Just Write • Hacker News Board

Re: Just Write

#41

Post by ozim » Tue, Feb 25, 2025, 3:14 AM UTC

adityaathalye wrote: post #29

Writing != Publishing. It's wise to not conflate these two acts. Let Writing be personal; reflective. Occasionally one might feel like sharing with another self. Then, publish with kindness to self. Publishing is an open set of choices, including writing a rambling email to a friend or two. If writing publicly is stressful, email someone.

I think writing publicly is much less stressful than writing and not publishing.

After you get past initial fright of course. Because later you don’t fret about what-ifs.

I think I started posting comments on HN 5 years ago and I had account since 15 years ago.

Re: Just Write

#42

Post by tejonutella » Tue, Feb 25, 2025, 4:31 AM UTC

feoren wrote: post #37

AndrewStephens wrote: post #10

I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment expressed in this post. A few weeks ago I was inspired by this quote from Why the Lucky Stiff: > When you don't create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than your ability. Your tastes only narrow & exclude people. So create. I won't bore you with the blog post I wrote in response, but the gist is that writing (and equally importantly, publishing) is a way of ge…

> So write something and don't worry if nobody reads it. It's demotivating to have created a huge body of work that you know nobody will ever read/hear/experience. It saps the desire to create any more. I've been creating things for decades and approximately 0 people (other than myself) have benefitted from any of it. Everything is always just under the line of "good enough" to publish/publicize, and publishing/publi…

That’s a lot of words to say you’re not great at marketing yourself

Re: Just Write

#43

Post by Gravityloss » Tue, Feb 25, 2025, 5:28 AM UTC

feoren wrote: post #37

AndrewStephens wrote: post #10

I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiment expressed in this post. A few weeks ago I was inspired by this quote from Why the Lucky Stiff: > When you don't create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than your ability. Your tastes only narrow & exclude people. So create. I won't bore you with the blog post I wrote in response, but the gist is that writing (and equally importantly, publishing) is a way of ge…

> So write something and don't worry if nobody reads it. It's demotivating to have created a huge body of work that you know nobody will ever read/hear/experience. It saps the desire to create any more. I've been creating things for decades and approximately 0 people (other than myself) have benefitted from any of it. Everything is always just under the line of "good enough" to publish/publicize, and publishing/publi…

This post was worth reading and I think it's something very important to think about.

It's a bit similar to the succesful artist syaing follow your dreams and then analyzing the odds. That it's not a meaningful strategy on its own.