The Right Kind of Nudge

I keep telling myself I'll write more once things slow down. I mean I have a list, I have ideas, I have a folder full of half-started drafts -- actually, I have several folders. What I don't have is momentum. The chasm between "I wanna write" and "actually writing" is apparently where drafts go to die.

I sat in on an AI training session the other day and the instructor described a problem that I know well — just not my own version of it. He's a software developer. His boss kept interrupting him for status updates: what did you get done, where are you on this? He wondered why an AI agent hasn't already fixed that. The agent could keep tabs on the code he wrote, generate a plain-language summary, and post it somewhere his boss could check. No more interruptions. The work would speak for itself.

What if I turned that around on myself?

I could create a GitHub repository — a digital shelf where I deposit stories, one by one — to hold all my magnificent creations. Then I'll configure an AI agent to check in on it regularly. When a new piece shows up, it tracks the progress. When nothing shows up, which, historically, is most of the time, it doesn't sit in judgment. It reaches out instead — a Message on my iPhone, an email, a text. Anything to break the seal. Or if I'm genuinely stuck, it could send a first line — something to get the gears turning.

What I'm really after is keeping the machine from going cold. Because the hardest part of writing, for me, isn't the writing — it's the re-entry. Getting back to it after a gap. A person can get frustrated with your gaps. Hermes won't. It checks in exactly the same way on day forty as it did on day one.

I haven't set any of this up yet. But I'm going to. And honestly, the fact that I'm writing this right now is probably a good sign.