Just a little status update: I’m a few days into my new routine of blocking out the time before 7am for writing projects—and so far it’s amazing. I’ve been able to make progress on a writing project¹ that has stymied me for months and months. Yesterday and today alike I wrote 600–700 words in roughly an hour (and words I’m relatively happy with, at that). All my previous efforts at this had come to about 600 words in total, largely in outline form, and when I’d taken a stab at it other than that I’d eventually given up and thrown away anything I’d written.

This is a pleasant change.

Knowing your rhythms is useful, it turns out; even more useful is taking advantage of them to actually get things done!

The other thing I’m noticing (as I write at about 6:45pm, in one of those “just okay” spans I mentioned in that post) is that my mind is ticking along again in what I’ve historically called “writing mode.” The idea of sitting down and knocking out a few hundred words of (admittedly self-indulgent) blogging has not seemed relaxing or fun in quite some time. But that’s changing a bit as I stretch those muscles again. I’ve drawn the analogy often enough in the past, but I’ll repeat it once more: writing is very much like exercising. The act of simply doing it day over day helps reopen pathways in the mind (like running down paths in the woods, perhaps?) and every day you do it makes the next day easier than it otherwise would have been.

So now: off to work on a New Rustacean episode script, because the juices are flowing.