Spaghetti dinner inspires writing tips.

On Wednesday night, Kris and I went to Keith and Katie's house for a spaghetti dinner. The dinner was a fund-raiser for the Second Harvest Food Bank, which is a great idea. Lots of bridge friends were there: Lisa, Andy & Michele, Mark and Megan, Hugh & Bridget, Kitty and another friend of Keith and Katie, whose name I don't know.

Kris and I talked for a while with Hugh. Hugh is still looking for a job (anyone looking for a computational chemist?) in the Bay Area. He thinks he'll get an offer for a job with a company in San Diego. He's not thrilled about moving from the area. However, he'd rather not blow through his entire savings.

When I asked if he was excited about the job, he didn't say he was very thrilled. It was doing work that he had already been doing, so it wasn't a new challenge. When I asked him what he'd like to be doing, Kris responded, "Writing!" Hugh agreed, but explained he's had a block. He can write in his journal, but is unable to get writing on things he feels he "should" write about.

We went on to discuss ways to get Hugh writing. We had a large number of suggestions that I really liked, so I wrote them down. As my new policy of saving most everything electronically, the suggestions are now an article named Ways to start writing.