Writing Roadblocks November 24, 2007

These are some stumbling blocks to writing better and more often. I need to resolve these issues to move forward.

• I feel writing about myself is vain.
• If I share my feelings, they would either be egotistical or self-pitying.
• I don’t want to share some things about myself. I’m embarassed.
• I don’t want to talk about other people. I have no right to share things about them to the world, no matter how incidental.
• My life is boring, there’s nothing to blog about unlike others.

To get some help, I asked my friend who specializes in these things. So, I’m now starting on Creative Nonfiction, A Manual for Filipino Writers by Cristina Pantoja Hidalgo.

Writing better, writing more often November 3, 2007

So I’ve been going emo over my lack of innovation. I have figured a way out. A workaround.

I’ve been frustrated over what I couldn’t do in the tech field. A solution is to find something else to do. Something related to this blog. Writing.

I haven’t been writing much prose. I only write technical specifications for work, and blogging for you, the reader. (And of course I haven’t been blogging enough.) My technical blogging is limited. I don’t want to blog anything remotely related to what I work on. Instead, the tech I blog about is stuff that I find fun or significant. I moved the “hard” topics to another blog. I want to keep this blog for personal insights. And for essay-type blogging.

That is the main reason why I haven’t been blogging here enough. I wanted to reserve this blog for article and essay-type posts. I wanted to reach the level of the influential bloggers and tech essayists whose works stand the test of time. But now, I realize I’m not there yet. I need to improve.

I got some writing help. Hopefully, this blog will show results. This blog should warm me up to writing longer pieces, more literary, even.

The first piece of advice in essay writing I got was to write the essay as if it were a personal letter to myself. I’ll apply that to the blog. As a letter, I should be more casual and just let the words come out. I am doing that right now, instead of carefully considering every word. But, I can’t sustain writing like this if the limit is the time I’m on the PC.

I need to take down my thoughts and write down notes. The writer spends their waking time thinking of what to write about – in the same way the programmer thinks of new ways of solving problems.

So I go forward with writing better and writing more often as a goal. I may not declare my 101 goals in public (like Sacha Chua’s goals, assuming even I could even come up with that many. Now if I were as logical as her…)

People are joining the NaNoWriMo this November. Perhaps I should join them, in writing essays. Hope I could do this.

The Multiple Intelligences of Tech November 2, 2007

In my previous post about product and technology innovation, I complained that I lacked the skill or opportunity to create my own product. Instead, I implement plans made by others.

Now I’m thinking this is a similar to the theory of multiple intelligences: intelligence is not one-dimensional. While there are tech people like me who can design and implement a product, there are other people who can identity problems and think about the needed solutions. Product development skill – and marketing the idea – uses a different intelligence than making the idea a reality. Programming is basically problem solving, and is pointless when there is no identifiable problem.

The single person who can do both has an awesome combination.

This reminds me of a career advice post by Scott Adams, which I found through Marc Andreesen’s own career posts. To be extraordinary, being very good at two or more things is more achievable than being the best in one. Making use of the multiple intelligences of tech will help one become extraordinary.

Needless to say, that is what I want to do.