mindways

Posted by Athena Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/07/07/the-big-idea-april-davila/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=61477

The action of writing does not require artistry, but the artistry of writing requires action. That action being sitting down and actually doing it, even if it is hard. Writing coach April Dávila is here today to introduce some new methods that are sure to get you focused and motivated so that you can, as her book is titled, Sit Write Here.

APRIL DÁVILA:

What Chopping Onions Taught Me About Writing

As a writing coach, I’ve spent the last several years working to convince writers that we can do hard things (like finish a novel) without all the agonizing. My conviction on this point stems from an experience I had many years ago with a big pile of onions, which sounds odd, I know, but allow me to explain. 

In 2009, I attended my first week-long silent meditation retreat. The only respite from the unending quiet was a daily talk given by the instructors. One afternoon, the lecture was about how mindfulness can help us discern between pain and suffering and I was not getting it. Pain and suffering. One follows the other like day follows night. To be in pain is to suffer. I suffer when I’m in pain. End of story.

After the talk, I walked down to the kitchen for work duty. Every attendee at the retreat had a chore, and I’d volunteered, along with five other silent meditators, to help chop vegetables for dinner. The head cook poured out a box of onions and told us to start dicing.

I wasn’t done cutting the first onion when my eyes began to sting. As I started in on the second onion, tears streamed down my face. The woman beside me sniffled. The man across the table turned away, wiping his eyes with his sleeve. Pretty soon I could hardly see. My eyes burned and the discomfort edged into real pain, and yet I found myself giggling at the absurdity of us all standing there crying over our cutting boards.

One by one, the other choppers started to chuckle too. We stood there with tears streaming down our faces, laughing and turning away to catch our breath, to blink away the sting, to try and compose ourselves. With no success.

Then it struck me: the pain was real. My eyes genuinely hurt. But I was not suffering. I was, in fact, having fun.

Had I been in a different, less aware state of mind, I might have spun up a story about how I’m just not cut out for kitchen work. The tears could have confirmed that it was too hard, too painful. I might have quit. Instead, I kept right on dicing, tittering with my fellow yogis as we tried to cut onions we could barely see.

As a writer, I think about those onions a lot.

Because here’s the thing about writing: it is genuinely hard. And here’s the real kicker: writing only gets more challenging as you get better at it. Before I cared about diction and imagery and precision of language, I could slap together any few thousand words on instinct and call it a story. 

These days I take the time to whittle away at ideas until the words on the page actually say what I mean. That requires deep focus, real effort, and sitting with a lot of uncertainty. It’s hard, and (especially when difficult feedback or rejection comes into the picture, as it inevitably will for all writers) it can even be painful.

You can tell yourself that the pain is a sign that you’re just not cut out to be a writer, that it’s too hard and maybe you should quit. You can bow down to that little voice in your head saying you’re not a real writer, this is going nowhere, you should be doing something useful. Or you can recognize those thoughts as your brain’s natural response to discomfort, then carry on and keep writing.

Learning to observe your thoughts without getting hijacked by them (which is essentially what meditation trains you to do) is tremendously helpful when it comes to sitting with a difficult scene, quieting the inner critic long enough to get a first draft down, and recognizing the difference between “I’m stuck” and “I’m anxious about what people will think if I put this idea on the page.”

My book, Sit Write Here, is a practical guide to using mindfulness meditation to write more and suffer less. Not to write more easily (necessarily) but to stop adding unnecessary anguish on top of an already demanding craft. In each chapter I pair a meditation practice with a stage in the writing process, from getting the first draft done, to surfing the waves of accolades and criticisms. 

If you’ve ever struggled with writer’s block, if you tend to beat yourself up for not writing more, or if you want to write more compelling prose in fewer drafts, this book is for you. Agonizing over our writing is a habit. And like all habits, it can be changed.

You can do this hard, beautiful thing. Probably without crying.

Though if onions are involved, all bets are off.

Sit Write Here: Amazon|Barnes & Noble|Bookshop

Author’s socials: Website|Instagram|Facebook

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/07/07/the-big-idea-april-davila/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=61477

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/07/05/various-sundry-7-5-26/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=61432

Happy Day After Independence Day! It’s on a Sunday, which means you have time to recuperate!

Well, it’s over now: Happy to say this weekend’s event was one that brought an entire nation together, and, for a moment, healed its wounds as we celebrated the potential and promise of the future, and all the good days to come. I am, of course, talking about the wedding of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Then there was whatever that shitshow was in Washington, DC, which included marching white nationalists, storm evacuations, and Trump using the nation’s 250th birthday to ramble in a manner that was not just the usual hateful nonsense, but also the usual boring nonsense. I genuinely don’t understand how anyone ever considered him media savvy, watching him in action is like watching your racist senile grandpa harangue the cat.

Well, now it’s over, and it was largely a failure, and Trump’s hope that this would be the most spectacular display of self-gratification ever is dashed. As was noted on Bluesky, events were delayed so long and Trump rambled enough that the pyrotechnics didn’t even start until after midnight, which means, logically enough, that Trump couldn’t even manage fireworks on the Fourth of July. And, really, that’s kind of perfect.

I hope your Fourth of July was a good one, at least. Mine was lovely, as it happens.

Speaking of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce: An article from New York magazine that wonders whether the two newlyweds have a prenuptial agreement, and what such an agreement might look like. Personally, I would be absolutely shocked if a) the two of them did not have a prenup, and b) that either of the newlyweds considered this to a contentious issue. Even the “lesser” partner here, in terms of wealth, is a multimillionaire several times over, and comes into the marriage with his own businesses and investments he probably wants to continue to control and benefit from. Plus, these two people are well into their thirties, both seem to be reasonably sensible, and understand how the world works. I imagine both would see a prenup as an organizational vehicle for wealth, and not attach too much emotion to it. I could be wrong! But I would be surprised if I were.

I know neither partner here, of course, but I think it’s reasonable they’ll make it for the long haul. They’re both coming into the marriage reasonably secure in their own accomplishments, which are considerable on both sides and also different enough that there would be no direct sense of competition, both seem to be incredibly supportive of their spouse’s activities, and both seem to, you know, like each other. It seems to be a grown-up relationship of mostly equals. And they will never have to worry about money, that’s for sure.

(Oh, and before you can get to it in the comments, I know not everyone was thrilled with the marriage, for various reasons. Still the best major story to come out of the US this weekend. Yes, this is where we are with this stuff, folks.)

Humble Bundle check-in:

The John Scalzi Collection Humble Bundle topped $7k raised for World Central Kitchen in (less than) one day, which isn’t bad considering that the bundle was released in the US on an actual national holiday and a Saturday, when most people would reasonably be away from their computers, and looking at their phones, well, less, anyway. We’ve got some time to keep things going with that, since the Bundle exists for another three weeks. I feel pretty good we’ll raise a decent amount for World Central Kitchen. Also remember that the percentage of the proceeds that come to me are going directly into the Scalzi Family Foundation, which we use to support local charities and organizations, and also various artistic/creative stuff. A whole lotta charity going on.

“AI” Being Terrible: Allow me to post a Bluesky thread here because I think it’s relevant and also should be archived somewhere. It’s about guitar YouTuber Rhett Shull finding out that his content is being cloned by an “AI” YouTube channel:

To reiterate, folks: Support actual human creators! It matters. Thanks.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/07/05/various-sundry-7-5-26/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=61432

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/07/04/adventures-in-refrigeration-or-how-we-have-become-possibly-the-midwestest-people-ever/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=61409

Earlier this year we had a rather unfortunate incident involving our 25-year-old stand-up freezer, in which the condenser failed while the thing was full of frozen things, which quickly became rather disgustingly unfrozen. The clean-up was stinky and terrible and no fun at all. Also, we needed to get a new freezer.

Krissy got that new freezer a couple of days ago, and you can see it here, next to the drinks fridge we have in our garage — the drinks fridge being, as the name implies, an extra fridge used solely for the chilling of drinks, often located in the garage. The “drinks fridge” is a thing that is commonly associated with, although not exclusive to, the US Midwest, which of course Ohio is part of. We “got” ours a while back when Krissy redid the kitchen and got a newer fridge to match the remodel, and on the principle of “waste not, want not,” we relocated the perfectly functioning older fridge to the garage to start its life making our respective drinks nice and cold.

There was a problem, though, which was that over the course of time, my sodas started crowding out her preferred drinks, some alcoholic but some not, simply because I drink a lot of soda, and I like to have a variety of options available, so at any one time I’ll have several brands and flavors in the fridge, usually in their 12-pack cardboard containers, and that just takes up a lot of space. So when Krissy decided to put a second garage on our property (for her pickup truck, ride-on mower and other various yard and garden tools), she decided to deal with this issue for good. And thus, allow me to introduce you to our new, second, drinks fridge:

This second drinks fridge is actually really nicely located, because on the other side of that wall to the left is a really nice shaded patio area that Krissy had built onto the second garage, perfect for hanging out on while cracking open a cold one with her friends. Also, when Krissy is out mowing the lawn or doing other yard/garden work, having her sports drinks here will be handy because she’ll be in here anyway to get her mower and and other stuff. It’s reasonably sensible!

(Actually, this second drinks fridge is actually the third drinks fridge, because we have another, dorm-room sized, fridge in the main garage which is there to hold cold drinks for the delivery people who come to visit our house, next to a basket of snacks we have for them there as well. But this new one is officially the second drinks fridge because it is larger, and also because it’s for personal use.)

(Oh, and, while I’m thinking about it, we do have a second freezer as well, a chest unit that will live in our basement while the larger freezer will stay in the garage. That second freezer was given to us by a friend who upgraded their freezer choices and didn’t want it anymore, but it runs perfectly well, so, again, waste not, want not.)

Lots of people, particularly in the Midwest, have a “drinks fridge” and/or a dedicated freezer, but I think that our doubling up on both, and then some, puts us in rarified territory in terms of pure Midwesternness. We may, in fact, be the most Midwest people around, at least in terms of refrigeration. We shall wear this distinction lightly, with humility, and, always, with a cold drink in our hands.

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/07/04/adventures-in-refrigeration-or-how-we-have-become-possibly-the-midwestest-people-ever/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=61409

Posted by John Scalzi

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/07/03/update-yup-its-hot/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=61400

It’s currently 93 degrees here (Fahrenheit), but thanks to the humidity the heat index means it feels like 106 (41 Celsius), or so the weather report in my phone tells me, the one that also tells me we have an extreme heat warning through eight PM. I went out in this stuff because I checked the mail, and, yup, it’s really damn hot, the sort of hot that makes you basically want to fall down into a lump. I took the dog out so she could do her business; she took three steps into the yard and went whump into the grass. Two of the four cats have expressed interest in being outside at the moment. I told them no.

It’s been hot enough that I did something I haven’t had to do for a couple of years: Go to the basement and retrieve the portable AC unit that I used to bring into my office in the summer. I haven’t had to do that the last couple of years because we got new windows and a new HVAC, and between the two of those the house generally does a better job of keeping an even temperature, even during the summer. This heat dome, however, appears to have defeated that ability, and last night the upper floor of the house, where our bedroom is, was ten degrees warmer than the ground floor. Portable AC unit to the rescue. It’s staying up here for the duration.

If you’re caught under this heat dome I will give you the same advice I suspect you’d get from anyone sensible, which is: Stay out of the heat, hopefully somewhere with decent air conditioning, hydrate lots, and refrain from doing much outdoors while the sun is out, especially if it’s also humid where you are and your sweat won’t evaporate as readily as it otherwise might. Also keep your pets in if you can; they can’t sweat like you can and they’ll overheat pretty quickly.

The good news is that thunderstorms are rolling in late tonight and while they’re not going to bring down the temperatures all that much, they are expected to dip tomorrow from “actually dangerous” to “merely unpleasant.” I’ll take that, thank you.

How is it where you are?

— JS

https://whatever.scalzi.com/2026/07/03/update-yup-its-hot/

https://whatever.scalzi.com/?p=61400