Category Archives: Philosophy

Writing the entire Harry Potter series in a year: A return to regular story building in 2024

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[Updated 2024-03-31 for March metrics, 2024-04-30 for April metrics]

There’s a bit of clickbait to that title, but according to a quick web search, the first Harry Potter book (Sorcerer’s Stone) has just short of 77,000 words. And in my writing journey for 2024, as of January 25, I had written that many words.

Don’t get too excited.

I don’t expect it to be as coherent or commercially successful as J.K. Rowling’s works, and there probably won’t be a movie made of any of the first things I’ve composed this year.

But it’s an enormous start to the year, and if I stay on pace, there’s a reasonable chance of passing one million words in 2024. (The entire Harry Potter series, seven books, is 1,084,170 words, or 90,347 words a month).

Last year I wrote about writing a thousand Amazon reviews in one year. In the last 18 months I’ve made it to 1145, but I didn’t get a thousand-review year. I’m okay with that, and if I only get half a million words this year, it’s more than I’ve written in any decade, including college probably, so I’ll be satisfied.

A novel in a month

Some of you may have met me through National Novel Writing Month[1], or NaNoWriMo. I got involved in 2002, completing a 50,000 word novel the same month I got laid off from 3PAR and lost my mother in the same week. The writing, and the community, probably came the closest to keeping me sane through a very stressful month.

I continued doing it every year through 2009, including being the San Francisco Municipal Liaison a couple of years and helping my friend Linda start the peninsula region along the way. I stayed as active as I could with the South Bay group, but in 2009, life and a bad relationship soured me on the effort. When you need an escape from your escape, it’s not a good thing. I’ve occasionally considered going back, but I haven’t.

Getting back on the writing horse

I’ve written partial drafts of at least half a dozen short stories since then, and from November 2022 to March 2023 I kept a handwritten journal every day. Double espresso and sparkling water, a warm white monitor lamp, and a notebook and pen started every day in that time. Some days I literally wrote “I don’t feel like writing anything today” and others I wrote a full page.

But 10 to a hundred or so words is pretty manageable, undirected other than the obligation to write *something* every day, and didn’t run the risk of turning into anything interesting.

To be honest, the NaNoWriMo days weren’t as smooth as they might have seemed. Just needing 1667 words a day on average isn’t so scary in theory. But thinking back, that felt harder than this January effort where I averaged 3290 words a day.

One counter-intuitive reason is that I didn’t have, want, or really need anyone to support me in Home Office Writing Alone Month (HoOfWrAlMo? Maybe not). I didn’t go to write-ins, or share my word count with anyone consistently. There was no party at Rickshaw Stop when I got to the end of the month, just dinner at Opa with my honey. And that was just celebrating Wednesday, and her not wanting to cook.

The stronger reason, I think, is that I wasn’t focused on trying to get a single coherent work to the finish line. In fact, with 11 new projects and one I picked up after two years of sitting in the drafts folder, I didn’t have to stick with one character, one story line, even one location. So if I ran out of steam on one thing, I could warm up something else.

As with my 2000s era novels, my characters sometimes take off in different directions. The runaway one MC picks up at a rest area who I thought would go camping with him? Her dad’s a real estate magnate who invites him to join the family business, not just the family. The girl another MC meets at a coffee shop on the coast? She’s taller than last time he saw her. And there’s more, but I’m going to be intentionally vague for now.

Sometimes the draw for a character or a story ebbs and flows. Sometimes I don’t care enough to come up with a full length story/novella, much less a novel, and sometimes a one-off suddenly pops into existence as a five-book series that I’m writing out of order and then going back to try to squeeze some continuity into it. Witches, spells, and brooms? I lived through that in the early 90s so maybe some of that will end up in a story called Allan Kahzam and the Bikini of Extreme Peril before the snow falls at Squaw Valley next winter.

Darn, it’s bad enough that a KLF video gave me an idea for a story. Now I have to figure out a magical bikini?

But you see where this is going.

The wrap for January 2024

I wrote on December 31, and seem to have two days in January where I either didn’t update my spreadsheet, or didn’t write. I don’t remember that happening, but we’ll just go with 32 days to report for January.

Total words: 103,414 (3232/day average)
Pace for the year: 1,179,565 words
Total works opened in Word: 12 (one started December 31, one started January 31)

And since I left this in my drafts folder for a month, let’s do…

The wrap for February 2024

Total words in February: 40,321 (1390/day average)
Total words in 2024: 143,735 (2396/day average for 60 days)
Pace for the year: 860,053 words
Total works opened in Word: 22 (including five archival works and one that will get rolled into another)

Another month has passed, so here is the obvious…

Wrap for March 2024

Total words in March: 35,760 (1153/day average)
Total words in 2024: 179,495 (1951/day average)
Pace for the year: 712,126 words
Total works opened in Word: 17 (11 current, 5 archival, and one still waiting to roll into another)

And another month. You know the drill.

Wrap for April 2024

Total words in April: 42,578 (1419/day average)
Total words in 2024: 222,073 (1820/day average)
Pace for the year: 664,398
Total works opened in Word and Reedsy: 28 (11 current, 1 rolled into another as foretold, 11 closed, 5 archival)

Where do we go from here?

Well, if you spend a month working on a single story line, you may make it to the end of the month with nothing salvageable but the patterns and habits you developed. That, and being the legend of the guy who finished and submitted his first novel with seven (7) seconds to spare, are what I still carry from NaNoWrimo between 2002-2009.

But if you track multiple projects, you may find it easier to write, and out of those 12 projects I added anywhere from 854 to 23125 words to last month, maybe two or three will see the light of day before the Summer Solstice. One of them is looking to be that five-book series, two of them have a third part still to be started, there are half a dozen I haven’t resurrected from the last 20 years, plus digging out and looking at those 8 novel-attempts to see if any of them hold up to a decade or more in cold storage on a VM in San Diego.

And it feels like every time I walk to a cafeteria on campus at work, I get another picture in my head that could become a thing. Like that five-book series that began with the thought of a couple of young women sitting around a large living room asking themselves why guys like boobs. Don’t feel too bad for the guy in the room. He has a pretty good answer. Maybe you’ll get to read it later this year.

I would offer to write a future post about my writing tools and workflow[2], but “Word + OneDrive” isn’t so exciting. So there you have that.

For my fellow NaNoWrimo survivors, and any other writers out there, how is your productivity going? What do you think is worth thinking about as someone gets back into writing, or into it in full force for the first time?

[1] I’ve been reading a lot of the fresh drama around NaNoWriMo in the last month or two thanks to Reddit algorithms, and I’m glad I’ve been out of that scene for something like 15 years. I feel bad for the people affected, both in the bad actor situations and the apparent incompetence among the so-called leadership that’s killing the program now.

[2] I have started using the free Reedsy editor, although I have not used their marketplace yet. It’s some of the best of Word, plus the formatting of Kindle Create, and then some. Even has an AI-enabled proofreader of sorts, suggesting missing words or punctuation, extras, miscapitalized or misspelled words, and little bits of structure. You can pay extra for more features, but the free version is enough for a reasonably good writer to make KDP-ready or even print-ready media. I may write more about it later in the year after I use more of its features and get a few titles out of the way.

The Lonely Silver Rain and the Long, Dark Tea-Time of the Soul: Two things that hurt about obsessively reading fiction

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I’ve been pondering this topic for a few days now, and have thought about it occasionally over the last 30 years. I go through phases of fiction reading, often going through a writer’s entire catalog, or at least a series or two when they write in that manner.

Recently I’ve been reading a writer named Marilyn Foxworthy, who is inspired by Burroughs and the pulp era, writing with a mix of allegory, sexuality and sensuality, internal monologues and soliloquys, and pop culture references. Her work isn’t for everyone, and she warns you of that in the introduction to each book. But I’ve enjoyed it.

She has almost a dozen “series” that are in various states of being written. One of the series, with two books so far, was based on Edgar Rice Burroughs’s John Carter/Barsoom series. When I got to the second book of her series, I took a break from modern fiction and read the first three John Carter books. I have the rest on my Kindle now, so they’ll be covered in between other works.

Between going back to a classic writer, and running out of a modern writer’s works (at least in several series), I got to think about my two pains of fiction reading.

Waiting for new works

The late Douglas Adams was influential in my high school and college days. There was a gap in his Hitchhiker’s series, and I remember rushing to a bookstore in Muncie to get Mostly Harmless when it came out in 1992. His last Dirk Gently novel had been in 1988, and So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish was 1984, so I’d been waiting a while for that book to come out.

We weren’t as connected then as now, so my research mostly involved checking the library and Usenet occasionally for a few years here and there, and I was excited to get the book.

I probably felt something similar whenever a new Jimmy Buffett album would come out, but by the time I became a Parrothead and a tapwater Conch, it was a lot easier to keep track of these things, and listen to something on release day online, if not get it shipped from a bookseller or music store, or pick it up in person somewhere nearby.

With Adams, I read most of what he wrote. The first computer CD-ROM title I bought was “Last Chance To See,” even though I didn’t have a computer with a CD-ROM drive yet. But I felt he had done his work, and it was okay to read it all.

Running out of works

You’d think I would go on to mourn Adams’s demise in 2001 and the lack of future works by him. That was and is sad, and I remember exactly where I was sitting when I got the news of his death (a particular hotel room in Canada with my American girlfriend who lived in Canada at the time), but it didn’t feel quite the same.

My reference for running out of books from an author was more connected with Jimmy Buffett (RIP) who I seem to remember had among his three desert island books one Purple Place for Dying by John D MacDonald. I can’t find where I read that list, but he leads off Incommunicado with a mention of the author and his best known character. He also says it brought him back to Florida from French Polynesia and led to him finding his wife. The other two were Bruce Chatwin’s “The Songlines,” and one I can’t find,

I mentioned it in my Goodreads review of Seven by JDM. As I mention in the review (that I forgot about writing until about a minute before this line), I read 20 of the 21 Travis McGee novels.

I always wanted to know there was more Travis McGee to read, even if there would never be more, so The Lonely Silver Rain sits in a box somewhere in Silicon Valley, waiting for me to run out of anything else to read.

My honey says I should read it, so I can go back and start over from the beginning… and seeing that I got the last seven Travis McGee novels and The Executioners (which became the movie Cape Fear) about 17 years ago, maybe it’s time to abandon my restraint and read it.

First world pains, I’m sure

I’m usually not that superstitious, so my reaction to Travis McGee is a bit odd, but after I finished #20 in that series I did have all of Randy Wayne White, Carl Hiaasen, and Tim Dorsey to read. RWW of course was closer to JDM’s style and manner, while the others went more into the modern absurd, Dorsey even more than Hiaasen.

I’ve enjoyed some “aftermarket” Douglas Adams, including several forms of his incomplete story Shada from Doctor Who. Gareth Roberts wrote the Shada novelization based on the BBC script that was interrupted by a strike. There were two remakes/flesh-outs of it, including one narrated in the gaps by Tom Baker and another fully animated one. And of course, Chronotis and his TARDIS stuck in Cambridge became Reg Chronotis at St Cedd’s in Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.

On the upside, going back to Marilyn Foxworthy, she has dozens of books out, and is still working on more. I’m eager to continue the adventures of the various Jensens, and I’m hoping for another Barsoom book in particular before I finish with Burroughs.

Where do we go from here?

My Kindle is getting a workout. I’ve had an Oasis for a couple of years, and while I’m tempted the larger screen of the Kindle Scribe, I’m probably not going to make it worthwhile even with a trade-in. It is on my Amazon wishlist, in case anyone has Amazon gift cards they can’t find a use for. But if I need a larger screen before Foxworthy gets the next Barsoon volume out, I have an iPad Pro that runs the Kindle app as well.

I also just re-realized that the used bookstore in Mountain View, California, has been closed for many years. Ananda BookBuyers moved to Gilroy in 2016, and closed that store a year and a half ago. I went looking for Lonely Silver Rain at two used bookshops left in the area, but neither had it. So I’ll be getting a copy tomorrow via Amazon Prime.

Who have you read obsessively, and have you run into either of the concerns I’ve discussed here? Share in the comments.

[2023-12-10: Title updated since the books involved fit well.]

A Decade of Blogging: An Experimental Look At How ChatGPT Enhances the Blogging Experience

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As someone who has been blogging about technology and tech culture for the over ten years, I’ve witnessed significant changes in the way information is shared and consumed. Blogging, once a hobbyist’s haven, has evolved into a powerful medium for information dissemination, entertainment, and even influencing public opinion. These changes can be attributed to various factors, including shifts in technology, social media, and the emergence of AI-powered tools.

I’m going to reflect on how blogging has changed over the past decade and explore how ChatGPT might enhance the blogging experience while preserving the personal touch and character that makes blogs unique.

The Evolution of Blogging

Blogging, which started as an online diary or personal journal, has come a long way since its inception. Over the past decade, several key transformations have taken place in the blogging landscape:

  1. Professionalization: Many bloggers have transitioned from casual hobbyists to professional writers and content creators. With monetization options like affiliate marketing, sponsored content, and ad revenue, blogging has become a legitimate career path for some.
  2. Social Media Integration: Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have become essential tools for promoting and sharing blog content. Bloggers now need to maintain an active presence on these platforms to drive traffic to their blogs.
  3. Visual Content Dominance: Visual content, such as images and videos, has gained prominence. Readers today expect engaging multimedia elements alongside text, which has transformed the way blogs are structured and designed.
  4. SEO and Analytics: Bloggers now pay more attention to search engine optimization (SEO) and analytics to reach a wider audience and measure the impact of their content. This data-driven approach has led to more strategic content creation.
  5. Global Reach: The internet has made it possible for bloggers to connect with readers from all around the world, breaking down geographical barriers.

ChatGPT’s Role in Enhancing Blogging

One of the most significant advancements in recent years is the integration of AI, like ChatGPT, into the blogging sphere. Here’s how it can enhance the blogging experience without losing the personal touch and character that make blogs unique:

  1. Content Generation: ChatGPT can assist bloggers in generating content ideas, writing drafts, and even suggesting improvements. It can be a valuable tool when facing writer’s block or tight deadlines. While AI can create a solid foundation for a blog post, bloggers can then add their unique voice, insights, and personality to make it truly their own.
  2. Research Assistance: ChatGPT can help with research by summarizing information, providing relevant sources, and even answering questions on a given topic. This streamlines the research process, allowing bloggers to focus more on crafting their narrative and analysis.
  3. Language Enhancement: ChatGPT can aid in proofreading, grammar checking, and language refinement. Bloggers can rely on AI to improve the clarity and correctness of their writing, while still maintaining their personal style and tone.
  4. Personalization: Bloggers can use ChatGPT to personalize content for individual readers. By understanding reader preferences and previous interactions, AI can help tailor blog posts, making the experience more engaging and relevant for each visitor.
  5. Content Scheduling and Distribution: AI can assist in creating content calendars, optimizing publishing schedules, and automating social media posting. This allows bloggers to focus on creating high-quality content while AI handles the logistics.

Preserving the Personal Touch

While AI can be a valuable tool, it’s essential to maintain the personal touch and character that make blogs unique:

  1. Authenticity: Bloggers should be transparent when using AI tools and make it clear that they are responsible for the final content. Readers value authenticity, so maintaining transparency builds trust.
  2. Unique Voice: Bloggers should continue to infuse their unique voice, experiences, and perspectives into their content. AI can assist with the technical aspects of writing, but the personal touch comes from the blogger’s own experiences and insights.
  3. Interaction and Engagement: AI should complement, not replace, the interaction between bloggers and their readers. Engaging with readers in the comments section and on social media remains a critical part of the blogging experience.

So where do we go from here?

Over the past decade, blogging has transformed into a dynamic and influential medium. With the integration of AI tools like ChatGPT, bloggers can streamline their work processes, improve content quality, and reach wider audiences. While these AI enhancements are valuable, it’s crucial for bloggers to maintain their unique voice and character, ensuring that their content remains authentic and engaging.

The blogging landscape is continually evolving, and bloggers who adapt to these changes while preserving their personal touch will likely continue to thrive in this ever-expanding digital world. AI, like ChatGPT, can be a supportive ally in this journey, enhancing the blogging experience for both writers and readers alike.

What do you think? Share in the comments below. And yes, this is an experiment.

Titanic, Hindenburg, and My Management Mindset

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As some of my readers know, I’ve taken the last year off from the corporate world. I’ve done some things on my own, sold some things on eBay, and worked as a contractor for a mining pool. Now that I’m back into interviews, one thing I get asked more than ever before is about my management style.

I prefer to think of it as a management mindset, as the style would adjust to each minion’s needs and “work language” for lack of a better term. And despite relatively little formal management training, I’ve come to a coherent and occasionally appreciated position.

You can only be as good a manager as your manager is to you.

A large part of team management is proxying in both directions between the people who report to you, and the person or people you report to. Your reach and control is probably limited — you can’t usually spend more than the budget allows on salary, or eliminate 7am calls for your west coast team because a manager three levels up wants 10am meetings from his east coast office.

But on a more granular level, if your own manager isn’t supportive of what you need for your employees, there’s only so much you can do to make that happen. This is often because your manager’s manager is limited, and on up many levels.

This can be an uncomfortable maxim to present to a prospective or current manager, as some will take it as a personal affront. But good managers (leaders) will understand that it’s reality, and they can’t do more for you than their manager permits (generally speaking). They probably know it even if they haven’t specifically thought about it.

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How not to embarrass yourself when writing about mining (or anything else)

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Disclosure: I work with Flexpool.io but I am not writing in any official capacity or with any proprietary knowledge. You should mine with Flexpool, but it’s not mandatory.

Disclaimer: Hashrate rental can be expensive and unprofitable if you don’t know what you’re doing. If you do know what you’re doing and can manage your risk, check out Nicehash and MiningRigRentals and maybe you too can embarrass the tech media. (Referral links may earn me a little bit.)

This morning, some “news” pieces came out in some of the tech press. Not the big names most people have heard of, but venues with some reach and some expectation of basic knowledge.

The headline from notebookcheck dot net

The “story” was that some unreleased and possibly even non-existent GPUs were mining to Flexpool, the number 5 Ethereum mining pool in the world This sounds pretty amazing, even unbelievable, although after the April 1, 2021 Captains Workspace reveal video on the “RTX 4090” you realize some people will believe anything.

The evidence? High hashrate and workers named “4090TI-Overclock-Test,” “RX7000-Control-Test,” and “RX7000-Overclock-Test.”

The “story” got a lot of coverage, starting at wccftech, spreading to Notebook Check and Digital Trends, and later with a bit more justifiable incredulity from Windows Central and TechRadar. Also seen at TweakTown after this was originally posted.

A couple of these mention later in the article, after breathless references to the scale and/or specs of the cards named and the vast amounts of Ethereum that could be mined by these farms, that it’s unlikely.

How could this happen?

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