Getting back into the swing of daily writing takes a combination of purpose and dedication. You have to want to jump in and engage in the writing process. At the same time, you have to be focused about the process with a real dedication. Between those two things the process can take off and writing will happen. I have found that sitting down and writing that first paragraph is easier to make happen than continuing into a full writing session where a bunch of words are produced. My process really was to sit down and writing until the writing stopped every day. That process over the last few months has been broken. My daily output in terms of prose plummeted. It was just not a good thing to have happen.
Storing the written word used to involve opening a word processing document every day and just writing. Sometimes things would get placed into another document for storage. For larger projects I tend to work out of that document on an ongoing basis. I try to write section by section in a sort of linear start to finish basis. That is how I tackle larger projects. You are probably aware that the faucet powering that grand writing project was turned off and otherwise not working. I’m going to try to get back into a pattern or routine of writing at the start of the day and producing good quality content. That process really will be about purpose and dedication. Not only will it be about those two things because that is necessary, but also it will be because they were included in the first paragraph and the show must go on to completion.
My big project for the day is to rework my backlog. Right now, the backlog document I keep has become unwieldy and is just assembled poorly. That is probably from a lack of proper backlog grooming. Before engaging in that effort I took a look at both my five year writing plan and my research trajectory documents. Both of those documents actually need to be revisited and improved. That is probably a project for another day. Today is the day that the backlog needs to be brough up to date and potentially published as a distinct page on my weblog to help surface the content in need of attention.
Publishing the new backlog was pretty easy. The list was culled down to the current size during the great backlog grooming of September 29, 2024. My plan going forward is to keep updating that weblog page as a live backlog of topics that I’m considering writing about. Please note that separate backlogs exist for other projects as well including the Lindahl Letter and nels.ai which are distinct and different from this backlog. Both those backlogs exist in Google Docs that contain the content that was written for both of those online projects.
