My Thoughts

As an IT professional, I live in a world of logic, algorithms, and code. I see every day how rapidly technologies evolve, and artificial intelligence has become an indispensable part of modern IT. It is a brilliant tool for automating processes and solving complex problems.

But precisely because I know this world so well, I draw an absolute, insurmountable line when it comes to my other great passion: writing.

The Machine Doesn’t Co-Write To put it very clearly and leave no room for speculation: I do not use any AI for my texts. No ChatGPT, no Gemini, no hidden algorithms churning out plots or writing dialogues for me. Everything written in my manuscript comes 100 percent from my own pen—and my own mind.

The fact that it’s been so quiet here on the blog over the last few weeks definitely wasn’t due to a lack of motivation. Priorities just had to shift temporarily. Besides writing, my main profession is as a software engineer – a job I really enjoy. Currently, a large project there is demanding my full attention.

We aren’t just writing simple scripts; we’re building a complex architecture. The fascinating part is that it’s damn similar to writing a book. Everything has to interlock, the common thread needs to be clear, and the structure has to hold up. And just like with writing, there’s always that one moment in IT: on paper, the idea looks brilliant – but in reality, you look at the result and just think: back to the drawing board.

My website is finally coming together. The tech is in place. But I’m still tweaking the speed. My goal has always been to keep loading times as low as possible. Nothing is worse than pages that take 20 or 30 seconds to load and still aren’t fully rendered.

That also means—and I’m a huge fan of this approach—not using any bloated software in the first place. So: no CMS, no cookies, no PHP. If something needs to be computed, the visitor should have everything under their control. Sure, a little bit of CSS and JavaScript is necessary, but no heavy lifting that the server has to calculate. And what was and still is absolutely crucial to me: zero cookies. I’m happy if you read this, but I don’t want to track you or, even worse, spy on you. Anyone who does that lacks confidence in themselves and, worse, in their readers.

Is it just me? Yesterday, I was in the zone. 5,000 words. Just like that. Compiled and deployed. Sure, the plot still has more holes than a bad firewall config, and the story is shaky, but the core is there. I finally know what the characters want: They don’t just want one life; they want them all. One moment submerged in the underground, the next in high society. They want to change personas like other people change underwear.

You know the feeling: You’re watching TV, reading an article, or just walking around, and pop—you have a new idea for a plot. The problem? It doesn’t fit into any of your current books. Not with the dancers, not in the dystopian zone, and certainly not in the server room.

So, what is the only logical (and completely unreasonable) thing to do? Exactly: You start a new book. A new world, new characters, completely without a past that’s already written in stone. You just start typing, and the character decides who they want to be.

The plan this morning was simple: squeeze in a nap after the early morning feline Olympics. Well. Wanting and doing are running on two entirely different operating systems, unfortunately.

But fine. To make up for it, the cat spent the rest of the day in a coma. I get it, totally—elite athletes need their recovery phases, after all. I, on the other hand, got to work. A bit of thinking, shuffling some Python and RabbitMQ packets around. Someone has to pay for the premium wet food.

Yeah, I’m an early bird. Usually, I’m up by 5:30, no alarm needed. But our cat had other plans today. Apparently, 4:00 AM is the perfect time for a morning workout—discipline: the hurdle sprint involving moving furniture.

He’s currently loudly redecorating the living room. Every lap of his attempt to set a new Olympic record is accompanied by a loud meow. And then: crash. He’s knocking things over—after all, they were in his way. No idea what that was, but it sounded expensive.

A post about heart, mind, rage, and structure.

It’s time to unlock the doors. Not just to the finished stories, but to the construction site behind them. I’ve realized something: The finished book is the goal, sure, but the path to get there is the actual adventure. That includes the painful art of “killing your darlings.” Characters pop up out of nowhere but never make it into the final draft. Not because they’re boring, but because they steer the story in the wrong direction. Deleting entire chapters feels a lot like code refactoring: It stings for a moment, but the system runs much smoother afterwards.

There’s that little, nervous blinking on the monitor. It waits. It demands. As a computer scientist, I feed it logic. As an author, I feed it stories. The problem is the same in both cases: Sometimes you stare back, and your head is as empty as the text field.

You ask yourself: Are the cryptic characters I’m typing here brilliant or total nonsense? Does the syntax fit? Is the tone right? The truth is: You won’t know until it’s there. The cursor has no patience, and I’ve decided not to have any either. No more hesitating. I’ll just type away. Fixing errors—whether bugs or plot holes—is something that can always be done later.