She Unmakes Her Golem

(Even when life beats you down)

Look, I’m a mom, I have ADHD, I’m a spoonie. To say that I don’t have heaps of energy to spare and I struggle with consistency is an understatement. For years, I tried to write consistently, but I couldn’t manage to keep up with habits I built and deadlines I set.

So fuck neurodivergent guides on building habits, fuck “eat the frog first”, fuck “it’s all in the grind”, and fuck “you just need time management”—here is how I manage to write often and a lot.

Focus on having fun, not on the outcome

This was the groundwork I had to lay before I could even start my streak. At an online writing conference, someone said: “If you push yourself and meet your goals, and you publish your book, but you haven’t enjoyed the process… What’s the point?” and hoo boy, that question hit me like a truck.

I was so caught up in the narrative of “You’ve got to show up for what’s important” and “Push through if you really want to get it done”. For a few years, I used to read all these productivity books about grinding your way to success, and along the way I started using the same language as they did. And I notice a lot of you do so, too.

But your brain doesn’t like to grind. No-one’s brain does, and especially no neurodivergent brain. If having to write gives you stress or if you put pressure on yourself for not writing (enough), your brain’s going to say: “Huh. Writing gives us stress, we’re going to try to avoid it in the future.”

So before I could even try to write regularly, I needed to teach my brain once again that writing is fun. I switched from countable goals like words or time to non-countable goals like “fun” and “flow”.

Rewire my brain: writing is fun and I’m good at it

I used everything I knew about neuroscience, psychology, and social sciences. These are some of the things I did before and during a writing session. Usually not all at once, and after a while I didn’t need these strategies anymore, although I sometimes go back to them when necessary.

I journalled all the negative thoughts I had around writing and try to reason them away, using arguments I knew in my heart were true. (The last part is the crux.) Imagine being supportive to a writer friend with crippling insecurities, only the friend is you.

Not setting any goals didn’t work for me—I still nurtured unwanted expectations. So I did set goals, but made them non-countable, like “have fun”, “get in the flow”, or “write”. Did I write? Yes. Success! Your brain doesn’t actually care about how high the goal is, it cares about meeting whatever goal you set.

I didn’t even track how many words I wrote. Not relevant.

I set an alarm for a short time (like 10 minutes) and forbade myself to exceed that time. The idea was that if I write until I run out of mojo, my brain learns that writing drains the mojo. If I write for 10 minutes and have fun, my brain learns that writing is fun and wants to do it again.

Reinforce the fact that writing makes you happy by rewarding your brain immediately afterwards. You know what works best for you: a walk, a golden sticker, chocolate, cuddle your dog, whatever makes you happy.

I conditioned myself to associate writing with specific stimuli: that album, that smell, that tea, that place. Any stimulus can work, so pick one you like. I consciously chose several stimuli so I could switch them up, and the conditioning stays active as long as I don’t muddle it with other associations.

Use a ritual to signal to your brain that Writing Time is about to begin to get into the zone easier and faster. I guess this is a kind of conditioning as well? Meditation, music, lighting a candle… Pick your stimulus and stick with it.

Specifically for rewiring my brain, I started a new WIP that had no emotional connotations attached to it, nor any pressure to get finished or, heaven forbid, meet quality norms. I don’t think these techniques above would have worked as well if I had applied them on writing my novel.

It wasn’t until I could confidently say I enjoyed writing again, that I could start building up a consistent habit. No more pushing myself.

I lowered my definition for success

When I say that nowadays I write every day, that’s literally it. I don’t set out to write 1,000 or 500 or 10 words every day (tried it, failed to keep up with it every time)—the only marker for success when it comes to my streak is to write at least one word, even on the days when my brain goes “naaahhh”. On those days, it suffices to send myself a text with a few keywords or a snippet. It’s not “success on a technicality (derogatory)”, because most of those snippets and ideas get used in actual stories later. And if they don’t, they don’t. It’s still writing. No writing is ever wasted.

A side note on high expectations, imposter syndrome, and perfectionism

Obviously, “Setting a ridiculously low goal” isn’t something I invented. I actually got it from those productivity books, only I never got it to work. I used to tell myself: “It’s okay if I don’t write for an hour, because my goal is to write for 20 minutes and if I happen to keep going for, say, an hour, that’s a bonus.” Right? So I set the goal for 20 minutes, wrote for 35 minutes, and instead of feeling like I exceeded my goal, I felt disappointed because apparently I was still hoping for the bonus scenario to happen. I didn’t know how to set a goal so low and believe it.

I think the trick to making it work this time lies more in the groundwork of training my brain to enjoy writing again than in the fact that my daily goal is ridiculously low. I believe I’m a writer, because I prove it to myself every day. Every success I hit reinforces the idea that I’m a writer. It’s an extra ward against imposter syndrome.

Knowing that I can still come up with a few lines of dialogue on the Really Bad Days—days when I struggle to brush my teeth, the day when I had a panic attack in the supermarket, or the day my kid got hit by a car—teaches me that I can write on the mere Bad-ish Days.

The more I do it, the more I do it

The irony is that setting a ridiculously low goal almost immediately led to writing more and more often. The most difficult step is to start a new habit. After just a few weeks, I noticed that I needed less time and energy to get into the zone. I no longer needed all the strategies I listed above.

Another perk I noticed, was an increased writing speed. After just a few months of writing every day, my average speed went from 600 words per hour to 1,500 wph, regularly exceeding 2,000 wph without any loss of quality.

Talking about quality: I could see myself becoming a better writer with every passing month. Writing better dialogue, interiority, chemistry, humour, descriptions, whatever: they all improved noticeably, and I wasn’t a bad writer to begin with.

The increased speed means I get more done with the same amount of energy spent. I used to write around 2,000-5,000 words per month, some months none at all. Nowadays I effortlessly write 30,000 words per month. I didn’t set out to write more, it’s just a nice perk.

Look, I’m not saying you should write every day if it doesn’t work for you. My point is: the more often you write, the easier it will be.

No pressure

Yes, I’m still working on my novel, but I’m not racing through it. I produce two or three chapters per month, and the rest of my time goes to short stories my brain keeps projecting on the inside of my eyelids when I’m trying to sleep. I might as well write them down, right?

These short stories started out as self-indulgence, and even now that I take them more seriously, they are still just for me. I don’t intend to ever publish them, no-one will ever read them, they can suck if they suck. The unintended consequence was that my short stories are some of my best writing, because there’s no pressure, it’s pure fun.

Does it make sense to spend, say, 90% of my output on stories no-one else will ever read? Wouldn’t it be better to spend all that creative energy and time on my novel? Well, yes. If you find the magic trick, let me know, because I haven’t found it yet. The short stories don’t cannibalize on the novel, because they require different mindsets. If I stopped writing the short stories, I wouldn’t produce more chapters. (I tried. Maybe in the future? Fingers crossed.)

Don’t wait for inspiration to hit

There’s a quote by Picasso: “Inspiration hits, but it has to find you working.” I strongly agree. Writing is not some mystical, muse-y gift, it’s a skill and inspiration does exist, but usually it’s brought on by doing the work. So just get started and inspiration will come to you.

Accountability and community

Having social factors in your toolbox is invaluable. I have an offline writing friend I take long walks with, I host a monthly writing club on Discord, and I have another group on Discord that holds me accountable every day. They all motivate me in different ways and it’s such a nice thing to share my successes with people who truly understand how hard it can be.

The productivity books taught me that if you want to make a big change in your life or attitude, surrounding yourself with people who already embody your ideal or your goal huuuugely helps. The fact that I have these productive people around me who also prioritize writing, makes it easier for me to stick to my own priorities.

Your toolbox

The idea is to have several techniques at your disposal to help you stay consistent. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket by focussing on just one technique. Keep all of them close, and if one stops working or doesn’t inspire you today, pivot and pick another one.

After a while, most “tools” run in the background once they are established. Things like surrounding myself with my writing friends, keeping up with my daily streak, and listening to the album I conditioned myself with don’t require any energy, and they still remain hugely beneficial.

Do you have any other techniques? I’d love to hear about them!

[parachute opens up to reveal it is rainbow]

And make no mistake - they are NOT the only AI company hiring humans in developing countries and paying them poverty wages to pretend to be AI (x, x). AI is not nearly as powerful as they want you to believe.

--

"Builder.ai promised to revolutionize software development with artificial intelligence – and convinced deep-pocketed investors it had. Backed by Microsoft and valued at $1.5 billion, the startup masked manual labor as machine learning until the facade crumbled, leaving behind lawsuits, layoffs, and one of the industry's most embarrassing collapses.

Builder.ai has collapsed under the weight of several deceptions, ending the rise of a British startup once heralded as a pioneer in democratizing software development. Valued at $1.5 billion in 2023 with backing from Microsoft and Qatar's sovereign wealth fund, the company filed for bankruptcy protection this week after revelations that its "AI-powered" platform relied on hundreds of engineers in India while executives allegedly orchestrated a years-long financial deception.

For eight years, Builder.ai marketed its "Natasha" AI system as a fully autonomous tool that could build software "as easily as ordering pizza." However, internal documents and employee accounts reviewed by Bloomberg paint a sharply different picture. Engineers in Noida and Bangalore manually coded client projects while being instructed to mimic AI-generated responses.

"We were told to never mention our location or use Indian English phrases," said a former Bangalore engineer.

The team timed updates to UK business hours to maintain the illusion of automation.

The company's downfall accelerated in April 2025 when Bloomberg exposed a round-tripping scheme with Indian social media firm VerSe Innovation. From 2021 to 2024, the two companies exchanged nearly identical invoices totaling millions of dollars for services never rendered, artificially inflating Builder.ai's revenue by up to 300 percent. Audits later revealed 2024 revenues totaled just $55 million – a fraction of the $220 million projected to investors. VerSe co-founder Umang Bedi denied the allegations, calling them "absolutely baseless."

Microsoft's $455 million investment in 2023, including plans to integrate Builder.ai's technology with Azure, now stands as a cautionary tale. The partnership fell apart when creditor Viola Credit seized $37 million from Builder.ai's accounts after uncovering inflated financials, leaving only $5 million in restricted funds. The startup also owes $85 million to Amazon and $30 million to Microsoft for cloud services.

The US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York has subpoenaed financial records and customer lists as part of a widening probe into potential securities fraud. Separately, the SEC is investigating whether Builder.ai misrepresented its technological capabilities to investors. Internal Slack messages show executives directing staff to "minimize visibility" of human labor in investor materials.

"Positioning must focus on our proprietary AI – human labor isn't part of the story," a 2022 internal memo stated.

....The insolvency marks the most significant AI startup failure to occur since ChatGPT's breakthrough debut in 2022, underscoring growing scrutiny of "AI washing" across the tech sector."

When an acquaintance of mine announced she was going to approach her father during the holiday vacation to try to “get close” to him by “breaking through his brick wall,” I suspected she was doomed to failure. While I didn’t know exactly what “breaking through his brick wall” might entail, I was not surprised when she returned home feeling grumpy and defeated. The outcome might have been different if she had been less ambitious—if she had planned one specific move toward her goal. For example, she might have requested some one-to-one time with her dad, perhaps for coffee or a short walk. Because she and her father never had “alone time” in the midst of family visits, this in itself would have been a significant change, even if they had talked about nothing more than the weather. And had he resisted her efforts, she would then know she needed to begin with a smaller move still. From a more conservative standpoint, it may have been premature for my acquaintance to make any new move until after she had taken time to get a calmer, less blaming perspective on the distance between herself and her dad. Perhaps she set up a confrontation that she unconsciously knew was doomed to fail, because she herself needed to reinforce her own distant position from her father, as well as her perception of herself as the one who could be close. In any case, breaking down someone’s brick wall is hardly an example of moving slow and thinking small.

Substantive change in important relationships rarely comes about through intense confrontation. Rather, it more frequently results from careful thinking and from planning for small, manageable moves based on a solid understanding of the problem, including our own part in it.”]

Yes, read that again. Let it sink in. This is what the science now says. We have already averted truly apocalyptic global warming.

To quote David Wallace-Wells, author of The Uninhabitable Earth, from his huge feature in the New York Times:

"Thanks to astonishing declines in the price of renewables, a truly global political mobilization, a clearer picture of the energy future and serious policy focus from world leaders, we have cut expected warming almost in half in just five years... The window of possible climate futures is narrowing, and as a result, we are getting a clearer sense of what’s to come: a new world, full of disruption but also billions of people, well past climate normal and yet mercifully short of true climate apocalypse." (New York Times, October 22, 2022. Unpaywalled here. Emphasis mine. And yes, this vision of the future is backed up by the current science on the issue, as he explains at length in the article.)

So we've already averted truly apocalyptic warming, and we've already cut expected warming IN HALF in just the past five years.

The pace of technology, of innovation, of prices, of feasibility, of discovery, of organizing, of grassroots movements, of movements in other countries around the world, have all picked up the pace so fast in the last five years.

Renewable technology and capacity are both increasing at an exponential rate. It's all S-curves, ones that look like this:

-via The Economist, June 20, 2024.

How much more will we manage in another five years? Another ten? Another twenty?

I know the US is about to fucking suck about the environment for the next four years. But the momentum of renewable energy is far too much to stop - both in the US (x) and around the world.

(Huge shoutouts to India, China, and Brazil for massive gains for the environment in renewables, and Brazil for massive progress against Amazon deforestation.)

We're going to get there.

Some real talk for the new year, about where we now stand, and what the next years are going to look like. (Still ends on a "be hopeful or else" kind of note, but definitely gets into some heavy truths about the meaning of recent events.)

End of 2025, we should have 10x the offshore wind as we did at end of 2024, due to one project that broke the bottleneck for building.

The bottleneck was lack of a specific type of ship operating within US. It's currently working off Virginia. The prep work for similar project off Connecticut is currently underway, and as soon as Virginia is done, that ship switches up here. And is likely fully booked through 2030 with similar items.

The Regional Greenhouse Gas Intiative has been operating for 15 years, reducing co2 power plant emissions in new England and midatlantic. They did such a good job they hit their 2020 goals in 2018... and set new more aggressive ones for 2030, at least some members shooting for zero power plant emissions by 2030.

Thats 10 members, plus Virginia just joined so just starting that process Pennsylvania and North Carolina may join with next year or two, once legal challenges solved.

RGGI used model of taxing CO2 emmission via permit and permit auction money goes to direct utility assistance for low income folks, weatherization & energy efficiency to reduce demand, and green power projects.

Those green projects are all small, but lots of em. So no one big solar farm, it's 20 warehouses with solar panels. So invisible infill you don't SEE happening. But that's been chugging along for 15+ years and will keep going because it's a state, not federal, program.

Justice40 under the Biden administration prioritized historically undeserved and economically depressed areas for funding for climate resiliancy projects and green projects. It's been in place since 2017 so a lot of money assigned to it that's still working through system and all those will complete in next few years.

Trump could reprioritize how money for those programs is allocated, but it is a lot of very rural areas so he will get push back. Noooo, we need that money! And they do.

Since they're very poor and undeserved areas, it means you get a much bigger improvement vs better off areas. Swapping out a coal plant from 1940 vs one that upgraded in 1990 is a way bigger potential improvement!

The US military has been putting lots in alternate energy for last few years entirely due to security of being reliant on oil they have to get places, leaves supply lines vulnerable. So they will continue adding capacity for foreseeable future. And anybody complaining about it being "woke nonsense" can get told off about how many fuel convoys get struck in conflicts and how much better on-site solar and wind is than generator use.

So there's good things in process that likely can't be stopped. So even if us fed stopped new project funding entirely (unlikely), there's lots in process that will complete in next few years and continue building capacity.

I don't know what the noise at the very beginning is. I don't even know if it was me and not the computer being weird. I kept having recordings start with clicks and then break into actual voice midword so this time, this take, I waited around and made random noises to get the microphone live before starting this time.

(original script that I was recording from follows)

I'm sorry we failed you, Marcellus.

AND I'M HERE FOR IT

Honestly did you see the way Francesca gulped and was so lost in her eyes she forgot her name altogether? GOD I LOVE THEM