I’ve always used procrastination as a power tool. For example, I use it as motivation to clean the house. All I need to do is start writing and the laundry will magically take care of itself.
Which brings us to the topic of productive procrastination (that shall henceforth be known as PP, hee hee). Can we actually leverage our lazy tendencies to get more done? Or is it doing us more harm than good?
Let’s find out.
Continue reading
Just one year after I wrote this post about AI and writing, ChatGPT was released into the world, threatening to disrupt so many fields from programming to copywriting.
Naturally, I had my pitchfork at the ready. AI is going to take my job! I thought. Every creative in the world is doomed!
Then I remembered I was jobless.
Anyhoo, I decided to play around with the thing and see if creative writing was really doomed to a future of algorithms or if us writers could benefit from wielding this Star Trek tech. And here’s what I’ve learned.
Continue reading
Where do you get your ideas from?
I personally can’t say. I know when they have the most odds of showing up, but I don’t exactly know where they come from.
But as fate would have it, my friend would ask me this question on a particularly eventless morning, and that would be the tinder for this post. So Wan, if you’re reading this, that’s how I get my ideas.
Maybe this post will answer that question proper. Or maybe I’m just writing this because I need something for this week. Either way, let’s take a quick tour through my Idea Central and see if we can source for its… uh… source.
Continue reading
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
It’s easy to want more in life. In fact, we’re programmed that way. Give us a taste of sugar and next we’ll want doughnuts. Earn our first million and we’ll look for a billion.
The hedonic treadmill is real, and constantly running is not the path to happiness. If anything, it’ll probably highlight just how capable you are of crying in your Lamborghini.
Of course, I shouldn’t comment since I don’t have a Lamborghini, but I did win the lottery where authordom is concerned—a traditionally-published novel along with the subsequent press coverage.
Continue reading
When’s the last time you drove a stick shift?
Seems like an irrelevant question, until you recall the fact that I’m a writer. And as it turns out, being a writer affords me the ability to make the zaniest of analogies. Hence today we officiate the marriage between productivity and driving a manual transmission.
But first off, let’s discuss productivity overdrive (PO). Is it a fancy new term I made up? Yes. Is it important? Not really. Should we still treat it like pre-existing corporate lingo? Most definitely.
Continue reading
Your Friendly Malaysian Writer 