Another reason family, and kids can focus your mind.

Last year I wrote a post about how having two kids in two years focused my work. I still think this is true, and today I read a post by Aaron Mahnke about almost the same topic. > My 60-90 minutes of write time needs to be the most productive, most > efficient time I can manage. But because it comes at the end of the > day, my ability to retain fine details is rapidly deteriorating. Add > in a finger or two of whiskey, and it’s a miracle that I get anything > written at all.

Wireframing My Fiction is about how Aaron focuses the small amount of time he has each day to focus on personal projects. I feel like we both have the same idea with slightly different frames. > So I have developed a technique over time that I like to call > wireframing. If you are familiar with the process most web developers > use for the creation of websites, then my process will feel familiar. > Wireframing is all about putting the bare essentials on paper to gain > a complete picture of the website, but without all the decorative and > functional elements. It’s the skeleton that will be built upon, like > that wire figure in your college art class that you would have to mash > clay onto in some vain attempt to build a human body.

I don’t write fiction. I write blog posts, and make websites. My ideas usually come to me in the weirdest places, so I write them down in simplenote the best I can, and then I put the idea like on the wall in my head. I will then continue to think about it until I can’t think about it anymore. Then it others spews into a post, or into some code, and I’m done. Keeping the notes is key. Without them I would forget some of the finer points of my thoughts.