index.md (3453B)
1 --- 2 title: "Weeknote for 2025-W37" 3 description: "Developing a writing habit" 4 date: 2025-09-14T19:38:04-07:00 5 draft: false 6 categories: 7 - Weeknotes 8 --- 9 10 They say it takes six weeks to form a habit, but as far as I can tell, [the 11 research](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11641623/) suggests an 12 average closer to two months---depending on the habit being undertaken and the 13 individual being studied. Nevertheless, I find myself six weeks into an attempt 14 to build a new habit to help with my writing, and some links have come my way 15 that feel relevant to the effort. 16 17 Specifically, I've committed to doing a little bit of writing (at least 5 18 minutes), most days (4–5 days/week), as a "swooper"[^swooper]. I have a bad 19 habit of procrastinating on the parts of a writing I should be composing by 20 editing parts I've already written, which leads to a lot of wasted effort. Now 21 I'm trying to write things in a single go, without scrolling up to change 22 earlier parts of an unfinished piece. The "how" matters more than the "what"; 23 I've done this for journal entries[^journal], emails/reports at work, and 24 attempts at flash fiction. I doubt this will make me a _better_ writer, but it 25 should make me a faster one. If I'm going to write artlessly I should at least 26 get it over quickly. 27 28 First, [writes.casa](https://writes.casa) is wrapping up its second week of 29 collecting and publishing anonymous short submissions. There's a new topic each 30 week, and the list of languages it accepts has already grown since launch. As I 31 write this I've yet to submit anything, but it would make a great outlet if I 32 produce any non-technical prose that feels worthy of edits. 33 34 Les Orchard's [Tarot Thing](https://lmorchard.github.io/tarot-thing/) is a 35 great source for prompts for non-technical prose. I've been using it liberally 36 in my attempts at writing fiction. (My goal is to _write_, not think of things 37 to write.) 38 39 I'm enjoying the contributions to the [Vim 40 carnival](https://lazybea.rs/vim-carnival-sept-2025/). [I already wrote a spiel 41 about Vim]({{< ref "/posts/vim/" >}}), but lately when I'm not tapping on my 42 phone screen I'm using Neovim with [LazyVim](http://www.lazyvim.org/) for all 43 my writing. It took a while to get used to this whole new set of plugins, but 44 the stock configuration actually works quite well for prose. 45 46 Finally, I'm late to the party with this one, but I only recently learned that 47 the [nonprofit behind National Novel Writing Month (aka NaNoWriMo) 48 dissolved](https://techcrunch.com/2025/04/01/nanowrimo-shut-down-after-ai-content-moderation-scandals/) 49 earlier this year. I was part of the crowd that was disappointed by recent 50 decisions they've made, but I'm sad to see things end this way. Over the past 51 20 years I've made several attempts---none complete---to write 50,000 words in 52 November. To honor the spirit of NaNoWriMo---which needn't be tied to any 53 particular organization---I plan to make another attempt this November, and 54 will track my progress on [writingmonth.org](https://writingmonth.org). 55 56 [^swooper]: As defined by Vonnegut: "Swoopers write a story quickly, 57 higgledy-piggledy, crinkum-crankum, any which way. Then they go over it 58 again painstakingly, fixing everything that is just plain awful or doesn't 59 work. Bashers go one sentence at a time, getting it exactly right before they 60 go on to the next one. When they’re done they’re done." 61 62 [^journal]: I'm still a big fan of [izzzzi](https://izzzzi.net).