Writing on Michael Doornbos

I wrote a book

Sat, 28 Mar 2026 13:08:08 +0000

A novel. My third.

The first one was about five years ago. It has every problem you’d expect from someone who’d never written fiction. Flat dialogue, scenes that wander, characters that exist to serve the plot instead of the other way around. The bones are good, though. There’s a real story in there. I just didn’t know how to tell it yet.

The second was last November. Twenty-nine days, start to finish. Better, but the middle act drags, the villain is a cardboard cutout, and the romantic thread pays off too early, robbing the ending of the tension it needs. I learned more about pacing from writing that book than from anything I’ve read about writing.

On life

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 19:07:44 +0000

We got married young by today’s standards (20 and 22) and had our youngest child when she was barely 21.

Up until we knew we were right for each other in the “rest of our lives way”, she had loose, somewhat ambiguous career ambitions. Mostly out of necessity. But even before we got married, she was sure she wanted to be a full-time Mom.

This required us to start working on my career immediately. Together, we worked hard to build a path that would allow me to be able to support the lifestyle we chose. We knew it would be hard, and she was a bigger driver of my initial success than I was. One of our very first purchases as a couple was a new computer and $300 worth of Study materials for me, when $300 was A LOT of money for us (it was also our very first Amazon purchase, in the spring of 1998). She was the one who pushed for me to get into Linux before anyone had even heard of it. She pushed me to follow my deep love of first principles, even when I had no idea how.

My advice to 6-18-year-olds who want to learn to program

Tue, 03 Feb 2026 21:03:44 +0000

I’ve been programming, more for fun than anything, since 1981. I was 6, and my Uncle helped me learn BASIC on the Commodore VIC-20 he bought that sat on his kitchen table.

https://vimeo.com/797177361?share=copy&fl=sv&fe=ci

(No, I didn’t write programs like this when I was SIX. But this is my favorite VIC-20 program of all time. A random maze generator from a magazine listing in the early 80s.)

If you’re somewhere between 6 and 18 years old, programming is a tool you can have in your toolbox. Today. There’s A LOT of sensational information on the internet today. I’m looking at you, social media…