Writing Original Works...for Science
This is cool.
Soundarya Soundararajan, known as Sound in the LYT community, was just published in Science for the essay she developed as part of WOW last year!
It's a fast read that got me reflecting on some ways I've been hard on myself recently.
Read: I was debilitated by mistakes in grad school. A dream reshaped my perspective
Here is Sound's summary of how our 22-day mini cohort—Writing Original Works—supported her writing:
I wrote this piece for WOW 2025. At first it didn’t feel good enough to be an essay, honestly. It felt more personal, like a dear diary moment. But I kept iterating through the exercises, and I started seeing it getting shaped for a reader. A reader I had in mind.
When I posted my exercise, the community called out a line that resonated: “to improve it has to exist first.” That encouraged me, people were reading it and responding to what it actually was. I submitted it to Science.
When they asked for confirmation of original work, I remember being so glad to say: here are the drafts, from draft zero, all preserved in Obsidian through WOW.
What [Writing Original Works] taught me is the value of iterations. Even after submission, the piece kept becoming, more rounds, more shaping, until it was finally what it needed to be. What more can I ask for than a community that sees what’s actually in a piece and tells you so? Not generic responses, but real ones.
Thank you, LYT and team, for making this happen. The line the community loved became the closing line of the published essay. The editor moved it there. To improve it has to exist first.
Now, Sound doesn't hesitate to spread around the thanks and gratitude, but she is a really special person.
Perhaps what I admire most about Sound is the mix of wearing herself on her sleeve (being vulnerable) while engaging with a childlike wonder with everyone else in the LYT community (being curious)—while sharing her thoughts and experiences along the way (being alive).
You can join WOW 2026, it starts May 1st
I no longer have to make a big deal about the Writing Original Works mini-cohort because people like Sound make it easy.
If you are someone who thinks, someone who wants to write, and someone who wants to share your writing with others—you will likely find that WOW, in just 22 days, improves your writing process.
Learn more about WOW on our page. If it feels right, join us. We start May 1st.
Idea Updates
I'm back in NYC. For those curious, I'm no longer in Los Angeles, closing a decade in that city, and now I'm splitting time between Montana and New York City. I love NYC. What's funny is I find I'm actually way healthier here. I walk so much more.
In fact, just yesterday, after all the preparation and delivery for our two-hour live AI event, I was exhausted and I just put on my shoes and went outside to start walking. An hour later, I was at the Museum of Natural History, learning about the Artemis II mission and then listening to Liam Neeson narrate the history of the universe—before getting lost in different hallways and exhibits ending with staring at a huge Alaskan brown bear looming over me, and then meandering my way back through Central Park.
There is nothing like walking through the city to both humble you and broaden your perspective. The author John Steinbeck famously said, "I am in love with Montana. For other states I have admiration, respect, recognition, even some affection, but with Montana it is love, and it's difficult to analyze love when you're in it."
What's funny for me is growing up in Montana. I both feel in my bones that his statement is true, but also feel the same about New York City. That made me wonder where Steinbeck grew up and spent his time for him to feel that way about Montana. He grew up in California and then spent time in New York City. He was 58 when he finally went to Montana. But what's really funny is that his gushing quote about the splendor of Montana came from him spending just 60 hours in the state.
Haha. So there's a bit of infatuation at play. Is there any place on Earth that you're a little bit infatuated with? Email me. I'm curious why, and I'm curious if it is in stark contrast to the place where you grew up.
Idea Exchange
As they got close to the Moon, Artemis II astronauts were eager to land. "If you had given us the keys to the lander, we would have taken it down." Almost unanimously, whenever any human leaves Earth, there comes a time where there is an overwhelming sense of how empty Space is—and how delicate, fragile, and special Earth is.
Of course that always
makes me want to listen to
Carl Sagan's immortal passage: Pale Blue Dot.
⚕️Important health update: Amyloid-β ≠ Alzheimer’s disease
"At the end of last month, a scientific journal pulled a research paper on Alzheimer’s disease. The retraction came from Neurobiology of Aging, which removed a 2011 paper claiming to show that a version of a protein called amyloid-β was responsible for memory loss in Alzheimer’s disease."
If you know someone who's been affected by Alzheimer's disease, or even if you haven't yet, it's important to stay current on how the research is shaping up. Read on.
This is pure nostalgia, but a video game launched last month where you essentially work at a Blockbuster video store in the 90s and the reviews are overwhelmingly positive. I can see why this is popular too. Renting movies was such a cultural touchpoint for so many of us, and it just doesn't exist today.
I remember many Fridays where I would tag along with my older brothers to Hastings and Blockbuster and rent movies for the weekend. Or when it was just my dad and older brother and we would have a James Bond weekend