Programming My Way Back to Writing
An Unexpected Catalyst
In my spare time, I enjoy writing, but lately, I've been stuck in a loop of only writing ideas and outlining drafts. I finally decided to take action and do what any rational writer would do... code.
Over the course of two weeks, I collated all my drafted ideas on paper and on various writing platforms into a database in Notion. Then, I manually tagged each item and exported the file into a .csv to visualize in Python.
I started by analyzing the raw frequency of my ideas to get a sense of what singular topics I tend to ideate. I decided to use a bar graph for simplicity and a word cloud for flair (to be honest, these tend to be less readable, but they are very visually pleasing). For the uninitiated, the bigger the word in the word cloud, the more frequently it comes up relative to other words.
The main things I tend to think about are insights (external and internal) from things I observe in the world. I have an odd tendency to draw analogies and connections from the most random events or relate them to something I love. In my more recent ideas, they tended to be related to chess, but I’m glad looking back that my interests are so far-reaching.
I also seem to draw a lot of inspiration from the humanities and social sciences: psychology, philosophy, history, politics, and economics. Hilariously, I tended to draw more ideas from comedy, anime, and YouTube than engineering (my major).
In addition to my singular ideas, I also decided to take a look at how often some ideas related to others. To do this I made a correlation matrix and a node diagram (even less readable but 100 times more visually appealing). The correlation matrix gets darker the more the item on the x and y axes occur together. For the node graph, the thicker the line, the more the two ideas relate to each other. In addition, a more connected theme would have more connections flowing from it.
External insight seems to be tied to a lot of themes, most consistently history, philosophy, politics, psychology, economics, and YouTube. In addition, these external insights are often tied to my internal ones as well; often what is applicable to others is to me. But in the realm of personal insights, anime, productivity, music, psychology, and YouTube seem to be the most frequent connections.
Although not the ideal means with which I want to get back into writing, I think this was a big, small step, and I'm glad a little code helped me take it. I’m deeply fascinated and motivated seeing how varied my interests are; it would be a shame just to let these drafts die and remain only in my mind.
This is the work is that of a Great writer and Reader. Appreciated 👏