Writing sans judgement

2026-07-15T00:00:00Z

Every draft I've ever abandoned died the same way. Not from a lack of ideas — from the second voice that shows up around paragraph three and starts asking who this is for.

So the rule here is simple: publish before that voice arrives.

What this will be

Notes on filmmaking, mostly. Occasionally on products, since I spent a decade building them. Sometimes on being a father, which has turned out to be the only role that reliably makes the other two feel small.

Nothing here is a thesis. It's a notebook that happens to be public.

A test of the machinery

This blog can hold a video:

It can hold a picture with something written underneath it:

On location, Nashik, 2019. The scene we cut entirely.

And it can hold a page of script, formatted the way a script should be:

INT. EDIT ROOM - NIGHT

Two monitors. A half-finished cut. ARASTU sits with his hands behind his head, not touching the keyboard.

ARASTU

(to no one)

It's not that it's bad. It's that I know what it wants to be.

He reaches forward. Deletes the last four minutes.

CUT TO:

That's the whole apparatus. Words, sometimes a video, sometimes a scene.

Let's see how long I keep it up.

Arastu Zakia

Writing sans judgement

What this will be

A test of the machinery