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Show HN: Avoid editing while writing your first draft

rolandasb.github.io

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Re: Show HN: Avoid editing while writing your first draft

#31

Post by jeffwass »

munmaek wrote: post #28

I do something like this from time to time, just with pen and paper. I often have thoughts for blog posts, and I'll write out as much as I can in a dedicated notebook. After ~2-6 days, I'll look at it again with fresh eyes and type up a first rough draft, doing edits, writing more, and rearranging everything to be more cohesive. Again, after 2-6 days I'll take another look and polish the draft. Generally by that poin…

I wrote the second half of the draft of my novel (kids Sci-Fi) on my iPhone on the train to/from work (scrivener app). I could get in the zone and just tap away.

Now editing, that’s a whole different ballgame. I find editing very hard to do on the phone.

Re: Show HN: Avoid editing while writing your first draft

#32

Post by tyre »

munmaek wrote: post #28

I do something like this from time to time, just with pen and paper. I often have thoughts for blog posts, and I'll write out as much as I can in a dedicated notebook. After ~2-6 days, I'll look at it again with fresh eyes and type up a first rough draft, doing edits, writing more, and rearranging everything to be more cohesive. Again, after 2-6 days I'll take another look and polish the draft. Generally by that poin…

I think you'd enjoy "Draft No. 4" by John McFee. He talks about a very similar approach to writing. You might pick some things up from him talking in depth about the same :)

Re: Show HN: Avoid editing while writing your first draft

#33

Post by tyre »

john-radio wrote: post #26
nickjj wrote: post #21

This might be an unpopular opinion but I always edit while writing my first draft. This is how I've written 250+ technical blog posts and over a million words worth of course notes. I basically write a couple of sentences or paragraphs, stop, review, reword things if needed, change things around and move on. Then at the very end I'll give it all a final reordering / fixing until I'm happy with it. I feel like I can't…

The "never edit while drafting" advice comes from the creative writing community. It might be of limited use in cases like technical writing, where you already might have a solid idea what the final product should look like before you start. Most people find that trying to write a novel and edit it at the same time is like baking cookies one by one.

This. Technical writing is a different species entirely. You know beforehand all of the pieces, or at least reason about them.

Creativity doesn't work that way. You'll literally inventing new things. It would be like saying, "let me plan out how I will innovate." Makes no sense.

Re: Show HN: Avoid editing while writing your first draft

#34

Post by alpaca128 »

thdrdt wrote: post #27

Masters in all kinds of areas have in common that they start with the big picture and then start refining level by level. But they can keep themselves from refining details that are smaller than the current level. I think this works for writing as well. Personally I also use this in programming. When I was young I directly dove into the details but that just doesn't work. Now I'm more like a painter. First big stroke…

It also makes it easier to still make larger changes early on; details often depend on how the basic structure looks, so they make changes more difficult.

Re: Show HN: Avoid editing while writing your first draft

#35

Post by nickjj »

tyre wrote: post #33
john-radio wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "never edit while drafting" advice comes from the creative writing community. It might be of limited use in cases like technical writing, where you already might have a solid idea what the final product should look like before you start. Most people find that trying to write a novel and edit it at the same time is like baking cookies one by one.

This. Technical writing is a different species entirely. You know beforehand all of the pieces, or at least reason about them. Creativity doesn't work that way. You'll literally inventing new things. It would be like saying, "let me plan out how I will innovate." Makes no sense.

My blog posts and course scripts aren't just documenting code.

I very rarely know what I'm going to write until I start writing. I don't even outline anything. I just start writing and relentlessly edit as I go.

I do the same thing for 1,000 word blog posts as I do with 400,000+ word course scripts.

If anything editing is more important for the larger pieces of work because in order to cleanly flow to the next lesson or section of a course the prior stuff has to be pretty much in its final form.

Re: Show HN: Avoid editing while writing your first draft

#37

Post by mynameiskyleok »

mbrock wrote: post #19

Here’s my attempt at a tool for writing not even a draft but a stream of consciousness that evaporates like a daydream or prayer. https://swa.sh It doesn’t work on mobile, but you should use it with a proper keyboard anyway. There’s nothing sent from the JavaScript to any server; it’s a static page hosted on Netlify with very simple code. It’s just an index.html with style and script tags, 39 lines total. I use it in…

This is great. I often write just to clear my head. There's never an output/deliverable. It's just meditation. Thanks for sharing!

Re: Show HN: Avoid editing while writing your first draft

#39

Post by skrebbel »

rayalez wrote: post #14

Shameless plug - my app, Writing Streak, has the "typewriter" mode (Alt+T) that prevents you from editing the text you wrote, and a "blurred" mode (Alt+B) that hides the text you type, achieving the same effect: https://writingstreak.io

Good plug. I just gave it a try.

I like the blur, but I find it hard to use. I make extremely many typos and my normal typing method involves simply hitting backspace a lot of times. Obviously I should address that instead of complaining about your blur feature on HN, but the gist is: if I can't even see the last few words I wrote, I'll end up writing gibberish :-)

If there'd be a "blur everything except the last 15 characters or so" kind of mode, or something where it gradually blurs characters as they're further away from the cursor (like a warcraft "fog of war" for typing), then that'd be ultra neat.

That said: WOW that app is nice. You got yourself a new user. I love how it's essentially device local and signup is optional. Super user friendly that way, in a literal sense (i.e. it's very kind & friendly to the user)

Re: Show HN: Avoid editing while writing your first draft

#40

Post by oplav »

rayalez wrote: post #14

Shameless plug - my app, Writing Streak, has the "typewriter" mode (Alt+T) that prevents you from editing the text you wrote, and a "blurred" mode (Alt+B) that hides the text you type, achieving the same effect: https://writingstreak.io

This is cool, will give it a try.

Just FYI, in "typewriter" mode, you can still delete if you use Ctrl + Delete or Option + Delete on a Mac. And then if you delete everything in "typewriter" mode using either of those key modifiers, using the other modifier on the empty text input crashes the app.

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