once I have gotten into a serious and committed writing project, I noticed hat my chess game has improved by a lot. (I play every day online.)
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Neat!! I wonder if your brain processes chess in the language center somehow, maybe? Now I wish I was a researcher… I wanna know…
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Yeah, that tracks.
Both writing and chess use the same skills: focus, planning, and seeing patterns. So getting better at one can easily carry over to the other.
Maybe, maybe not. People tend to see coincidences as causal connections, even when they’re just coincidences. In fact, mixing up correlation and causation is a problem in every science. For example: In certain towns, you can actually show that the number of births rises when the number of storks also increases. But what does that mean? That storks bring the babies? Or that storks are responsible for people’s fertility? Of course not. It’s simply a meaningless coincidence.
But if you believe that writing helps you play chess, that’s perfectly fine. It doesn’t hurt you or anyone else 
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writers do apparently seem to use different areas of their brains when writing. I mean, you will have writers who only know how to write fiction but not nonfiction, those able to switch between them, writers interested in novel series of fifteen books and those (like me) who can’t imagine doing such a thing, etc. any permutation you can imagine.
as for me, I found that the writing project had some deep flaws to it and have abandoned it. I had a good central theme but couldn’t find a way to make it go. (expect I will pick it up again later.)
Fair point about correlation vs causation, that happens a lot.
But in this case, it’s not completely random either. Both writing and chess involve similar skills like focus, pattern recognition, and thinking ahead. So it’s not crazy that improving one might carry over a bit to the other.
Doesn’t prove anything for sure, but it’s also not the same as the stork example.
Are you sure about that?
I mean, not the bring babies part. That’s an aerodynamic obstacle. An off-the-shelf stork won’t generate enough lift.[1] And the way it’s depicted, dangling from the beak, the weight distribution is completely off.
But the fertility stuff? Who knows. Maybe people feel more “inspired” when seeing storks. Or storks emit some kind of pheromone that somehow works on horny humans. I don’t think that’s actually happening, but it could.
Some eagles can carry way more than one, but at best they take babies away. ↩︎
Hmm, that’s a scientifically complex problem 
If I had to figure it out, this is how I’d go about it.
- Ask the parents: How many of them actually saw storks before the pregnancy?
- Are there also cities with lots of storks but few children?
- Are there cities with lots of children but no storks?
I can’t believe what I’m writing here … It’s probably your pheromones forcing me to do this. 
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As the saying goes, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I don’t believe there is any connection whatsoever, but I’m also not confident about the “of course” part. (Except for the transport issue.)
It’s always funny how different people approach the same problem. My first thought, and I’m not sure if I should be worried, was: Where would I get a stork? I mean, do you call a stork broker or what.
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Using a broker is a dead end. The surest way is to go through the local zoo director. First, you befriend him, and only later do you start talking about storks and renting them out. I mean, you don’t want to buy one right away 
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That’s probably the best advice I got this week.
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Just ask—I’m here for you.
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That’s right. And that’s exactly the problem. Medicine is full of very plausible explanations for illnesses that have never actually been true.
Stomach ulcers are caused by stress and coffee. Sounds logical, doesn’t it? But it’s not true. The cause is almost always a bacterium. If you have it, you’ll get a stomach ulcer; if you don’t, you can drink as much coffee as you want.
I like that!
I am going to watch and see if it helps me. I do blog about chess. Are you on chess.com ? My username there is tearaway2
Fancy a game?
yes, I have an account on Chess.com where I have an impressive rating of 108 (after a year, I think). I’ve sent you a friend request.