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More people should write (2012)

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Re: More people should write (2012)

#21

Post by surprisetalk »

kingkongjaffa wrote: post #9

I love reading and writing. Do you all have any advice for writing more and writing better?

Some great advice from Ben Kuhn on how & why of writing:

[1] https://www.benkuhn.net/writing

I also just published some structural tips for writing quickly at high quality:

[2] https://taylor.town/pseudoprose

Make sure to create a low-friction writing environment for yourself! Whether it's a notebook or text-editor, you should be able to get your idea onto paper within 90 seconds of having it.

Re: More people should write (2012)

#22

Post by hawski »

narinxas wrote: post #6

the more people out there that write, the less writtings by people are worth scarcity never creates value, but it always incresases it but also: the more pople have written, the cheaper text and AI bot training become which makes me feel in a funny situation, the more I write, the better I get at it, but it also makes it simpler for AIs bots to learn my style and make it worthless by the inverse-scarcity phenomenon

Scarcity depends on the amount of openly published writing. You can publish only parts of your work or publish it to limited audience.

Re: More people should write (2012)

#23

Post by photochemsyn »

related & useful:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20061078

Undervalued Engineering Skills: Writing Well (pragmaticengineer.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37033403

Some tactics for writing in public (jvns.ca)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37118883

Writing about what you learn pushes you to understand topics better (addyosmani.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19143853

Vim Is Saving Me Hours of Work When Writing Books and Courses (nickjanetakis.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22854332

Writing a Book with Pandoc, Make, and Vim (keleshev.com)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24628549

Writing a book: is it worth it? (kleppmann.com)

Re: More people should write (2012)

#24

Post by causality0 »

narinxas wrote: post #6

the more people out there that write, the less writtings by people are worth scarcity never creates value, but it always incresases it but also: the more pople have written, the cheaper text and AI bot training become which makes me feel in a funny situation, the more I write, the better I get at it, but it also makes it simpler for AIs bots to learn my style and make it worthless by the inverse-scarcity phenomenon

If someone asks me if they should do something I do, I always lay out the pros and cons of doing what I do, and try to give them the questions whose answers they need to know in order to decide if they are the type of person who should. Why are there so many articles by writers telling other people they should be writing instead of telling them why they might or might not? I would never presume that any of my hobbies or habits is so universally beneficial.

Re: More people should write (2012)

#25

Post by hypertexthero »

hasoleju wrote: post #5

As someone who just started writing regularly a few weeks ago this piece is very encouraging! I'm very curious if I will be able to make writing a habit. In the past I often quit new behaviors after a few months. I discovered this quitting behavior a year ago and since I'm aware of it I found a lot of examples where this happened in my past. Now I see everything I start as part of a big experiment to test which thing…

I’m the same way, I think.

It’s like the movie Groundhog Day.

Every moment is a new start, and you keep starting over and over again and trying to finish or to improve your navigation of a messy, random river that is life.

A piece of writing, a project, a trip to see friends is usually interrupted by life. And there’s never that perfect time for you to do the work. Perfection is a memory of the past.

We need to do things in between, simultaneously with all the mess, and keep starting over and over.

Re: More people should write (2012)

#27

Post by pilgrim0 »

Apocryphon wrote: post #17

Is to post different from writing? Considering that so much of online user-generated content these days are posts, comments, replies. I’m not even talking about fluffy exhibitionist social media posts or incoherent comments on news articles. I mean supposedly more highbrow comments on special interest aggregator sites such as this. Forums and bulletin boards. Does that constitute writing? Or are we just creating more…

I think posting is, in general, an extension of dialogues, i.e conversation. Writing involves dialogues, of course, but encompasses a much wider field of styles. Ephemerality of the text does not automatically implies reduced value. You’ll get some of the benefits of writing within dialogues but it’s limited by the fact there’s not much room from digression, so less creative freedom and exploratory potential compared to just actively choosing the subject and style, with no particular audience or pre established context in mind. I regard monologues as an expansion of dialogues (a dialogue participation is sort of a monologue if you think about), and there’s a low entry barrier for doing it, can be very enriching and even therapeutical. All in all, I think the author here is talking writing for the sake of writing, which is structured thinking.

Re: More people should write (2012)

#28

Post by 082349872349872 »

Apocryphon wrote: post #17

Is to post different from writing? Considering that so much of online user-generated content these days are posts, comments, replies. I’m not even talking about fluffy exhibitionist social media posts or incoherent comments on news articles. I mean supposedly more highbrow comments on special interest aggregator sites such as this. Forums and bulletin boards. Does that constitute writing? Or are we just creating more…

Posts can go either way: I would say that some online exchanges have more of an oral cultural character and others have more of a literary cultural character.

(upon reading TFA, it seems it doesn't even care about the oral/literary distinction I had been trying to make; for TFA the important part of posting is the export of thoughts out of one's head, which can be done in either mode?)

Re: More people should write (2012)

#29

Post by inglor_cz »

I love writing. I have more than 1000 articles under my belt and eight books, all in the last 7 years.

Writing helps you discipline your thoughts. All too often, logical gaps or nuggets of ignorance in a seemingly watertight argument only turn up when you commit your thoughts to the paper. (Well, word processor.) And, vice versa, thinking without writing things down tends to be infected with sloppiness.

Write things, if only for yourself and your future self. You may also find out that you have a knack for it. In that case, godspeed.

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