On Writing

There’s been a lot of chat bouncing around of late about the benefits and/or the joys of writing things down. A lot of this prompted by 100DaysToOffload of which I’m on day .

This is different for everyone, but the theme is the same. Obviously anyone writing on a blog, about their thoughts on writing things in blogs, is likely to have some positive feelings about the practice. I’m no different.

The Hobby

I have written for enjoyment on occasion. I have taken to it only every so often and, when I have, it’s been fleeting. The times that I have, like recent days, I have enjoyed it.

“The fact of the matter is that I just enjoy the process of writing. Moving words around a blank page like so many Lego bricks is fun. Skill and readership have very little to do with it.”

-more here about what’s fun about it

Barriers to entry

some of this strays into the intention to form a habit rather than just why it’s hard, maybe divvy up some more

Not unlike reading books, I enjoy the activity once I’m doing it. It’s the getting started where most of my problems lie. I enjoy the writing even though the writing is about the mundane and the inconsequential and the boring. Who gives an arse about how I planted a tree, or what coffee makers I have, or what vegetables I’ve planted. This puts some people off, has put me off in the past, and I think is what moves many more people into microblogging on twitter or mastodon. They don’t feel daft writing the mundane on a platform that was literally created for banality.

Microblogs are great, I’ve used them for over a decade and will continue to do so. It’s wonderful when this inane drivel starts conversations and becomes the foundation of friendships. However, they have helped me ignore blogging because all my trivial nonsense end up there, leaving nothing to blog about. So, now my intent is that I wont not blog because all I can think about is stuff I’d usually just chuck out on Mastodon (or stuff I’ve already posted there). I’m going to just write, because once I start, I enjoy it.

This intent means, by definition, that the writing I do will add nothing to anything for anyone. Will be relevant to no one, and is entirely about me. What I’m doing, what I have done, what I might do, the things that have entertained, and things that have annoyed. It will be trivial and it will feel like narcissistic naval gazing of an egomaniac.

This triviality when presented in longer form writing rather than microblogging, without the protective cloak that a lack of ceremony provides, can and will cause discomfiture. But I will do it anyway.

The Tool

At university one of the compulsory modules (that at the time thought was laughable) was called Professional Programming Practice. We were given some instructions over a few sessions, assigned a programming task, and sent off to complete it. What made this unusual were the instructions given and the module deliverables.

We were told to keep a programmers logbook. We were told that as we worked our way to a solution to the task we’d been given we had to write down everything. Our understanding of what we had been asked to do, how we planned to solve it and the steps we took to implement the solution. Every time we had to make a decision, every time we got stuck and had to change approach, every time we solved a problem. Write and explain it.

The deliverable for the module, the thing we were assessed and graded on, was the logbook. We handed in our code for context, but if it didn’t work, it didn’t matter.

The point of all this, obviously, was to teach us that the act of journaling your work in this way is an invaluable tool (The professor was very fond of referring to this as one of the tools in our toolkits). I don’t remember much of this hitting home at the time, I think I believed it to be all an exasperating waste of time and beneath me. I also remember thinking the professor was a bumbling old duffer but more on that another day.

What I didn’t grasp then, I certainly have done since. The benefits of this practice when working with software projects are huge and for the most part it boils down to having to slowly, and specifically explain and clarify your thoughts and actions to yourself, repeatedly. For three of the more obvious and specific examples of how this helps:

• When approaching a problem, additional understanding can be developed by writing down the problem and possible solutions. It helps you interrogate and explore what’s required in much greater detail and often shines a light on your own ignorance.

• Writing up issues and stumbling blocks forces you to perform an near instant retrospective on bugs, mistakes, and misunderstandings. Mistakes are rich in information and sifting through them helps you understand more about why they are made and about the domain in which they were made. It takes writing about mistakes to truly delve into them. All of this is equally true of successes. It can lead to fleshing out the reason something worked so well and it can even bring to the surface something that could, in fact, work even better. Moreover, there are times writing about a failure could lead you to a solution and writing about a success could make you discover a problem lurking beneath it.

• A record of your work is a saviour when coming back to a project. The ability to return to your thought process and know why you made the choice you made, why you misunderstood the specification, why the obvious path wasn’t followed, why that feature was never implemented. I’ve lost count of the times I wish I knew what I was thinking back when I did X. Those who forget the history, and all that.

So, to some up, writing is a incredibly valuable tool for working on problems and keeping a programming logbook is of massive benefit. Which makes it all the more frustrating to me, that I almost never do it.

Inability to wield it

if it’s so great, why don’t you do it

This came to mind slightly as I was writing about how I retrieve mastodon posts and display them as comments in this blog.

The Habit

Building habits intentionally is hard, at least I find it difficult and I think that’s common. I think most people do what comes naturally to them and I’m an inherently idle person so this is especially true for me. So, despite the enjoyment of the writing, it’s still that act of beginning, the overhead of the start, the cliff face of every blank page stitching up into the clouds. That has always stopped me from forming the habit of writing.

It’s for this reason that I’m hoping to leverage the conditions of to Covid-19 lockdown and the #100DaysToOffload concept to help me build this habit, as it’s often claimed that habit forming takes at least 3 months (N.B. If the pubs are still closed in 3 months this will all be moot, because I’ll be dead). I want to develop the habit not just because of the enjoyment I’ve spoken about above but because being able to write consistently and well about thing is an incredibly useful thing to be able to do but it’s something I’ve never been able to do. It’s my hope that building this habit by writing owt about owt will develop my ability and instinct to the point where writing can be the tool I know it can be.