Cory Haynes challenged programmers to spend one month guarding against the “trap of negativity [... O]ne month where we put forward an air of positivity in all our dealings.”

He chose November and refered to it as positivember. I know you’ve been busy writing, but what about starting next month and trying it for a while.

A lot of tweeters used it as an opportunity to tweet negative things by wrapping them in some sort of a positive lining. That’s not really the point. The point is to take time off to truly be positive. Look for the positive things around you and you will be happier.

For writers this is an essential bit of good news—words are powerful. The words you use will influence others and they will also influence us as we speak them.

Cory targets programmers because he notes that they are “an overwhelmingly negative group. We complain about our hours, we complain about our jobs, we complain about our coworkers, we complain our toolsets. If we are going to become better, we need to change this.”

I think this is true about most people who are bright and use their minds all day to solve problems and who tend to work intensely alone. It describes authors as well. Let’s give postivember a try. If it’s working well, who knows, we may just make a permanent habit of it.