I used to hang out in irc.freenode.net#emacs a lot, and I used to frequently check the RecentChanges page of http://www.emacswiki.org. Both were great sources for Emacs questions and answers, and they often inspired me to go and write blog posts sharing what I discovered.

Lately, I've been hanging out with Drupal geeks and social networking geeks–hence all the blog posts about Drupal and technology evangelism. This is because of work, and so my blog posts are about things I'm learning at work. My Emacs use is down to reading mail, reading news, and managing my day. I still use it every day, but I'm not doing a lot of development in it. (Hmm, maybe that's something else I can set up.)

Maybe I should start writing from the front of the book instead - basic Emacs stuff, leading up to more advanced tips…

I spent some time working on the Wicked Cool Emacs today. Spam filtering - not something I'd set up before. I'm writing it because I promised to write it, but I can't shake off the feeling that this part would be better done by someone who's passionate about Emacs and spam filtering. I have Google handle my spam filtering for me, so I haven't needed to do anything more sophisticated. Still, not everyone's going to have the same set-up, so it would be good to document that too.

I'm tempted to jump to a different chapter and start working on that, just to make working on the book fun again.

Oh, that and productive application of structured procrastination… =)

Better: A Surgeon's Notes on Performance by Atul Gawande Read more about this book…

Here's a quote for all you writers, bloggers, and other aspiring communicators, from the afterword on how to become a positive deviant [p.249]

My fourth suggestion was: write something. I don't mean this to be an intimidating suggestion. It makes no difference whether you write five paragraphs or a blog, a paper for a professional journal, or a poem for reading group. Just write. What you write need not achieve perfection. It need only add some small observation about your world.

You should also not underestimate the power of the act of writing itself. I did not write until I became a doctor. But once I became a doctor, I found I needed to write. For all its complexity, medicine is more physically than intellectually taxing. Because medicine is a retail enterprise, because doctors provide their services to one person after another, it can be a grind. You can lose your larger sense of purpose. But writing lets you step back and think through a problem. Even the angriest rant forces the writer to achieve a degree of thoughtfulness.

… Most of all, by offering your reflections to an audience, even a small one, you make yourself part of a larger world. Put a few thoughts on a topic in just a newsletter, and you find yourself wondering nervously: Will people notice it? What will they think? Did I say something dumb? An audience is a community. The published word is a declaration of membership in that community and also the willingness to contribute something meaningful to it.

So choose your audience. Write something.

Atul Gawande, Better

My blog anchors my participation in the larger world, resulting in not only online interaction but real-world as was well. It makes me part of the conversation.

When I talk to people who don't blog. I feel a strange disconnect as if the conversation we have stops there: stops at the e-mail exchange with each other, stops at the meeting, is confined within the boundaries of our encounters. When I talk to people who blog, the conversation is wide open and embraces the world.

It's hard to explain that to the people who are afraid that they might have nothing to say. The truth is that you won't discover what you have to say until you say it. Sometimes it's hard to remember that not everyone has discovered the use of writing in reflecting and connecting with others. People have other priorities. They have no time. And perhaps at the core of it, they are shy as I was shy, as I still am shy. But I can overcome my shyness because I want to be part of that larger conversation with them. With you.

Write, and join the conversation.

I just finished putting together my third chapter, which is really chapter 7 in the book: managing your notes and Emacs. This chapter is about taking notes in Emacs, focusing on Remember, Org, Planner, and blogs. At 38 pages, it's a little over my planned 35 pages, and I haven't even covered all the things that I wanted to like random information management with Howm, blogging to Blosxom, and customizing Planner templates. Maybe after some really fierce copy-editing, I'll have some space.

I sent a copy off to my editor, and I just finished uploading a PDF and OpenOffice.org document that you can download and read. There's also an HTML version, but the formatting is a little wonky. I hope you find this useful! I didn't blog as much of this as I did last time, so I missed out on all the wonderful feedback people could've given me. I'll do that next chapter.

I formatted most of the chapter this afternoon, hanging out with Leigh Honeywell, Seth Hardy, and a few other geeks at the Linux Caffe. Leigh's working on a book proposal, and we're thinking of organizing a writing group for technical authors. We'll start by meeting this Thursday at Leigh's apartment. iI enjoyed chatting with them as I worked on my book, drifting in and out of conversations. I think it would be a good idea to work somewhere quieter, with plenty of table room for assorted gadgets, but this was a good start.

Next chapter: contact management in Emacs. I've got a lot of fun hacks that I want to share here, so coming up with material shouldn't be hard. I'll keep you posted!

(UPDATE: Fixed links. Thanks to Leschinsky Oleg for pointing that out!)

I also rock because I'm getting the hang of writing macros for OpenOffice.org. Basic is not my favorite language and OpenOffice.org macro programming is sufficiently obscure that it's hard to find examples of what I want to do. OOoMacros.org helped me learn enough to write a few more functions to make my writing life better. I wrote two new functions today: one to mark up wingdings in my code, and another to mark up the source code examples. Both save me lots of tedious work. The wingding function replaced all instances of (1), ;; (1), (2), ;; (2), until (9) and ;; (9) with the corresponding wingding. The example function marked up everything enclosed in <example>..</example> tags, formatting the first and last lines in a different style and using a single-line code style for short examples. Between that and the two functions I'd previously written to format about 80% of my command and keyboard shortcuts, editing is just so much better.

It seems that most people don't tinker with their tools. I like doing so. I like getting to know what I can do with a tool and how far I can push it. This can be frustrating sometimes (I spent all afternoon trying to get Emacs to play nicely with other weblogs!), but most of the time, it's both fun and useful. Not only am I saving myself time, I'm also exercising my brain and opening opportunities for other hacks down the line. This is good.

Oh! And W- is giving Ledger a try. The tool he'd been using to keep track of finances dropped some more of his data recently. Because it's all magic inside, he couldn't figure out what happened. I'd been going on about how awesome Ledger is, this command-line double-entry accounting tool that provides no bells or whistles but with which I can do all sorts of crazy things. He described how he wanted to budget, and I showed him how to do it. No screencast, but I do plan to review the audio and create some supporting materials for my upcoming article on Ledger and Gnuplot.

Life is good. =)

This was a very good writing day. I wrote 2256 words for my book, Wicked Cool Emacs, filling in the section on using Planner to take notes. I braindumped some stories from yesterday and today in an 847-word blog post, and I also sketched the outlines of my upcoming presentations and articles. All of that was extracurricular work in addition to e-mails, instant messages, meetings, wikis, and spreadsheets. Yes, it was a very good writing day, and I think I'll finish this chapter by the 7th, somehow managing to finish a chapter a month despite everything else that's going on.

What did I do differently? I tried two things:

Using a PDA to write during my commute: the thumb board made all the difference. Tapping tiny keys on a virtual screen or even scrawling in handwriting or graffiti was too slow for me. It made me think too much about input, and I got distracted from what I want to say. On the other hand, I found it easy to type while thinking about what I want to say. I didn't feel slowed down by the technology.

I spent most of my commute writing blog posts and outlining my upcoming presentations and articles. I was surprised to find that a flat file was good enough for organizing my outline. I thought that I would need an outline or mind mapping program, but all the programs I tried took too much effort to get ideas into the system. Palm's built-in memo pad did quite well, although I ran into the 4 kB limit about halfway through my commute and I had to start a new note.

I also ended up draining the battery because I hadn't dimmed the backlight, but that just meant that I could play on my DS with a clear conscience.

Tracking the number of words remaining: Early in the writing process, I set up Emacs to show a running total of the number of words in my draft. The first version of the quote showed the total number of words, and the second version of the quote showed the difference between a baseline and the current number of words. This was useful for seeing how much I'd written since I reset the baseline. Today, I flipped it around. Instead of showing me how many words I'd written, Emacs showed me how many words I still had to write, starting at 2000 and counting down. I don't know if that's a key change, but I admit that it was fun seeing the number inch down. Maybe it's the computer science geek in me, but I find it easier to test if something is zero then to test if something is equal to another number.

Hmm. One of these days, I might even hook my word counter into some kind of automatic status notification to the outside world so that people can find out how I'm doing. Maybe it would automatically tweet when I reach 50%, 75%, and 100% of my quota. Not that anyone really needs to know, but I think it would be fun.

I didn't look into doing word counts on the Palm, but I don't think I'll need it. I think of the Palm as a way to work on outlines and jot quick thoughts. I was pleasantly surprised to find out that I'd written so much, though.

End result: another section in the book, another step closer to the end of my third chapter, and a warm and fuzzy feeling of accomplishment. I may be getting the hang of this writing thing.

I'm looking forward to joining the writing group that Leigh Honeywell is thinking of starting up. I'd happily head out into the snow for an afternoon of writing at the Linux Caffe. Of course, I won't be able to do speech recognition, but I think the company will more than make up for it. And who knows? If I bring my voice recorder along, I can use it to capture my demos to other people and transcribe those into my computer afterwards.

Kaizen: relentless improvement. Yes, even for creative processes like writing… =)

Tracking Your Finances with Ledger and Gnuplot
Most people generally stress out about their finances at the end of
the year and at tax time. A good personal finance program can help
them plan and control their expenses so that they can make it through
the holidays and taxes without wiping out their bank accounts. That
way, they'll have room in their budgets for another year's
subscription to Linux Journal!
My article will give practical tips for managing personal finances
with the Ledger command-line tool, and how to slice and dice the data
with awk and Gnuplot to generate useful graphs. It is compatible with
Gnucash but far friendlier for people who like working with text
files. For example, I have more than two years of categorized
financial data: some imported from bank statements, some exported from
Gnucash, and many added through the Emacs Ledger mode. I can see my average monthly expenses for any category, project my savings into the future, or export the data and graph it in Gnuplot to see how my
income compares with my expenses and to look for patterns. This makes
it easy for me to see where I am, and motivates me to keep moving
forward. I would love to share these tips with your readers in an
article around 2200 words long, accompanied by sidebars that include
tips on managing personal finance.

Part of my query letter to the Linux Journal

Okay. I can do this. What's on the horizon in terms of extracurricular writing?

• TLE paper, 3 pages, self-imposed deadline of Feb 19
• Talk on Networking 2.0 (script, presentation), 1 hour, to be delivered Feb 29
• Wicked Cool Emacs book (ongoing), finish chapter on notes management, flexible deadline but would like to finish it by Feb 7
• Wicked Cool Emacs book (ongoing), write next chapter on Being Big Brother (ooh, that'll be fun!), flexible deadline but would like to finish it by March 7
• ON VACATION March 10 - 24 (may get some writing done)
• Personal finance article for Linux Journal, April 1

Discipline. Discipline and organization.

I need to make better use of my commuting time. The DS is a nice distraction, but I need to convert my commute into thinking or writing time.

What do I need in order to do that?

I need to have:

• An outline (paper copy, and I can put the full version in my DS)
• A pad of paper
• A pen that I won't lose (or don't care about losing)
• Free hands to do this
• Another way to work if I don't have a seat or free hands (voice recorder)

Tech prop: Typing is not fun on the DS. It's not bad for keeping data, but typing involves an on-screen keyboard. Maybe I can borrow W-'s old Treo, find an outlining tool, load my outline into that. I'll give that a shot.

Today: Prep outline, get everything ready for tomorrow - I have a longer commute coming up. I'm reasonably ready for the work I need to do, so I can spend some thinking time on the book.

… tap tap tap…

I like editing. I can read what I want to say, and all I have to do is figure out how to say it better. I translate from something that I understand to something that other people might understand. It helps to throw away this abstract idea of "people" and write for specific people I know. I like thinking of a few other geek girls who are also interested in Emacs, like Clair and Quinn. How would I explain Emacs task management in a way that would help my friends go, "Aha! Now I see it!"? When I get the technical stuff nailed, I cut and tweak until it sounds like something I'd actually say to them.

Editing is work, but it's good work. This is what's going to make me a good writer: deliberate practice. I can feel the changes in the text. I think there are much better ways to say things in the way I say them right now. I don't know what those ways are yet, but I'm looking forward to finding out. This is not to say that I'll spend the next few decades obsessively polishing a single chapter. This book is a starting point, not the end, and I like writing and learning too much to get stuck.

I'd still like to make it to my self-imposed deadline of January 31 for this chapter, but sprinting towards that deadline would be less effective than deliberately practicing writing, deliberately trimming and polishing my previous work until I get a sense of what it means to write.

In this section, you'll learn about the different kinds of notes you take, and you will be able to choose one or two Emacs modules to start learning.

- [ ] Capture and retrieve - Remember, search

Getting the ideas out of your head and into your note-taking system; searching your notes (basic), searching your notes (specific)

Wicked cool code: Remembering to different note-taking systems, searching different note-taking systems

- [ ] Outline Notes with Org, Blorg

In this section, you'll learn how to keep outlined notes using Org.  You'll be able to create headings, sub-headings, and text notes. You'll also learn how to manage outline items by promoting, demoting, and rearranging them. These basic editing commands are covered in the Emacs Org manual, so I'll just give a brief summary..

You'll also get tips on how to capture text quickly (M-x remember, dabbrev), work with large outline files (split windows are useful), and search your notes efficiently (searching headings or text).

Lastly, you'll learn how to publish your Org file as HTML or LaTeX.

Wicked cool code would be: searching, how to import to and export from Freemind, a graphical mind-mapping program.

- [ ] Daily Notes with Planner

In this section, you'll learn how to write a day-based journal using Planner. In addition to free-form notes on the page, you'll also be able to keep semi-structured notes typed in manually or captured using Remember. You'll also learn how to publish the resulting pages as HTML and RSS, and how to customize the output.

Wicked cool code would be: searching notes and displaying matching headlines, private notes, publishing note headlines, and publishing a note index.

- [ ] Hyperlinked Notes with Muse

In this section, you'll learn how to create a personal wiki using Muse.  You'll learn how to create pages, link to pages, and publish your wiki.

Wicked cool code: Capturing notes to specific pages using Remember and keyword matches, private pages, publishing pages when you save them.

- [ ] Snippets with Howm

In this section, you'll learn how to manage random snippets of information using Howm.

- [ ] Blogging from Emacs - Wordpress, LJ, Blogger,Muse-Blosxom, EmacsAtomAPI

In this section, you'll learn how to use Emacs as a blogging client for many popular platforms. This is mainly for keeping other blogs in sync, although I'll also talk about the possibility of using planner-rss + something like Feedwordpress.

- [ ] Encrypted Notes (full file, segments) - MOSTLY WRITTEN

In this section, you'll learn how to encrypt your notes. Actually, this will probably be split up into the different tools…

"This isn't a hobby," W pointed out as he massaged my shoulders. "It's more like a second job."

He's got a point there. Because I want to meet some goal dates, I put schedule pressure on myself. It's work. I do a little bit of it even when I'm not in the mood for it, and I consciously work on getting into the right mood for it. And hey, I'm thrilled about my progress. =) I can almost feel my writing muscles getting stronger.

I'm settling into a good rhythm for writing. For example, this section took me 2 hours and 19 minutes to write. Just enough time between a post-dinner break (take a shower, read a book, chat a little, look at Your Personal Penguin (so cute!)) and bedtime.

Getting speech recognition to the point where I can trust it would be nice, too, so that I can give my hands a rest. =)

Must remember to write about non-Emacs, non-writing topics sometime, or I'll bore all my friends!

Tomorrow's a busy day. I have two conference calls, a client meeting, an eye exam (need new glasses), and if I can squeeze it in, a dentist appointment as well. I've finished a lot of work for the client, and I'm looking forward to sharing the first drafts with them. I'm really turning into an intranet social media consultant! =) This is good.

Tomorrow is also an editing day, so I'll take whatever I have so far and start putting it all together. And then the chapter's just going to magically fall into place, like it did last time.

The days are just packed. =D

Is 5,000 words per day Possible? « EK’s Star Log577

Nope, neither; just writers. Writers who write for a living (ie they get paid to write in order to put food on the table and buy clothes for thier kids), write a lot and write a lot every day. For them, 10,000 words a day is just more of the same old same old, because they’d be writing 10,000 words per day even if they were not here on NaNo.

Practice means writing something even if I don't feel like doing it. It's funny, but once I start writing, things come a little more easily. Kirk is right578. I don't have to expect my first draft to feel right. I just have to get it out there, so that I can find out what I'm thinking, and I can edit it. Writing is mostly editing, anyway.

When I was writing my master's thesis, I got stuck on chapters as well. What helped me then was the realization that it didn't really matter what I put out was my first draft, because I was going to fix it. My supervisor was going to help me fix it. My thesis committee members were going to help me fix it. I just had to get the raw material out there, so that we all had something to play with. Once I got the raw material out there, putting together a full length draft that my supervisor could then read, things went so much faster.

I'm like that with this book as well. I need to get the chapters out of my head. It's a little embarrassing posting all of these things and finding version dependencies, typos, bugs in my code, bugs in my writing… but the important thing is that it's out there. I'm really lucky that people are reading it, commenting, correcting my errors, suggesting other things I can look into. I wouldn't have that feedback if I didn't write.

So I just have to get things out there. I need to throw some pots, because each pot will teach me something that will bring me closer to what I want to be able to do. I need to practice. I need to practice, practice, and practice. Even if it sometimes it doesn't feel like I'm making much progress day by day, eventually I'll get to the point where even I will be able to see the difference between how I'll do things and how I used to do things before.

What are you working towards?

The next chapter is the one on taking notes. It's also 35 pages, and I've budgeted a month for it. If I push my current deadline forward one week, I might still be able to make it to my next deadline of January 31, 2008. The raw text should take me about six days of writing 2,000 words each. I'm planning to write about the one-file approach, Remember, Org, Planner, Howm, Records, and blogging from Emacs. Budget in maybe one weekend for editing, and that comes out to writing for three hours every other weekday and doing a little more work on it during weekends. This kind of schedule will help me avoid the mistake I did this month, which was focusing on work during weekday evenings and working on the book only during weekends.

I'm also happy to say that I'm getting the hang of dictating to Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I've trained it to recognize things like Emacs and C-c, and I'm getting used to working with a combination of typing and speaking. I carry a portable voice recorder with me, and I dictate into it after I've taken off my contact lenses and can't work at the computer. I've been using it for blog posts, chapter drafts, and the occasional rant about Emacs versioning. I'm also getting the hang of not freaking out about the ungrammatical things that Dragon NaturallySpeaking thinks I've said.

And I like not having to type.

Okay, I figured out what to do. I'm going to include it, but I'll use a distinctive background to show people that this is only available with a newer version of Org. That way, the bleeding edge geeks can still do all sorts of cool stuff.