogging too much is blogging too little, of course. That’s when you start thinking too much and don’t realise that people will have forgotten your one (imagined) bad post by the time you post the next one, and the next, and the next… So, dormant bloggers, get blogging!

That’s it really. Too short and introspective to post on TIE?
Vincent
(Picture courtesy of www.bennettlakehouse.com)

As someone entirely new to the world of finance (apart from the theory of course), I get a lot of beginner tasks to do. One of these, I found, has had a dramatic effect on my writing (in the positive sense), and basically consists of transcribing a 40-page legal document from (tree-)paper to Word.

This simple repetitive action of typing I don’t know how many words per minute for several hours a day, along with the entire (for lack of a better word) boringness of the subject-matter, means that, pretty soon, your fingers-muscles become as strong as Arnie in his hay day (picture), allowing you to write up your thoughts that much faster. I imagine a similar effect arises from coding and would think that the coders on this blog would find more time to write.. but hey.

The greater point to all of this is that there are no short-cuts to getting better in any craft, apart from more and more and more practice. There are plenty of books on grammar and how to write a novel, which are probably useful to read in regards to the structure of sentences and longer texts. But in the end, the most pleasurable thing of it all is to not have to spend too much time thinking about where the keys are located on your keyboard and instead be able to focus on the greater point of your writing: what you are trying to say!

Vincent

P.S. One negative thing to add: I don’t particularly think that typing all day is very good for the fingers. Can anyone suggest an RSI-preventative keyboard or is any extensive physical finger-labour bound to end up in walking around with the claw all day?

When I was a young, innocent kid, growing up in the small German town of Bonn, I remember one thing very well. That is, looking at my father’s Bild Zeitung (he is and was a big football fanatic) and seeing the cartoon “love is …” Each week (or day, I don’t remember), a new cartoon would appear, with a new definition of love. Whether it made a difference, I don’t know, but it does still have some nostalgic value.

Today, …

Similar to love, I think that writing or “blogging,” as the kids call it, has a certain subjective value. I think that, from my observation of my own behaviour and that of others, blogging is … the desire to figure out stuff. I started blogging as a student, as did Jeremy, Fidji, and many others on Tech IT Easy. Now, as my study-time is over, I find myself having less time for studying, which is sad really. What has taken over is that “learning on the job” thing, which makes you good at building up routines, but not necessarily at the brain-qualities that blogging benefits from.

I think that blogging also fits other paradigms, such as to publish news, to market something or someone, and to make money, many of which aren’t my own, but which certainly have more relevance to “in business” thinking and action.

Just one of the thoughts floating through my mind this week, as I’m spending a lot more time figuring out stuff, than learning on the job.

Vincent

This is one the hardest things ever. While I was blogging daily it was easy; you somehow get into this rhythm of pumping out text everyday and, at some point, you’ve hit your groove. Taking my break really made little sense to my brain whatsoever, as day-after-day, I kept on writing draft-after-draft, while I was meant to take a break!!!

Luckily-unluckily I eventually gave that up…

Now, I don’t actually thing there is any great secret to starting up again. It’s going to be a bitch, we all know that, and we can all remember that first workout in the gym / at home, after taking much-too-long-a break. Muscle Ache!!! Which in blogging-terms, translates to brain-ache or have-I written-sh*t-today?-ache. I know that, writing this, I will check back over and over and over again to see if it made any sense.

No, the real secret to starting up again is just… to never stop! Or, to continue like you never stopped and have faith in the imagined fact that someday that brain-ache is going to pass… even if it doesn’t feel like that right now.

See you tomorrow, Tech IT Easians!
Vincent

There’s a law in art, which is that to be creative, you must go out and smell the flowers. With that in mind, I’ll take a breather from Tech IT Easy and will look for some adventures that will automatically translate into more and better content… when the time is right.

I hope you enjoyed these last few weeks and until soon, I hope!

Vincent

P.S. I’ll continue to share links and write 140 letter haiku on Twitter.

The point of this mini-series is to vocalise some of my thoughts about the creative writing process, which is something I only think about when I write every day, but not when I only write sporadically. I wrote this post last week Thursday, which illustrate its point perfectly. Another key to prolific writing is scheduling & bundling related tasks. Why?

• For one, blogging isn’t a job, and if it is, it usually isn’t a good job. You blog when you find the time.
• Second, bundling similar tasks is easier than interrupting other ones. When I write, I’m “in the zone,” so why not write multiple posts instead of one.
• Three, ideas come and go when they please. I sometimes wake up at 3 a.m. with an idea and just need to write it down. I don’t go, “oh I’ll just write it tomorrow,” because by that time my creative influx has usually gone.
• Four, researching complex posts can be time-intensive and sometimes happens weeks in advance.

Incidentally, a good book to read (part 1) about the idea of getting into the zone, is Neil Fiore’s “The Now Habit.”

On the note of research, I drew the below graphic about a year ago, trying to visualise how I research and write for a blog (in this case, Food ‘n’ Retail). I personally think it only works when you take research very, very seriously (which you should, but which also takes time). And yes, it’s also the way I visualise innovation in firms, very much inspired by portfolio management, which I wrote about before.

Three horizons, obviously, the first being where its all still one big mess which you run into (or which is where you purposefully direct your energy at). Second, comes the processing phase where you’re trying to organise all that raw data into something useful. Third, comes the moment when the world sees your stuff and responds to it. That essentially feeds back into the organisation to produce future goods that are better. In a blogging context, that is the main reason why I value comments so much, though I’m also conflicted about them—a topic for a future post perhaps.

I think I’ve gone a little beyond the intended scope of this post. But it also illustrates that any project, be it prolific writing, or the prolific creation of any kind of art of product, requires some serious planning behind it, i.e. the timing and combining of activities for a consistent outcome.

Vincent

Visitors to Tech IT Easy may have noticed a slight increase in posting-rhythm last week—I averaged at about 2 articles a day. They say that the simplest reason is often the most straightforward one—I was on a brief relaxing holiday—but that wasn’t actually the core-reason why I wrote more.

Last week, I managed to read two books, one of which I blogged about and another of which, a draft is awaiting some QC before being posted. I remember this effect when I was a youngster, reading always made me feel like writing something. Countless were the fantasy-stories I started, but never finished, back when I was reading Tolkien et al.

Luckily blogposts are shorter… during my one year stint on foodandretail.blogspot.com, where I blogged daily, I was on a constant regime of reading related articles and books at night and blogging about them soon after.

There you have it: reading more makes you a more prolific writer. I also say this now that a study revealed that reading less and watching more TV makes you unhappy—or is it that unhappy people watch more TV, I can never figure out the chicken or the egg…

So what are you waiting for, go pick up a book and make some time to read it!

Vincent