oxfordhacker

I'm disappointed that, while I succeeded in last November's attempt to post every day, it didn't actually lead to me posting any more in general as I'd sort of hoped it might. As an ex-mathematician, the solution to this problem is trivial: reduce it to a previously solved problem. I want to post more, trying to post every day for a month worked last time, therefore I'm going to try to post every day for a month again. QED.

Of course, part of the point of the previous exercise was to get me to post stuff that I had (more-or-less) written, and it was largely successful in that regard, so I'll be going into this with fewer fallback options. On the other hand, I already write something (nearly) every day in the form of Morning Pages, and being an unimaginative narcissist, I tend to just write about whatever I've been doing or thinking in the last twenty-four hours, so if worst comes to worst I could blog by copying and pasting something I've already written. The problem with that plan lies within the very nature of Morning Pages: to avoid inhibition you're not supposed to be writing for anyone other than yourself, so some of that stuff might (and arguably even should) be inappropriate to share with others. However, I'm pretty sure that this is a problem (like so many others) that can be overcome with judicious use of regular expressions. All I need to do is:

• Delete any paragraph with the word 'dream' in it. I occasionally note down my dreams, but I'm not under the illusion that they're of any interest to anyone else.
• Remove all sentences containing the words 'feel' or 'emotion'. After all, I've got to preserve my reputation for manliness!
• Replace all proper nouns with initials. That way, I can continue being honest in my personal notes without jeopardising any friendships when I post them. e.g. 'Saw SHoTP play last night: terrible stuff. Frankly, I'm embarrassed that I even know anyone involved with this band.' or 'Last night J was going on and on about how great cats are again. I just pretended to agree, as usual.' Bingo! Honest, yet completely anonymus.
• Replace 'porn' with 'thought-provoking essays' and 'masturb' with 'cogit'.

That ought to do the job. Let the blogging commence!

Oh, I guess it has.

As per usual, I've been meaning to post more but not getting round to it. Unusually, I have come up with a cunning three-pronged plan to encourage me:

Motivation

What better way to motivate myself to post more frequently than to join the layabout cousin of the international phenomenon NaNoWriMo? Well, I couldn't think of one, so:

Inspiration

I've just been on Reading Week, the sort of holiday I kept trying to have as a child in spite of my family: I sat around for a week, doing nothing but chatting to friends, sleeping and reading. I didn't even go outside. It was awesome. On these holidays I always make notes on the books that I've read but don't then go on to do anything with them at all, not even keep them somewhere convenient as a reminder of what I liked and disliked. This time, I thought I could do a review a day. That's a week's worth of material right there. After that, I'll see how it's going, and either start reviewing other books I've read this year, or other things, or write something else entirely.

Concentration

I think it was bluedevi who first introduced the concept of Morning Pages to me. The concept is pretty straight-forward: spend 20 minutes or so writing something each morning. Normally, I'd be horrified by the prospect of exerting more than the bare minimum of necessary effort in the morning, but actually it fits into my new schedule surprisingly well. Now that tinyjo is a teacher, she gets up much earlier than I need to. I was just going back to sleep for an extra half an hour, but that wasn't really very restful and I'd often wake up feeling worse than before. Instead, I can just roll over, grab my phone, and start typing while she's getting ready for work. The original source for morning pages suggests that you write them long-hand, but it was written in 1992 before long-hand became obsolete.

An awful lot of bullshit has been written about the benefits of this exercise, but for me it's as simple as getting me into the habit of writing, and feeling enthusiastic about doing it. Hell, in the past week I wrote [word count] 4367 words just as part of this exercise, which is probably more than I've written in a week since school, possibly since forever. It's early days, but I'm hoping this will make it easier for me to write other stuff too. I guess we shall see...