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Write for One Person

wizardzines.com

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Re: Write for One Person

#71

Post by mettamage »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #4

> Often this person is me I wrote an article that never fails to put a smile on my face every time I read it. I felt like I had finally found my own voice. Ran it through Claude and it told me to tone it down a bit, but I ignored the advice and published it anyway. The article caused people on HN to say I had issues. They weren't exactly wrong, but still. Be careful with what you publish out there. Warm reception is…

I think one needs test audiences before they publish to the masses. We need the ability to play with our voice a bit to see how it connects well to the world

Re: Write for One Person

#72

Post by embedding-shape »

brendamn wrote: post #56
kshacker wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am late 50s and I still find talks overwhelming. What has worked though is 1. Recordings. Go into zoom, and give a talk with recording on. Listen to yourself, just once per recording but more if you can tolerate your voice :) It shows you your common failure points in black and white so that you can work on them. 2. Presenter notes. During my final talk, I have succeeded when speaking without notes, but to get ther…

Great advice. One point I’d add is to just let yourself be nervous. Once I accept that my voice will wobble and my hands will shake then nervousness starts to feel a little more like excitement.

Rehearsal works great for fighting nervousness. Just the mere thought of speaking in front of 30+ people makes my heart slightly faster, but once I have a presentation down to the minute and can go through it 100% without looking at my notes, the nervousness dies down a lot and confidence starts taking over instead.

Of course, it reverses back the second you take a step into the stage, but it gets a whole lot worse when you don't remember what to say, and once you've spoken for 4-5 minutes the confidence seemingly remembers to come back by itself too.

Re: Write for One Person

#73

Post by TonyStr »

I love reading articles that are written like this. Whenever I encounter a word/concept that I don't know, I can just look it up and myself decide how much in-depth I want to go to understand this topic before going back to the article. Whenever basic concepts are explained, I automatically get the feeling that someone very inexperienced wrote this, and that my time would be better spent reading other material.

Re: Write for One Person

#74

Post by criddell »

jordwest wrote: post #16
matheusmoreira wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure thing. https://www.matheusmoreira.com/articles/babys-second-garbage...

Haha this is excellent, I believe you’ve just invented a new genre - Garbage Collector fanfiction. I have no idea how reading this people would jump to the conclusion that you have problems, but I will jump to the conclusion that those people probably like to live in a gray box with blank walls

I think this is the original discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47612331

Most of the comments were positive but negative ones always hit harder for some reason.

Re: Write for One Person

#75

Post by nchmy »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #11
jordwest wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be willing to share it again here? I love reading these personal things - especially the things that people publish in spite of being told they're crazy. In my experience they're usually the more real, honest and raw things in a crazy world where everyone is keeping up appearances and pretending to be normal and sane

Sure thing. https://www.matheusmoreira.com/articles/babys-second-garbage...

I just skimmed it and dont see how anyone would come to a conclusion of schizophrenia/mental illness.

However, I only skimmed it because I REALLY did not care for all the prose etc... It was literally unreadable/incomprehensible (without investing considerably more effort). This seems to echo one of the comments in the original HN discussion.

But, if it made you happy to write and re-read it, then I'm in favour of it. Keep doing your thing. Evidently some other people like it as well.

Re: Write for One Person

#76

Post by FinnLobsien »

I work in growth now, and I definitely resonate with this. Producing content about Kubernetes operator architecture is always going to be hard.

But you have to decide whether you alienate the beginners by assuming people know what CRDs and memory errors are — or the advanced practitioners by explaining pods, clusters, and other jargon from scratch.

You can't make everyone happy.

Re: Write for One Person

#77

Post by kshacker »

Schiendelman wrote: post #66
kshacker wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am late 50s and I still find talks overwhelming. What has worked though is 1. Recordings. Go into zoom, and give a talk with recording on. Listen to yourself, just once per recording but more if you can tolerate your voice :) It shows you your common failure points in black and white so that you can work on them. 2. Presenter notes. During my final talk, I have succeeded when speaking without notes, but to get ther…

This is incredible advice across the board. Would you consider writing this somewhere and submitting it as a post? I think this is valuable and worth repeating.

Let me see what I can do. Thanks ! May take me a month since I am sure I can polish it a lot more, not on how to create a deck but how to prep.

Re: Write for One Person

#78

Post by skissane »

Animats wrote: post #62
skissane wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's kinda like people complaining about Space Launch System, why aren't we using Saturn V or an improved version of it. We have the blueprints and schematics and everything but it appears there's a gap between what's written down there and what's in the textbooks. A lot of in-between experience has evaporated because shop classes and manufacturing were shut down. Because it was designed to be manufactured using 19…

> > It's kinda like people complaining about Space Launch System, why aren't we using Saturn V or an improved version of it. Because the SLS uses left over Space Shuttle engines. Once. The Space-X approach is to use 33 Raptor engines.

> Because the SLS uses left over Space Shuttle engines. Once.

The reused RS-25s aren’t the same as the ones that flew on the STS-1. STS-1 used the original RS-25, Artemis uses RS-25D, and will in future use the new RS-25E.

In the same way, if Saturn V survived to the present, we wouldn’t be using the original F-1s/J-2s any more, we’d be a using significantly enhanced versions-and the originals would be infeasible to manufacture due to component availability changes

Re: Write for One Person

#79

Post by dredmorbius »

simonw wrote: post #27

Writing for "you, but three years ago" is excellent advice.

"You, before you embarked on this project" is another good target.

Much of the technical documentation I've written was effectively how I got from prior-to-current-project-me to after-current-project me. And is often written for future-me-who's-forgotten-what-I-learned-in-the-process.

What TFA fails to address is the option of either specifically naming prequisite knowledge OR basic prerequisite references. The number of sysadmin / tech manuals which re-iterate, e.g., basic bash/shell/editor commands, networking concepts, etc., etc., rather than simply pointing at a good definitive guide is ... frankly embarrassing. I'd rather see one good continuously-updated reference than thousands of writers reimplementing poorly-written, outdated, and very one-sided references.

Re: Write for One Person

#80

Post by dredmorbius »

ghaff wrote: post #42
zxter wrote: post #40

One thing I've noticed is that information is often either too basic or too advanced. The hardest resources to find are the ones that bridge that gap. Writing for a specific person often produces exactly that kind of explanation, which is probably why these posts end up helping so many others as well.

When I was giving presentations to fairly large groups for a larger company, the feedback forms would often include both "way too basic" and "really great insights."

On average, you nailed it.

(https://old.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/1ko9l3h/three_statis...>)

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