Hello friends of the blog!

So you might have noticed the lack of updates for the last six months. Short story: I got a new job, and then I got really busy learning all sorts of new things for about four months. You know, typical new job stuff. Turns out, it’s hard to write when your brain is melted and you just want to veg out.

I probably could have written something in the last couple of months, but all my good writing habits got wiped out. I’ve got to invent some new ones and get back to it. I’m still not 100% sure how I’ll do that. The “once a week blog post” served me really well for over a year, but (a) I’m in a new phase of writing that doesn’t involve blog posts anymore, and (b) I don’t have quite that much time anymore.

(Even if I were still trying to write a new post each week, I’m not sure I could keep that pace up. I experimented a bit, and while I used to get a post written in roughly 6–7 hours of writing time, it actually took up a lot more “thinking time” than that. Each post probably took another 10 hours of poking about, searching for inspiration and mulling over ideas. I don’t have that much “idle” time anymore!)

I’m going to figure out how to get back into things. Here’s what I’m going to try first:

Re-outlining a small book

I’m going to try writing a book somewhat like I’d write software: start with a small thing that works, then iterate outwards. To start, I’ll write a mini-book, hitting on just two main points:

  1. I’d like to start with core organizing ideas about design, and my “haven’t really thought about it in six months” brain comes up with two that are huge:
  2. Using these major ideas, I’d then like to critique current practices, ideas, ideologies. This will include some things like:

The basic theory of this approach is that either (a) I’ll learn this is the wrong organization (or is still too big of a chunk) and try a different approach, or (b) it could serve as the beginning of an overall organization that looks like:

  1. Present some new ideas
  2. Break down existing practices
  3. Build up from there

What’s next?

I’m going to try to get this mini-book in shape by the end of January, and if successful, I’ll probably share that with Patreon backers. (Speaking of Patreon, it’s still going to stay on pause, y’all.) The next steps look something like this:

  1. Write the mini-book.
  2. Write up a draft outline of the remainder of the book.
  3. Look for publishers, and get a contract.
  4. Write the rest of the owl book.

That last step might need some refinement. Eh, I’ll get to it later.

First things first: let’s see if I can get back to writing regularly now.