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How to Write Usefully

paulgraham.com

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Re: How to Write Usefully

#131

Post by dragonwriter »

daxaxelrod wrote: post #95
throwawaylolx wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>He just doesn't care to improve his work. Alternatively, you may overestimate how objective these rules are and how much they must correlate with some universal metric for good writing.

Agreed. In my opinion, great writing has to be within the context of the time. A lot of us speak in a manner similar to how PG writes. You wouldn't consider great writing from 1890 with the same set of rules as you would something written in 2020.

> A lot of us speak in a manner similar to how PG writes.

No one speaks with explicit sentence delimiters, and most of the criticism made were not of the sequence of words but details the additional visual signals of structure that appear in written but not spoken language.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#132

Post by metalliqaz »

luord wrote: post #128

Interestingly, I saw an example of the phenomenon of people getting mad at the certainty of an essay in this very site, a few days ago. Someone was telling the author that he would achieve more if he phrased his point in a more "polite" way, just because the certainty of the writing made the critic mad. Thankfully, the author was here in the comments responding, and he didn't budge. That interaction was very refreshi…

Drop us a link my man.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#135

Post by soneca »

Well,I can say that I did learn from this essay. I will start writing more, the freedom of writing without having to publish is as obvious as it's a novelty for me.

Re: How to Write Usefully

#136

Post by alexandercrohde »

hnhg wrote: post #3

I'll say it again, it's a piece of writing that wouldn't warrant any attention if it weren't for the author's status here. I'm halfway through and my brain is stunned by the effort of forcing it down. PG needs a break from writing for a while. I enjoyed his early stuff and I hope he gets a return to form. [edit: it's like he's the George Lucas of writing useful articles for hackers: the early ones were classics but h…

>> I'll say it again, it's a piece of writing that wouldn't warrant any attention if it weren't for the author's status here.

This is probably true. If I was the person to write this, and post this on my personal blog, and submitted it to HN, nobody would give a fuck.

Of course, that may not indicate anything, because that could be said for Newton's Principia, Einstein's Relativity, The Great Gatsby, Proof of Fermat's last theorom...

I think the question isn't "Would the world appreciate this if it weren't by PG?" but "SHOULD the world appreciate this, even if it weren't PG?"

Re: How to Write Usefully

#137

Post by jarnagin »

metalliqaz wrote: post #132
luord wrote: post #128

Interestingly, I saw an example of the phenomenon of people getting mad at the certainty of an essay in this very site, a few days ago. Someone was telling the author that he would achieve more if he phrased his point in a more "polite" way, just because the certainty of the writing made the critic mad. Thankfully, the author was here in the comments responding, and he didn't budge. That interaction was very refreshi…

Drop us a link my man.

Here it is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22372005

Re: How to Write Usefully

#139

Post by [deleted] »

throwawaylolx wrote: post #111
osdiab wrote: post #12

While the internet is full of garbage writing, I don't feel like telling people that they shouldn't say anything wrong or potentially unimportant is the right way to go. That's a perfectionist attitude that stifles people's ability to explore, experiment, be wrong, learn, improve, and act. Like learning a language, if you never speak it because you're afraid to say something wrong, you'll never learn. And separately,…

I think an otherwise interesting point is obscured by your construing of a strawman argument: >I don't feel like telling people that they shouldn't say anything wrong or potentially unimportant is the right way to go. That's a perfectionist attitude that stifles people's ability to explore, experiment, be wrong, learn, improve, and act. It is dubious to imply that the author is trying to police what people can say an…

[deleted]

Re: How to Write Usefully

#140

Post by soneca »

contingencies wrote: post #85

Niven's First Law of Writing: Writers who write for other writers should write letters. - Larry Niven, science fiction author (1989) Blind monkey at the typewriter. - Robert Burnham Jr., Astronomer (1983) We'll need writers who can remember freedom - poets, visionaries - realists of a larger reality. - Ursula K. Le Guin The writer is that person who, embarking upon her task, does not know what to do. - Donald Barthel…

Aren't these quotes about fiction writing? Do you think they apply to essay writing as well?

I don't think I got your point with this selection of quotes, if you don't mind explaining.

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