Fruit of Preterition

Nulla dies sine linea.

No day without a line.

— Pliny the Elder, Naturalis Historia XXXV.84, on the painter Apelles

Pliny records that Apelles of Kos, the greatest painter of antiquity, made it his invariable practice never to let a day pass without drawing at least one line. The maxim has since become a byword for creative discipline: the idea that regular, even modest output is the surest path to mastery.

These posts are my version of that practice — short, frequent pieces written as part of a self-imposed writing challenge. The goals are simple:

• Improve my writing by making it a daily habit rather than an occasional ordeal.
• Record research progress — half-formed ideas, small results, open questions — that would otherwise evaporate from working memory.
• Lower the bar for what counts as worth writing down. Not every post needs to be a polished essay; sometimes a line is enough.

Expect rough edges, incomplete thoughts, and varying lengths. That's the point.