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Momentum is about the only physics I understand. You want to make “something” happen and start the ball rolling. Put a plan in place and then work to create the conditions to move that “something” forward. Your chances of having “something” come off successfully largely depend on how well you have done your planning. Combined with a little luck. Planning and luck were strategies deployed regularly in my communications career. So I shouldn’t be surprised that “something” has started happening in my writing life. Largely for the same reasons. I committed to publishing a book next year and writing more regularly to make that happen. Starting this blog was part of that process. Now more writing guidance and opportunities to write are opening up. As I immerse myself in the company of writers, I discover I am not so very different from them. I am beginning to see myself as a writer again. In a good way. Today I signed up for the online Perfect Your Process writing summit. Hosted by writing coach Daniel David Wallace, there will be hourly presentations and podcasts throughout this weekend on all manner of writing-related content: AI, editing, and ways to restart your writing engine when motivation flags. I paid a modest sum to access the podcasts and presentations in perpetuity after the summit weekend. My digital, document, and book writing library grows daily, along with a wealth of useful tips and tricks on developing your craft. One writer advises us to mindfully engage all five senses as we sit down to write. Play music. Reread inspirational quotes and phrases. Put a blanket around your shoulders. Keep a favorite beverage at hand. It is a way to ground and focus on the task at hand. On Sunday, our 3X Weekly Hay House Writer’s Accountability Group is holding its first-ever writing marathon. Seven hours are committed to this day-long experiment in two 3.5-hour blocks. I am stocking up on fresh coffee beans and almond biscotti to keep up my energy and motivation. A theme is arising about what it takes to write a book the more reading and research I do about the writing process. Basically, it is as Nike simple as “Just do it!” It seems that with the increasing technological assault on all of us, writers and writing are rising up as even more important than they have ever been, in spite of fewer people reading actual books. We worry and wonder and doom speak about technology “taking over the world. ” Historically, anxiety about new technology is nothing new. The typewriter was first viewed as a threat to the art of writing. A version was invented in Italy in 1575, but it took a while to come into widespread use. Historians have estimated that some form of the typewriter was invented 52 times as thinkers tried to come up with a workable design. Professor Steven Pinker reminds us that counterforces will inevitably arise to tackle any serious technological threat to our survival. Because they always have. Also because we have other very real and present dangers to attend to, like climate change. Writing is conscious resistance and a collective, if tacit, defense of our humanity. In a world where apps and cellphones and streaming videos and gaming continually distract us from that which makes us human, writers are rebels. Writers form a united – if unorganized – front against the assault of technology’s impersonal and utter disinterest in who we are as a species. Technology does not care what becomes of us. That there are so many writing these days about personal and human stories is proof of those technology counterforces in action.