Writer’s Log, 6/11/12

It hasn’t yet been a month since I left ReadWriteWeb to begin writing a book. As expected, it’s taking some time to adjust. I haven’t opened Skype in at least a week – it used to be the main form of daily communication with my RWW colleagues. I miss it in a way, but I’m also feeling more relaxed and I’m excited about working for myself again.

As part of the adjustment process, I thought I’d start a daily journal on my main social media accounts: Facebook, Google+, Twitter. I’m trying this for several reasons. One, I want to track my progress in a public way (I’ve also started a private hand-written journal, which will focus more on book planning and chronicling my progress; an idea I got from a friend who just started a significant new job). Two, I want to make sure I keep communicating to the outside world on a regular basis. I’ve said a number of times in the past that I’m not a “thinking out loud” style Twitterer or Facebooker, meaning that I usually don’t update either channel more than a few times a day. So this daily journal will help in that regard. Three, writing a book is a new challenge for me and I’m still feeling my way into the process. So I want to record some of my learnings while I go and get feedback from you all.

Daily journal… what folks used to call a “web log” back in the day. It used to be more like a diary back then, too. I’m talking 2002-03 when I first started blogging. If you look at some of my RWW posts from 2003, a lot of them were quite personal. That’s because I was finding my voice and experimenting with this new medium. Incidentally, I’ve noticed that style of writing coming back in tools like Medium. Perhaps it never went out of style, but I got so focused on daily “professional blogging” instead (an entirely different beast, but that’s a topic for another day).

So what’s on my plate for the rest of today (it’s 11am my time as I write this)? Well, I’m going to do more topic research and story development. Until tomorrow…