Imagine you are Jochem ... The Writer

Imagine you, being me.

You have this vague sense of an idea.
It has to get out.
You feel you have to write it into a story.
Or a book perhaps!
You could just start.
Typing one letter after another.
But you want to do this right.
You decide to immerse yourself in the art of writing.

You read every book on writing you can find.
But you only remember On Writing by Stephen King.
In your defense, that’s a good one.
One thing you learn is that you have to read a lot of books.
So you read.

Every night before sleeping, you read a few pages.
One year later, you have read a grand total of six books.
Somehow, six does not seem much.
But what can you do?
You can start writing, that’s what you can do!

You use Hacker News as a procrastrinating device.
A few evenings.
A week.

Eventually, you come up with a plot for your book.
And decide to buy Scrivener.
It’s great for writing books.
Stephen King is a pantser.
So you should be one too.
You start typing.

It’s amazing.
Somehow, letter after letter gets written down.
It will become the next New York Times Best Seller.
Of course it will.

A few weeks later you notify your significant other about your writing endeavors.
She hears you saying the name of the main character.
She pulls a funny face.
One that you have never seen before.
That could be a good thing.
But it’s not.

You decide to rethink your plans.
And let your story simmer for a few days.

Six months later you rediscover the written chapters for your book.
You even like some of your ideas!
You decide to improve your text and carry on.

You decide all possibilities Scrivener offers are distracting.
You buy iAWriter.
You convert the book to Markdown.
It’s great.
Really.

Until you decide you want to write on Linux.
iAWriter does not run on Linux.
You rediscover Emacs.
You discover Jay Dixit, a successful author who writes using Emacs!
Jay explains how he has configured his Emacs.
It’s great.

Jay uses org-mode.
So you convert your Markdown into beautiful .org files.
You’re in heaven now.
Life is awesome.

Except…
You thought you had written three chapters in the last year or so.
Now you can only find some notes.
And a single chapter.
But it’s an old version.

In 2023, you discover something.
You haven’t touched your text for three years.
But any day now …

That’s right.
That’s you, being Jochem the Writer.
You are being me.