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Wednesday, November 28, 2012

Disciplined Writing for Fun

The postings on this site are my own and don’t necessarily represent IBM’s positions, strategies or opinions.

What If I Could Write 250 Words a Day?

Around 20 years ago, a girlfriend who knew I was a frustrated-would-be-aspiring writer gave me a gift of a book called *20 Lines a Day*. It advocated writing just 20 lines a day to exercise my writing muscles.

Today, via Facebook, which I had just dissed as the lazy way out of full-on blogging, Jeff Nishball, a writer who was published in “The New York Times” last week, kindly sent me a message, encouraging me and suggesting that I’m not any lazier than most writers for not having wanted to blog, but that I’d be well-served if I tried writing just 250 words a day. He said that it was essentially just a page’s worth of writing. Of course, now, I’m compelled to check the word-count to see if Jeff meant double-spaced or single. Off I go…. 137 so far, so happily, Jeff must have meant double-spaced!

My cat Phoebe just hopped onto my lap and then onto my work-notebook next to my laptop. Her tail is doing something unusual: Just the tip is in motion; it’s like a periscope and she’s using it to decide her next move.

That girlfriend was among the most creative people I ever knew, and she still is, though we’re married to other women. I thought of her when I finally watched the viral “Gangnam Style” video on YouTube yesterday. When I was in India on assignment in 2007, I posted a link to a YouTube video I had discovered, featuring Silky Kumar. She said she loved it. I wasn’t surprised. It’s better than the Gangnam one, or at least as good, @ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hpFftFeIkt0.

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