What to blog about
simonwillison.net
What to blog about
1–10 of 97 posts
Re: What to blog about
#2> It’s easy to get hung up on this. I’ve definitely felt the self-imposed pressure to only write something if it’s new, and unique, and feels like it’s never been said before. This is a mental trap that does nothing but hold you back.
No! It's absolutely correct and considerate! This advice to write a blog even if you have nothing new to add is why the blogosphere is now absolutely overgrown with low-content dross, and half the reason why searches for technical questions now just turn up endless blogspam instead of answers.
Re: What to blog about
#3In the words of the venerable AvE: "Make cool shit, put it on the internet." Have I been able to follow that? Not really, too many other things going on but I think the sentiment is nice.
Re: What to blog about
#4You know I am going to confess to a couple of biasses here.
Bias 1 - When I saw the article title in the listing of all the new submissions on hacker news, I thought to myself - "Sheesh, Here is somebody who wants to just become popular without a goal in mind. Why can't they just work on some thing they are passionate about and write about that to teach others"
Bias 2 - then I clicked on the article and saw who The author was. Oh damn there MUST be something poignant here.
I am pretty sure two biases don't unbias each other. Either way Simon has really good points in documenting your TIL items. As someone who can lose track of time building and coding, blogging is the last thing on my mind (unless a blog post is a pr for a new feature I am releasing), Simon's advice strikes a nice balance!
Re: What to blog about
#5> It’s easy to get hung up on this. I’ve definitely felt the self-imposed pressure to only write something if it’s new, and unique, and feels like it’s never been said before. This is a mental trap that does nothing but hold you back. No! It's absolutely correct and considerate! This advice to write a blog even if you have nothing new to add is why the blogosphere is now absolutely overgrown with low-content dross, a…
It really depends on the writer's motivation. Practicing regular public writing... awesome. Trying to rank for keywords... blah.
You have zero obligation to engage with someone's personal blog (that most likely will never show up in search results).
Re: What to blog about
#6My problem is I get stuck at the very last step: publishing.
I take copious, detailed, organized notes for everything I do (house renovations, DIY projects, programming projects) with a robust system that I've fine tuned over the years. This habit has proven to be invaluable for me, as I continuously reference notes and learnings from many years prior.
However, by the time it comes to editing and publishing, I've already moved onto something else.
> These days I make myself do it: I tell myself that writing about something is the cost I have to pay for building it. And I always end up feeling that the effort was more than worthwhile.
This might work? Sometimes it's a tiny mental shift that changes everything.
Re: What to blog about
#7> It’s easy to get hung up on this. I’ve definitely felt the self-imposed pressure to only write something if it’s new, and unique, and feels like it’s never been said before. This is a mental trap that does nothing but hold you back. No! It's absolutely correct and considerate! This advice to write a blog even if you have nothing new to add is why the blogosphere is now absolutely overgrown with low-content dross, a…
Who's to say that someone really does or doesn't have something "new" to say? New can be explaining something simpler way, as far as the writer understands it, and discouraging people from writing and getting experience through writing is pretty inconsiderate as I see it.
Re: What to blog about
#8[deleted]
Re: What to blog about
#9> It’s easy to get hung up on this. I’ve definitely felt the self-imposed pressure to only write something if it’s new, and unique, and feels like it’s never been said before. This is a mental trap that does nothing but hold you back. No! It's absolutely correct and considerate! This advice to write a blog even if you have nothing new to add is why the blogosphere is now absolutely overgrown with low-content dross, a…
So my very first thought of reading this comment is "I 100% whole-hardily agree".
But...
I have read a few posts from different people who say blog about it even if it isn't new or unique. The thought being is that it 1) improves writing skill and 2) if learning something, helps cements the concepts of what was learned.
It appears the Simon Wilson shared the same feeling about posts being new and unique as can seen here from his 2nd post in 2002: https://simonwillison.net/2002/Jun/12/bloggingAintEasy/
"with each post hopefully adding a new angle to the topic in hand"
Obviously he has changed his mind through the years which we are allowed to do.
And as I type this and think about the commenter's statement about "low-content dross", I would much rather sift through a bunch of individual posts from real people than from businesses trying to promote some product.
Re: What to blog about
#10In the words of the venerable AvE: "Make cool shit, put it on the internet." Have I been able to follow that? Not really, too many other things going on but I think the sentiment is nice.
> In the words of the venerable AvE: "Make cool shit, put it on the internet." Have I been able to follow that?
'cool shit'
who defines that? The reader.
'cool shit' could be about how you feel in a relationship, how you just cooked The Best Food Ever, how your pet made you laugh, a joke, an insightful sentence / paragraph that you read, something you saw, something you felt.
Just write.
If it is useful to you, then just write.