Problem Statement

Writers find it difficult to find inspiration and motivation to begin or continue writing.

Observations & Interviews

Who: She is an American historian and the author of multiple books on British natural history. She is also the recipient of the Whiting Writer's Award.
Quote: "Downloaded books or papers on your computer can seem invisible."
Interesting Moment: As a long established writer, she believes that the digital age has made writing more difficult in ways. Tracking different electronic resources is hard because papers and books are no longer physically visible, and it can be easy to lose downloaded materials on one's filesystem simply because their presence is somewhat "invisible". She also finds that organizing materials for different projects, and sharing them with a collaborator are also problem points.

Who: He is a communication instructor at Experimental Study Group (ESG), a small learning community for Freshman at MIT. He teaches communication intensive writing classes (CI-HW) about scientific writings for about 10 years. As a professional mountain climber, he does extensive technical writing on the mechanics of mountain climbing. In his spare time, he sits in the lounge of ESG to help students get started on their report and give them feedbacks on their writings.
Quote: "The hardest moment in writing is the first word."
Interesting Moment: From his years of experience in teaching, he observed that the students usually knows the format of report and a good idea of their project but usually do not start writing until the day before the deadline. One of the reasons he hypothesized and experienced himself is that the high activation energy to start writing. Faced by a blank paper, writers need a spark of motivation to get their ideas flowing. Most of the time, the writers are pushed by the deadline which makes writing less enjoyable due to the time pressure.

Who: He is associate professor of digital media at MIT and president of the Electronic Literature Organization. He is also a poet, computer scientist, and author of interactive fiction. Among his numerous publications, the most popular are The New Media Reader, The Electronic Literature Collection Volume 1 and Twisty Little Passages: An Approach to Interactive Fiction.
Quote: "I care a lot more about the perspectives of people who understand to some extent what I am trying to do and who can sympathize with my goals as a writers."
Interesting Moment: As a professional writer with many publications, he is very interested in sharing writing and collaborating. From interacting with readers and writers, he gains perspectives on writings and projects. While it is exciting to experiment with new ways of portraying ideas through digital media, it is hard to know how readers react to these new ways and the feelings towards the writing. Only with feedback can writers improve and better connect with their readers.

Who: An undergraduate at Columbia University who works at Scholastic Inc. and the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers. He was a semifinalist in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest, a national science fiction writing competition.
Quote: "there's so much stuff out there (most of which I don't need)"
Interesting Moment: As a young semi-established writer, this person already has an established method of organizing and writing. It will be a challenge to create a useful tool for experiences writers, especially when habits are already ingrained. As we discussed in tutorial, targeting a niche, specific sector of writers may be more practical. Furthermore, because he already has an established workflow, it's not immediately clear what problems are more important than others.

Who: An MIT undergraduate who studies math and also has a strong interest in reading and writing fiction, especially fantasy. He is part of a writing group that holds writer's workshops and competitions and URGE, a reading group that focuses on technical papers. He also has enrolled in MIT writing courses, such as "Writing Fiction".
Quote: "Research for creative writing can be tricky. Sometimes it's not as much about getting factual information as much as understanding a viewpoint...For example, it may not be easy to write about a janitor's life even if you know what they do!"
Interesting Moment: Like many other students, he sometimes finds himself too busy with schoolwork and activities to find the time to write. He is interested in writing short day-to-day entries and being able to tag and share them with others, such that in creative writing, it is less difficult to find a reference for one's story.

Who: An undergraduate student at Brandeis University who studies philosophy and frequently write papers as part of the coursework. Her area of interest include religion and artificial intelligence. She also like to write poetry and short stories as a hobby in her spare time.
Quote: "The biggest problem writer's have is Writer's block - you have something in mind but it just refuses to come out."
Interesting Moment: Her inspirational moments for poetry and stories usually come to her when she is writing her philosophy papers. She will quickly jot down the idea but has no time to work on them immediately. When she does have time to write on it later, however, she usually find it hard to achieve the same kind of inspirational level and hence difficult to expand on the idea. There is a mismatch between motivation and time to write: there is no time to write when she wants to and when there is little inspiration to write when there is time.

Interviewees

write('now') will help both professional and amateur writers generate ideas for their writing.