Meet the Writer Roxana Murariu: "We Craft our Identities Based on our Tribes"

This story is a part of Hacker Noon's Meet the Writer series of interviews. The series is intended for tech professionals contributing the most insightful Hacker Noon stories to share more about their writing habits, ideas, and professional background (and maybe a hobby or two).

If you too would like to start contributing to Hacker Noon, you can do so here.

So let’s start! Tell us a bit about yourself. For example, name, profession, and personal interests.

I am Roxana Murariu, a Romanian Web developer living in Dublin with my family.

Interesting! What was your latest Hackernoon Top story about?

The article, Metaphors are Water: The Hidden Power of Thinking in Metaphors, was about metaphorical thinking. I wrote about the pervasive usage of war metaphors to describe the current pandemic situations, how we use metaphors as instruments for creativity and how metaphors express social models.

Do you usually write on similar topics? If not, what do you usually write about?

I write about parenting, self-improvement, and tech on my blog. I crosspost relevant articles to HackerNoon.

Great! What is your usual writing routine like (if you have one?)

Depending on the topic, an article can take from two hours to 20-30 hours of researching, writing, editing, and formatting. I do this work across weeks as I have multiple drafts opened at any moment (for example, now I have around 35 current drafts). These drafts grow organically. Whenever I come around to an interesting concept, I either note it in a specific draft or open a new one.

I read most of the articles from the Writing Routines website and Mason Currey's books to absorb good habits about writing. What suits me best is to do a little bit of work every day. This work does not necessarily involve writing, as I research extensively for some articles.

I write my articles in Microsoft Word, edit them with Grammarly Premium, read them aloud to catch errors, and then I leave them alone for at least a night.

About the editing part, I have no issue cutting whole paragraphs if they don't help the article ("in writing, you must kill all your darlings", as William Faulkner wrote). Another quote about writing I follow is by William Zinnser from his extraordinary book On Writing Well: "You'll never make your mark as a writer unless you develop a respect for words and a curiosity about their shades of meaning that is almost obsessive."

Writing gives me great joy, as it is the perfect outlet to recharge after an intensive day at work.

Being a writer in tech can be a challenge. It’s not often our main role, but an addition to another one. What is the biggest challenge you have when it comes to writing?

I have drafts with tens of pages (anything from 30 to 50 pages) of unedited content, with a melange of Romanian and English, as I added my ideas and research notes from previous weeks. Every time, with no exception, when I open these heavy drafts, I sigh and tell myself: why do I even bother? What original thoughts can come out of this?

In time, I learned to see these distorting questions as my cue to simply start working and as a challenge to condense the complex knowledge from those drafts into eight or ten minutes worth of reading.

What is the next thing you hope to achieve in your career?

I'm trying to start a business with my husband to have a sustainable income from it. Our first project is a narrative-driven fantasy role-playing game with collectable card elements. This project nurtures my creative writing side as I develop the characters, dialogue, lore, and quests of the game.

Wow, that’s admirable. Now, something more casual: What is your guilty pleasure of choice?

Oppo is a fantastic low-carb ice cream brand.

Do you have a non-tech-related hobby? If yes, what is it?

Children's books! Thanks to my daughter, I discover new children's books quite often. Rich topics and mindful conversations are pouring out of these books, from emotional literacy skills to stories about friendships, bullying, death, diversity, inclusion, religion. And did you know that Dr Seuss, in his Fox in Socks, knew precisely how to solve one of the most significant programmer's puzzles, naming a variable? Look no further than the muddle puddle tweetle poodle beetle noodle bottle paddle battle!

What can the Hacker Noon community expect to read from you next?

Tech essays (the Polanyi's paradox and the future jobs of the 21st century), a new series about debunking science myths, and more.

Thanks for taking time to join our “Meet the writer” series. It was a pleasure. Do you have any closing words?

Thank you for having me.

People crave meaning and belonging. Thus, we craft our identities based on our tribes. Nowadays, we live in a world more divided than ever before, as we have access to social media applications that hold a wealth of choices for tribes. This leads to virtual social bubbles and echo chambers where our biases are distorted and amplified because engaging with social media algorithms is autocatalytic (the process feeds itself).

To break free from this process, I often question and try to change my biases and assumptions. I also regularly read an essay written by Paul Graham on keeping our identities small. So, I would like to end this interview with a question: when was the last time you changed a deep-held belief?

This story is a part of Hacker Noon's Meet the Writer series of interviews. If you too would like to start contributing to Hacker Noon, you can do so here.