bodhi tree swaying

How to use view two parts of a document at once

I don’t use MS Word very much these days for writing. Generally I use WriteRoom, which offers the advantage of an uncluttered full-screen interface that cuts down on distraction. But my publisher’s bringing out a new edition of my book on Buddhism and vegetarianism, and using Word became a necessity. In fact I had the unpleasant task of taking a text file they sent me and turning it back into a fully-fledged Word doc. The unpleasant part was the the document had about 90 plain text endnotes, which I had to manually convert into Word endnotes. I had to copy text from the end of the document, create footnote markers in the relevant places, and then paste in the text. This required a lot of scrolling up and down the document.

Fortunately I remembered the “split window” trick, where you …

This is the introduction to a book I’m writing on the Six Element Practice, which is a traditional Buddhist reflection on impermanence, interconnectedness, and non-self. For some reason I posted the first part of a draft of the first chapter before I posted this, which is unfortunate since there’s a reference in the first chapter that makes no sense until you’ve read this. Comments are very welcome. I’d like this to be a good book, and feedback is an important part of honing the writing. Chapter One has changed a lot since I posted it, so once it’s done I’ll re-post it in its entirety. In future you’ll be able to find drafts of the Six Element Book by following the six element book tags. Enjoy!

Andrew walks into a laboratory in the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and stands opposite a plastic mannequin. …

In a letter to August Röckel on January 25, 1854, Richard Wagner wrote in regard to The Ring: “We must learn to die, and to die in the fullest sense of the word. The fear of the end is the source of all lovelessness…”

And I wrote a commentary on that quote on Wildmind.

I’ve tried listening to The Ring, but have never found it very satisfying. In theory, however, I find all the symbolism fascinating. I guess what I want is for Peter Jackson, that wonderful interpreter of the other famous Ring cycle, to turn it into a really compelling movie.

I’ve enjoyed some of Cory Doctorow‘s fiction — especially Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and Little Brother, I admire his outspoken and forward-looking views on copyright and intellectual property, and I love BoingBoing.

I also found his article for Locus Magazine, “Writing in the Age of Distraction,” to be full of good ideas. The man has an incredibly busy life and yet manages to turn out a novel a year. That’s on top of numerous public appearances, blog posts, articles, etc.

He recommends:

1. Short, regular work schedule: Only twenty minutes a day! He points out that one page in a day mounts up to a novel a year.
2. Stop as soon as you hit that limit (20 minutes, one page, whatever you’ve chosen).
3. Don’t research while writing — use some kind of keyword as a placeholder for unresearched facts.
4. Don’t be ceremonious about how you write — just do it.
5. Switch off your

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