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Brian: I’m Brian Hall. And today we’re talking again about habits. In the last episode, we both set out some intentions to change our writing habits and establish a daily practice. Let’s check in on that. Lou, how did it go for you?
Lou: Not great, Brian. I did the habit none times.
Brian: Okay, not great. Remind us what you were going to do and tell us what happened.
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Brian: And so just getting yourself in position and getting started in this way tends to lead to more powerful, robust output. I guess I’ve reached the point where just by starting consistently every morning, I was cranking out a blog post a day for quite a while. And I guess that’s the other thing I’ll say too, is habits can come and go. You can lose a habit and it’s probably not helpful to beat yourself up about that because you can also regain them. If you’re in the middle of a sprint, you might write every single morning and you might produce quite a bit. And then you might finish that book or reach the end of that series of blog posts. And maybe you abandon your habit. It’s there to be reclaimed, I guess.
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This is the beginning of season five, episode 48, and I’m going to tell you about something that we’re doing a little different now. This has always been a podcast where I, a software developer, talks to you, who I think are also software developers, about what I write and I’m trying to share with you tips and techniques for writing for people like us that want to write.
And in this season of Write While True, we’re going to start something new.
Write While True is now a collaboration between me and another software developer who writes. His name is Brian Hall. And throughout the entirety of this run of podcasts, I’ve talked a lot about the kinds of things I write, blogs, and I wrote a book, and this podcast.
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It’s been a while. Episode 46 came out in late January of 2025 and I’m recording this now in mid-December, so it’s been about 10 or 11 months. When I last left off, we were in the middle of season 4, and I was telling you about all the things I was learning as I was writing my book, Swimming in Tech Debt.
Well, I’m happy to say that I finally finished Swimming in Tech Debt, and it came out in September of 2025, a couple of months ago. And then the print book came out about a month and a half or so later, and I’ve learned so much about the book publishing process that I want to share with you.
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This is the 7th episode of season four. I started this season in January of 2024. My intent was to document the process of writing a book. But even though this season is over a year long, there have only been 7 episodes, and that’s because I took a 9 month break. I want to talk more about what happened during that break, and how I was derailed from my plans, and how I recovered.
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But even with all of that new writing, a lot of the ideas and content are drawn from my blog. That’s what I want to talk about today — How I started this project by reviewing and gathering my work.
My first step, at the end of 2023, when I decided that I wanted to write a book, was to immerse myself in my own writing, so I just read my blog. I just read all of the posts.
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My intention after episode 43 was to follow along the process of writing the book and share what I learned along the way. But, a few things happened that derailed me (in a good way).
I started a podcast in 2021, which has 43 episodes with writing exercises in it. I’m thinking of turning it into a YouTube channel, but I don’t want to just post the audio.
Here are some of the ideas I’ve had for adding video
Of all of these, the stylized transcript appeals to me the most because I think I can write a script to do it and then I can make it look like however I want.
In 2021, when I went independent, I decided to get serious about becoming a better writer, and so I started reading books about writing and using their exercises. Soon after that, I started a podcast to share what I learned. As of today, there have been four seasons and forty-three episodes. The last one was in April.
Write While True is a podcast about writing for software engineers who want to write better by a software engineer who wants to become a better writer. The title implies that writing is an infinite loop, which is how I think of it. You become a better writer by writing. Each episode is short and ends with an exercise.
I announced Season Four at the beginning of the year and published the first episode in March. The idea was to podcast while I was writing a book about tech debt so I could share tips along the way. The first four episodes were how I was applying The Four Disciplines of Execution to design a process that would help me finish a book by the end of the year.
It’s November, and I have 40,000 words of unedited text. I will definitely finish, but not by the end of the year. My original goal of 10,000 words in a pamphlet size book grew as I learned more about my topic by sharing my work with others. I was able to do this, in part, because I gave up things like the podcast.
Now that most of the book is written, I’m ready to podcast again. I am going to pick up Season Four where I left off. But, instead of sharing tips as I learned them, I can share them with the benefit of some hindsight. The script for episode forty-four is written, so I hope to get it done this weekend.
If you want to listen, subscribe to Write While True in your podcast player.
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There’s a hole in this process, and we need to fill that right now. This only works if you’re doing the lead activities consistently, and if they really do build up to the end goal. It’s true that working on the book is intrinsically fun and interesting. And if that’s all that happened, I’d probably be okay with it, but I really do want a book in the end.