inspiration

Writing Can Be So Terribly Boring Sometimes

/ Stuart Danker / 130 Comments

A woman looking bored in the dark

I remember landing my first writing gig as a young journalist. I was so hopeful, dying to unleash my voice upon the world. 

But I wrote for the newspapers, where every story bordered between direct and sterile. Didn’t the other writers care about craft? Surely, they knew something about the arts?

Oh, they did. They definitely did. But I was young enough to think I knew better than everybody else.

It wasn’t long before I became one of them. Before I realised how writing for a living and writing for yourself were two totally different things. And after scraping by for more than a decade, I can safely say this: writing can be a real bore sometimes, especially if you’re paid to do it.

Here’s why.

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Don’t Just Procrastinate. Make It Do The Work For You Instead.

/ Stuart Danker / 61 Comments

A hand sticking out from under the sheets, with

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.

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ChatGPT Is Coming For Your Jobs

/ Stuart Danker / 98 Comments

A mean-looking robot in front of a screen. Words on pic says 'resistance is futile'

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.

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Where I Get All My Writing Ideas From

/ Stuart Danker / 124 Comments

A bunch of people brain storming in a meeting room with a cork board and post-it notes

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.

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The Things I’ve Removed For A Better Life

/ Stuart Danker / 112 Comments

Someone burning a receipt with a lighter, with a text overlay: Less, but better

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.

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