The title refers to Dostoevsky’s ability to craft characters that were full enough people that he didn’t know how the stories would end in advance; he would lay the stage and write the natural flow of events.
Henrik leads into this with more talk about his creative process. This snippet that stuck with me about making the time to get lucky with inspiration:
Being inspired is fun, and I savor the moments when I am. But more often than not, inspiration refuses to show up until I assure it that I can be trusted to stick to my writing schedule.
It’s another Henrik Karlsson essay that’s not worth trying to summarize, as it’s been edited enough to be the correct length to contain all its content.
I’ve read this before, and I’ll read it again when I need a reminder of its importance.
Definition: Slack. The absence of binding constraints on behavior.
My work schedule has been leaving me with extremely little slack lately.
Slack means margin for error. You can relax. Slack permits planning for the long term. You can invest.
At any knowledge working job, especially one that’s ostensibly research focused, there’s only so long one can grind without relaxing, and without investing in the future.
I’ve used the outputs of the European Center for Medium-range Weather Forecasting for InSAR corrections without getting a lay of the land on weather. This video gave a nice short-ish background on numerical weather models and forecasting. Useful to fill in some of the mental gaps. One of the more entertaining parts was the prediction that future weather forecasting would involve a giant glob filled with people solving the necessary equations for little parts of the world simultaneously. Not a bad prediction, depending on your perspective of the consciousness contained in computers.