1000 Days

I almost logged in last night to do some writing.  I didn’t because I felt like I needed to save my thoughts for today instead–just in case.  That was foolish.

Poynter Online has some great and medium great instruction on writing better by Roy Peter Clark.  It’s journalism flavored.  Most of the advice is at the sentence or sub-paragraph scope so it translates well for all writing.  As I was checking for a good URL as reference I caught the name of an author, Amy Gahran.  Small world.

I should get in touch with her.  Maybe she needs a mentoree of sorts.  Might be a great way to break into a writing career while working as a code monkey.

Recently, my manager called me to discuss the new retention bonus plan for employees of my stripe: that there won’t be one anymore.  From the wording it implied that I should have or will have had a bonus for at leas this first year of my employment.  I did.  Since he’s just my manager and not HR he wasn’t sure about when or if it would come and stated that he’d get back to me.  After less time than I was expecting he did just that.  Turns out I was due for a bonus that would be paid today.  I’ve known this for a month and had calculated, based on past stinginess and vow of future frugality, that I would be able to go out to eat on the extra cash.  I was surprised instead to find the bonus was slightly higher than my regular pay!

Gotta pay the bills…

Undoubtedly the morning will be the best time to get this daily writing accomplished. Which means I’ll need to shorten my internet surfing or expedite it in some way.

As far as PopURLs goes I am going to limit myself to 4 click-throughs on links and two on photos. That ought to budget my time well and serve to help me better scan the listings.

For blog reading this will be a little harder. I can’t know how many are going to be available each morning, nor which of the good ones will be fresh. Maybe a timer? And only check in the morning and at lunch. I’ll have to think on that. But let’s set a goal for a target: after tomorrow I will have something that credibly limits my blog browsing.

Been itching to force myself to write again. This is the newest plan. It’s based on some dudes interpretation of a bit of advice Jerry Seinfeld gave him for writing: make chains.

Turns out the way to be a better comedian is to write every day. To mark it off on a calendar and to put a big red X over each day you write. Then don’t break the chain of X’s. Simple enough to say not so hard to do, but for 1000 days?

It is not clear to me how the 1000 days came into this. The two efforts are one and the same now.

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I gave up on reading Fieldwork. It was enjoyable to read, but not terribly encouraging to finish. I haven’t been able to get tot he good part and I am more than halfway through.

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Been thinking about taking up Ailchas’ story again. Or maybe to draw out the map of Am.

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The Bringer of Mist has also drifted to the top of my mind with a little bubble of thinking around the main character heading out into the sand dunes on lopers.