In chess, you are expected to play a lot versus marginally better opponents in order to get better yourself. If you only play against worse players, you don't learn. If you play against masters or computers at full strength, you get demotivated. In literature this strength handicap doesnt matter, in fact you need to read a lot of great autors, and write a lot. I guess you must read more than write. But you also need feedback, so writing alone is not as effective to get better over time.
To write better, develop a habit of writing
21–30 of 81 posts
Re: To write better, develop a habit of writing
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
No pain, no gain? I think it's just learning to be uncomfortable and that it's 'part of the process'. Imagine how good you'll feel after. It's all I can come up with.
For me it's not that running is uncomfortable. It's that running is boring .
I thin this plays a huge factor. Running on a treadmill is almost impossible for me (without watching a movie or something visual), but running in real life is more bearable. I feel engagement certainly helps.
Re: To write better, develop a habit of writing
#23Strongly considering making the first 90s of the linked reading of the LeWitt-Hesse letter my alarm clock!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnSMIgsPj5M
Re: To write better, develop a habit of writing
#24For anyone interested in writing “for real” (professionally or as a hobby) I highly recommend John Scalzi’s blog [1]. He’s cynical, he’s funny, and above all he’s practical. Among his advice over the years a few things have really stuck with me: 1) Don’t get an MFA, it’s a waste of money. If you need a grammar class, take one. If you need more of a basis in x literary genre because that’s what you want to write in, t…
Do you have experience as a professional writer? I'm curious, how you think a person without a degree on journalism, writing, etc, can get a job writing? I'm a software engineer, by the way. Not that I'm interested in changing my career or anything, but your comment was interesting and I do like writing, so I think it's worth knowing!
I'm not a full time writer but I do write as a freelancer from time to time.
Lately, I've been writing technical articles for a tech company. It all started because I wrote a introduction to their product on Github and shared it on Twitter. They liked it, and contacted me to write more of that stuff.
I'm sure there are plenty of tech companies that are willing to invest in producing content to get more exposure (guides, tutorials, videos, etc) for a new product.
Re: To write better, develop a habit of writing
#25For anyone interested in writing “for real” (professionally or as a hobby) I highly recommend John Scalzi’s blog [1]. He’s cynical, he’s funny, and above all he’s practical. Among his advice over the years a few things have really stuck with me: 1) Don’t get an MFA, it’s a waste of money. If you need a grammar class, take one. If you need more of a basis in x literary genre because that’s what you want to write in, t…
I had a lot of free time in the past and spend a lot of it writing. 99% of what someone writes will be crap. That is like 1% of the code you write actually running. It is really difficult to feel motivated to keep writing when your normal output is at such a low quality. I'd argue that this is the number one hurdle to writing more and writing "better".
IMO that's the wrong way to think about it.
As I see it, it's not that what you write is 99% crap and 1% good stuff. It's more like you're sketching before producing the final painting. It's not crap, it's just an unavoidable part of the process you need to go through.
Also, thinking that 99% of what you write is crap must be super demoralizing.
Re: To write better, develop a habit of writing
#26I'm a big fan of Scrivener (the mac version) for my writings. Not only fiction, but also academic writings, or organizing projects with custom templates. But besides that I think the post lacks a bit of information. For an article about writing, it's pretty basic and feels as if it's written and posted only to create some content and traffic for the website.
I have tried to replace Scrivener with yWriter, but I can't stick with it.
Re: To write better, develop a habit of writing
#27For anyone interested in writing “for real” (professionally or as a hobby) I highly recommend John Scalzi’s blog [1]. He’s cynical, he’s funny, and above all he’s practical. Among his advice over the years a few things have really stuck with me: 1) Don’t get an MFA, it’s a waste of money. If you need a grammar class, take one. If you need more of a basis in x literary genre because that’s what you want to write in, t…
Do you have experience as a professional writer? I'm curious, how you think a person without a degree on journalism, writing, etc, can get a job writing? I'm a software engineer, by the way. Not that I'm interested in changing my career or anything, but your comment was interesting and I do like writing, so I think it's worth knowing!
It depends on what you mean by professional writer. Being a developer advocate, at many companies, is equivalent to writing full-time, and a software engineer who has recently developed an interest in writing is typically an easier sell for those roles than a writer who has recently developed an interest in code.
This is basically true for all domain-specific writing jobs as well. Being an expert in the domain and being interested in writing is in many ways advantageous compared to being an expert in writing with an interest in the domain.
Re: To write better, develop a habit of writing
#28If I had to optimize good writing, choosing between reading and writing, I'd prefer reading.
Re: To write better, develop a habit of writing
#29For anyone interested in writing “for real” (professionally or as a hobby) I highly recommend John Scalzi’s blog [1]. He’s cynical, he’s funny, and above all he’s practical. Among his advice over the years a few things have really stuck with me: 1) Don’t get an MFA, it’s a waste of money. If you need a grammar class, take one. If you need more of a basis in x literary genre because that’s what you want to write in, t…
Note to self: don't get a Multi-Factor Authentication
By checking https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MFA, I presume you meant Master of Fine Arts.
Re: To write better, develop a habit of writing
#30I tried to do a 100 days of writing a few months into the pandemic for exactly the same reason (petered out around ~90 days in, but now I write without tracking religiously) -- https://explog.in/notes/100days.html. It was definitely worth it in terms of making writing easier, and also in helping me get better at thinking through writing.
Now trying to make it a permanent daily habit.