I was talking with  a couple of excellent SQL people* recently, and we were bemoaning the difficulties and disciplines of blogging. This is what speakers do after a successful SQL event, by the way.

I mentioned that I’d recently joined a writing group to help with my nonprofessional writing motivation, and how great the group was. When suddenly! I put two and two together, and came up with something! An Idea^TM!!

If we all want to write more, but find it hard to make ourselves do so…how about some group support!

From local writing clubs, to National Novel Writing Month, to T-SQL Tuesday: we have all kinds of specialized incentives to write. But I want something else. Something easy-peasy, recurring, and generalized.

Introducing #JustWriteTech

Here’s the deal: we’ll have a virtual meeting each week on Thursday at 11:00am – 12:30pm Central Time, where the goal is to just write – whether you need to write a blog, code, or anything you want that’s tech related. (Emphasis on blogs, though.)

How to do it?

1. Get on Twitter and post a “Hi there, I’m going to #JustWriteTech!“-style post.
2. At 11:30am, start writing.
3. Don’t talk, don’t get up, don’t check Twitter, don’t post to Twitter.
4. At 12:30pm (or later), stop writing. Congratulate yourself on writing!
5. Optionally, post to #JustWriteTech again to chitchat about how great we all are.

I’m going to hop on TODAY, September 19, to do just this. If you can’t make it this week, fine. If you can only make one week a month, fine. Or every other week. Whatever.

Feel free to start your own time-based #JustWriteTech – maybe #JustWriteTechEU, or #JustWriteTechAUS, for example – but be sure to link back to this post, would you? I’ll update things here with FAQ as they occur.

Let’s just write,
Jen

Frequently Asked Questions

Who were the “couple of excellent SQL people”?

* Kellyn Pot-Vin (@DBAKevlar), and @TracyBoggiano, for the record.

Once a week is too often. What can I do?

Come when you can, silly.

That’s a bad time for me. Now what?

Join the party late, or early. The Twitter posts will still be there. Just be sure you set yourself an HOUR to just write tech, okay?

I have objections/thoughts/questions.

Okay, comment here.