I wholeheartedly second the Murakami book recommendation. It's really nice how he talks about being a hardworking writer in a very personal and unglamorous manner. The analogy he draws with running is also very thoughtful.
Good point John. The full site with previews and a trial version will be up in a few days. That's why I haven't posted an Ask HN review post yet. I mentioned it in this thread because people expressed interest in such an app.
My startup Pretty Graph is working on an online graph-making app, which will make such graphs easy to make in the browser. Sign up at http://prettygraph.com or email me at [email protected] and I will let you know when we go live.
(My usual HN id is revorad, but I'm... err noprocrasting :-)
(Seriously, this is probably going to be the crappiest day for signal to noise ratio on HN. Time to get some work done.)