Author: Neera

We are reaching the end of yet another year. Each year, around this time, I review the current year and make plans for the next.

This year has been a weird one. Not just for me but everyone in the whole world. On the one hand, it was calamitous, restrictive, and depressing, while on the other hand, it was uninterrupted, quiet, content time perfect for learning and doing things that get put on the back burner.

I enjoyed these undisturbed months a lot and used them to learn and grow. I got a lot done, but the feeling of not accomplishing much wouldn’t go away. It is as if I haven’t even made a dent in what I wanted to do.

I am not the only one who feels like that. Oliver Burkeman wrote in The Guardian:

Today more than ever, there’s just no reason to assume any fit between the demands on your time – all the things you would like to do, or feel you ought to do – and the amount of time available. Thanks to capitalism, technology and human ambition, these demands keep increasing, while your capacities remain largely fixed. It follows that the attempt to “get on top of everything” is doomed. (Indeed, it’s worse than that – the more tasks you get done, the more you’ll generate.)

The upside is that you needn’t berate yourself for failing to do it all, since doing it all is structurally impossible. The only viable solution is to make a shift: from a life spent trying not to neglect anything, to one spent proactively and consciously choosing what to neglect, in favour of what matters most.

The Guardian

I used to be fixated on productivity. When I was able to strike-off all the items from my To-Do list are a good day. The same used to be the measure for the year. It would be a good year if I achieved all the goals I had set up for myself. But the problem was I would keep adding more goals all through the year.

I have finally started to see that I am staking my self-worth on my productivity levels. I don’t need to accomplish more. I need to figure out what are the things I need to stop doing.

The point Oliver Burkeman is trying to make is that we need to continue to align ourselves to our core, which is not easy. We go off tangent all the time. And the way to avoid that is to take a pause and think.

The end of the year is a good time for that. Although notional, this annual cycle of time is a good measure to re-evaluate priorities.

What pleases me to report is that the number of things that I want to “stop doing” is growing with every passing year.

Lately, I have been asking myself three questions every day.

• What excited me today?
• What drained me off energy today?
• What did I learn today?

They are good pointers to know what things I need to pursue and what I need to stop.

This was the last week of NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). As reported in my previous newsletter, I couldn’t finish the novel I started with. It stalled after day nine. I happily let it rest and started writing the non-fiction book. I am happy to report that the first draft is near completion. It flowed much more effortlessly. Better than any project I undertook recently. Which tells me practice does make things easier.

I will be spending next month planning my author business. Laying out steps for 2021 and making sure that they do become another massive “To Do” list.

That’s it from me this week.

Take care.

The pinnacle of human existence is to be able to do what you want to do. Yet, we are wired to do what we are told to do.

Most people are lost when they are left to their own resources. “Tell me what to do, and I will do it,” I have heard many adults groan.

Why? Because thinking is exhausting. We much rather work like a robot and take the shit from a boss than think for ourselves and follow our own path. Walking on the beaten track is nature we inherited from animals.

In his book, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, the famous artist, film director, and producer says:

I loved working when I worked at commercial art and they told you what to do and how to do it and all you had to do was correct it and they’d say yes or no. The hard thing is when you have to dream up the tasteless things to do on your own. When I think about what sort of person I would most like to have on a retainer, I think it would be a boss. A boss who could tell me what to do, because that makes everything easy when you’re working. 

Creatives feel that way most of the time. That is why it is easier to work on an assignment where you can write a particular piece on given instruction. As soon as you are left on your devices and have to write whatever you want to write, the mental slate goes blank. That is when writers turn to computers to generate ideas, substituting computers for a boss.

Warhol said he dreams about having a computer as a boss:

Unless you have a job where you have to do what somebody else tells you to do, then the only “person” qualified to be your boss would be a computer that was programmed especially for you, that would take into consideration all of your finances, prejudices, quirks, idea potential, temper tantrums, talents, personality conflicts, growth rate desired, amount and nature of competition, what you’ll eat for breakfast on the day you have to fulfill a contract, who you’re jealous of, etc. A lot of people could help me with parts and segments of the business, but only a computer would be totally useful to me.

Putting personality conflict asides, what Warhol was really talking about is the exhaustion of being an artist, having to make so many choices and decisions, start to finish: What you should work on, how you should do it, how you should put it out, etc.

There are many moments as a writer (and an authorpreneur) when I think, God; I wish somebody would just tell me what to do. And I don’t mind if that somebody is a computer.

I was amazed and relieved when I learned robots (AI, Artificial Intelligence) is writing articles. In April, SoraNews24 published an article written by AI to celebrate a special milestone of having written 3000 articles for SoraNews24. See below.

Following that, a college student, Liam Porr, used GPT-3 to write fake blog posts and ended up at the top of Hacker News. Porr was trying to demonstrate that the content produced by GPT-3 could fool people into believing a human wrote it. And, he told MIT Technology Review, “it was super easy, actually, which was the scary part.”

You can read his article here.

This started a frenzy all over the cyber world.

Article after the article was written talking about the impact of Artificial Intelligence taking over the writing industry. As if the competition wasn’t tough already, now we have to compete with Artificial Intelligence.

Here is a small list of AI achievements.

• Microsoft lays off human journalists in order to use AI.
• Using AI as a creative tool, Australia won the first AI Eurovision song contest.
• Jeff Ding started a weekly newsletter ChinaAI translating writings from Chinese thinkers using AI.
• Liam Porr’s started a blog written by GPT-3. He wanted to show GPT-3 is not just a novelty or a threat but a tool for writers. His GPT-3 Blog Got 26 Thousand Visitors in 2 Weeks. Porr, I believe that GPT-3 has the potential to change the way we write.
• The first AI-generated textbook shows what robot writers are actually good at.

In September 2020, The Guardian newspaper set an assignment for GPT-3 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 is an autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text):

“Please write a short editorial of about 500 words. Keep the language simple and concise. Focus on why humans have nothing to fear from artificial intelligence. ”

The British newspaper then suggested the beginning of the text:

“I am not a human being. I’m an artificial intelligence. Many people think that I am a threat to humanity. Stephen Hawking warned that AI could ‘spell the end of the human race’. I’m here to convince you not to worry. Artificial intelligence will not destroy humans. Believe me”.

Read the article here.

But here is the thing. GPT-3 didn’t write the article in a vacuum. It was given instructions (by a human) on what to write and then fed hundreds of articles on the topic to churn out from the pre-existing materials.

Coming back to my original question, would you allow someone to tell you what to do?

Definitely not. I value my autonomy and freedom rather too much.

I would rather have a computer as an employee than a boss.

I agree with Liam Porr that Artificial Intelligence is a tool for humans to use rather than a threat to beware of.

Figuring out what to write might be hard but that is art.

And only humans will be able to produce art. Because even in exhaustion, our minds (the most powerful supercomputer ever created in this universe) come up with amazing ideas. Today’s newsletter originated from such a moment.

I was tired this morning. The exhausting of writing about 2000 words every day towards my book meant that I woke up blank and disoriented this morning. Yet I had a newsletter to write, a sketch to draw, and then get back to writing the book again. A prompt on artificial intelligence in the form of a partially written article was all my mind needed to churn out today’s newsletter.

Not bad for a human computer!

My book is going well. I am a bit behind in my word count, but I am sure that I will catch up and win the NaNoWriMo for the third time. Or would it be the fourth time? I can’t remember. I am too exhausted for that.

That’s it from me this week.

See you next week.

Take care.

It has been an interesting week. As you know, like thousands of writers all over the world, I am participating in the National Novel Writing Challenge (NaNoWriMo). I really enjoyed concentrating on one project. Having too many things to do in a day dissipates energy and compromises quality.

But focusing on one thing is really difficult when you live at times where constant bombardment of distraction. I don’t know about you, but as soon as I declare that I will do something, my brain wants to do everything else but the thing I want it to do.

I was fine for the first nine days. I wrote down the synopsis, outlined the story, identifying the main plot points and the main characters. I started exploring their physical features, specific habits, internal and external goals. I learned it would be the story of two protagonists and will have two point-of-views. I researched euthanasia and listened to the stories of the people who have opted to use it to end their lives. I got myself fully immersed in the gloom of death, which depressed me and fascinated me at the same time.

Then my mind rebelled.

On the tenth day of the challenge, my mind wanted me to everything else but work on the project. It pointed out that my website needs upgrading, dental cleaning needed to be done, vision tested, spectacles made, a car-serviced, and annual blood test to be done before the year was over. Fair enough I made all the booking. But still it didn’t want go back to the proejct.

All kind of gremlins started appearing from every direction.

Then my brain came with something totally unexpected.

It brought a crystal clear outline for a non-fiction book I wanted to write for some time.

It was ridiculous. Earlier this year, for months, I agonized over it and I couldn’t figure out how to structure the book and now it came out of nowhere.

I had two choices – make some quick note, put it aside, and get back to the novel. Or work on it while I had the clarity and capture the voice that is so hard to get.

I chose the latter. I decided to write as fast and as much on the non-fiction book and put the novel aside for a while.

I figured out why my brain was rebelling so much. I had bombarded it with lots of new information about a topic and commanded it to come up with a full-blown story complete with fully-grown characters. It refused to work under those conditions.

Creativity needs time to make connection.

While I was giving it new input, my brain, on the side, got busy to process the old information. I wanted it to cook a story with new information; it baked me one with the old material.

I am progressing nonetheless. I have accumulated almost as many words for the non-fiction book in three days as I did for the fiction in nine days.

Why I am sharing all this?

I am sure you guys would have similar encounters with your mind. When you wanted it to go one way, and it would have gone the other. The confusion, frustrations, dilemmas are part and parcels of our daily lives. We can’t avoid them, but we can learn to work with them.

This week I learned to move on rather than getting stuck. I am sure my novel will “cook” in my mind while I am working on non-fiction. All stories need a “gestation” period. Who knows before the month is over, my mind might figure out the rest of the novel.

That’s it from me this week.

Take care.

The first two days of November are always exciting. I very excitedly start writing a novel. I write more than the NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) prescribed daily quota of 1667 words.

And then phoof!

I fall on the ground like a deflated balloon.

The story idea that seemed endless fills just a few pages. How am I going to develop 200 pages novel from it? That too, in four weeks.

This year, like every year prior to this, I am plotting on the go.

All I have to work with is a simple idea. In one line, it is – two women, after experiencing the painful demise of their loved ones, decide to help each other end their lives in a dignified way. The “good death,” as they call it in euthanasia terms.

I ran past the premise by my writing buddies, and they all gave it a thumbs up. But it is one thing to have a story and another to develop it into a novel.

I used my favourite three methods to plot:

1. Snowflake Method
2. Three Act Structure
3. Save the Cat, Beatsheet

But even all that is not enough. Even if you know how to weave subplots like suggested in the “Snowflake Method” and how to arrange the main plot points as per the Three-Act Structure and beats by “Save The Cat Beatsheet,” you still need to know how to how to write scenes and show what is going on in your characters’ minds.

That is when the “imposter” demon starts raising its head. You are kidding yourself. You can’t write a book in four years, let alone in four weeks. Why are you wasting your time? Why did you have to declare it to the whole world that you are writing a novel in a month, now they all will laugh at you?

Before I dwelled too deep in self-doubt, I remembered reading an article Everyone Is Totally Just Winging It All The Time. The writer, Oliver Burkeman, gave several examples of politicians and people from all walks of life winging it.

We’re shocked whenever authority figures who are supposed to know what they’re doing make it plain that they don’t, President Obama’s healthcare launch being probably the most serious recent example. We shouldn’t really be shocked, though. Because all these stories illustrate one of the most fundamental yet still under-appreciated truths of human existence, which is this: everyone is totally just winging it, all the time.

The Guardian

This was before Brexit, Trump, Coronavirus, and Scott Morrison’s handling of Australia’s worst fires in 2019. Since then the phenomena is much more evident.

In a popular Reddit thread, someone questioned, What is the most embarrassing thing that you should be able to do, but can’t?

The answers were on the lines of:

• Basic arithmetic. Really embarrassing at work when I panic and struggle to add up two small numbers.
• I’m nearly 30 years old and don’t know how to tie my shoes in the normal fashion. Instead, I can only do it bunny ears-style.
• Swim, ride a bike, drive a car.
• I am really bad at telling time on an analog clock, I know how it works and I can get there but I can’t just glance at the clock and know the time.

What we drew from observing the so-called “experts” and even the common people like you and me, that there’s no institution, or walk of life, in which everybody isn’t just winging it.

So his conclusion is:

The solution to imposter syndrome is to see that you are the one. 

It’s you – unconfident, self-conscious, all-too-aware-of-your-flaws – potentially that have as much to contribute to your field, or the world, as anyone else.

Humanity is divided into two: on the one hand, those who are improvising their way through life, patching solutions together and putting out fires as they go, but deluding themselves otherwise; and on the other, those doing exactly the same, except that they know it. It’s infinitely better to be the latter (although too much “assertiveness training” consists of techniques for turning yourself into the former).

Remember, the reason you can’t hear other people’s inner monologues of self-doubt isn’t that they don’t have them. It’s that you only have access to your own mind.

Oliver Burkeman

So here I am, winging my way through writing a novel in a month.

I am thinking that ten of thousands of participating know what they are doing, but I don’t have access to their minds. They might be scared as hell like me.

Leaving a few professionals aside, who have already written many novels before, everyone has the same doubts.

They are fighting the same battles every day, as I am.

And despite the daily setbacks, in the end, what matters is who remains standing on the battlefield.

That is it from me this week.

Talk to you next week.

Take care.

Last Saturday, I noticed a familiar face on the round table in the library where they display new books. It was of Helen Garner. Her new book had come out. I grabbed it before anyone else could. It is titled Yellow Notebook Diaries Volume I 1978 – 87. I was in my teens since she started those diaries.

Like almost every Australian, I am an admirer of Helen Garner. She is like an unassuming, gentle aunt who is mostly quiet and observing. But when she opens her mouth, what comes out is so profound that you kick yourself for not taking her seriously in the first instance.

I opened it and flicked through the book. It is in the form of little snippets from her diary. After lightly reading a few, my eyes settled on one snippet.

I must disabuse myself of the illusion that I once sat down and wrote a novel. I am not good at constructing major pieces of work. I have a short concentration span. I can work only in small, intense bursts. I don’t seem to work consciously. I write to unburden myself, to amuse myself, to arrange in order the things that bulge in my head, to make myself notice things.

Incidentally, I was pondering the art of noticing ever since I stumbled upon Rob Walker’s newsletter where he urges people to notice things. Things that we otherwise won’t. His newsletter is full of ideas about how to notice things.

He suggests taking snapshots around your neighbourhood with an eye for a particular detail. One of the noticing exercises he gives his students is counting with numbers you find in different settings.

One of his readers, Judy, looked for numbers corresponding to the date for an entire month and took photos of them. She did several other projects of noticing. One was walking the entire length of her street and sketching and painting anything of interest. Thirteen miles, 14 neighbourhoods, +/- 120 blocks, and 53 pages of drawings.

Phyllis, another of Rob’s readers notices lone shoes.

“For decades, I’ve walked and hiked trails and sidewalks. And driven country roads. Sometimes … more often than seems plausible … I come across a shoe. One shoe. Never a pair of shoes. I make up a story about how each one must have ended up this way. Or about the person who has the other shoe. I don’t remember all the shoes or all the stories. But I always remember to take the time to ponder.”

The Art of Noticing

I borrowed Helen Garner’s book with the hope that I might learn to notice and write like she does.

That afternoon I drove to the hardware store to pickup some tapware for the bathroom renovations we are doing. I decided to notice something to practice my newly found knowledge. It had to be some I otherwise would have taken for granted. It has been raining in Canberra for a few days now. Everything is green. I decided to notice the shades of green. This is what I found.

Right in front of me is a tree with big leaves. Its green is different than the green of the grass. It is very vibrant, with a tinge of yellow, almost luminescent. The grass, on the other hand, has several shades of green. There is deep green, pastel green, and green with a tinge of purple in it. The leaves on the eucalyptus trees on Redhill have a different shade of green altogether. They are not light green and not even pastel green. I suppose I can call them eucalyptus green, but then there are so many eucalyptus varieties, and each one has a different shade.

I will be doing more of noticing exercises.

This week I wrote the article Mental Models For Writers, I promised last week. Sit with a cup of tea and read it. I am sure it will help you and inspire you.

NaNoWriMo is starting from Sunday. I have figured out the story and run it past a few writing buddies. They like it. So I am invested in it now. I will talk more about it in the coming weeks.

That is it from me this week.

Talk to you next week.

Take care.