> It’s a lot of writing to do in any given week, but I don’t care. I want to write it all. I write all day to work, and then I think about writing all night to relax. In the late afternoon and evening, I am constantly, to paraphrase the great Walter Mosley, “percolating.”
I remember an author once saying there are two kinds of authors: those who like to write and those who like to have written. The interviewee was in the latter category.
Given that this article is about writing, here's a comment on the writing itself. It needs a rewrite. It's a good rough draft with maybe the kernel of a good idea, but in its current form is barely readable. It's stream of consciousness writing that doesn't fulfill the promise made in the title.
Or, maybe it does in fact fulfill that promise. If the goal is quantity of words - and 10,000 words a week in particular then never editing a rough draft is one strategy to get there. Just keep writing, never stopping to reconsider anything. Treat the screen you're typing on as an append-only log file. If so, well played!
There are readers who like to read and those who like to have read something. I went to this article with the intent of getting actionable advice to make writing easier. Half way through the article, this author hasn't even articulated a problem I can identify with.
Here's how to start the edit. Throw away half the words, then throw away the half that are left. Now start again.
Maybe the difference between writers who like to write and those who like to have written is that the latter take editing the mess they've created far more seriously than the former.
>there are two kinds of authors: those who like to write and those who like to have written.
I like this a lot. It succinctly points to an thought that's been at the forefront of my mind lately.
It seems to align with Daniel Kahneman's work about our two versions of our "self": an experiencing self (the writer) and the remembering self (the one who has written). As you allude, sometimes those two may not align in terms of what brings them happiness or fulfillment.
It makes me think I should be working to make sure I'm the one who optimizes for the experiencing self rather than the remembering self. Besides the fact that we spend much more time "experiencing" life than "remembering" it, the latter seems too often correlated with things outside our direct control like status etc.
> “…there are two kinds of authors: those who like to write and those who like to have written.”
I’m a writer and a runner, and that’s exactly how I feel about both. I rarely like starting, it’s sometimes pleasant but often grueling during, and I always feel a great sense of satisfaction afterwards.
I just wrote the first 53k words of a new hobby (character driven horror) novel this month. I think it’s between 1/2 to 2/3rds done and it’s been a lot of fun so far.
It takes some dedication but the hardest part is starting, especially when everyone assumes their first story will be great. After you put in the time and practice and then write your first 10 pages, the next 180 are relatively easy.
The first things people write will be bad. You have to just practice until you get past that and most people get discouraged before then. It’s an extremely fun and relaxing hobby if you can get past that bump
Edit: sigh… I have an in progress writing prep app with a trailer and everything but it’s not hosted yet, so I can’t link to it. Serves me right for putting it off
And what have you to show for the process you describe here? You seem very confident you've got the right idea, but without the opportunity to see the resulting work, it's impossible for anyone to tell whether you merit being taken seriously or whether instead you're just blowing air.
Comments like yours are why I often read the HN comments before clicking through to the actual article being discussed. Thank you for saving me five+ minutes.
You should click through to the article. However little it may suit the taste of the grandparent commenter - or suit mine, for that matter, at least in the methylphenidate style and triumphalist tone - there are some things of worth in there, nonetheless.
Here's a question about possible cultural differences: I notice that a good number of blog posts I come across these days, that are actually about a technical topic, either start with or prominently feature the authors feelings toward the topic. This post is a great example for what I mean, it starts with "I love writing. Every little goddamn bit of it."
I'm personally really turned off by that particular writing style. Sometimes it annoys me so much that I close the tab right away, even though I was originally interested in the topic. That probably tells you more about me than about the authors. (Ha! I just made that comment about myself, too. Take that, bloggers!)
But the fact that I see this happening frequently now makes me wonder: is that perhaps a writing style that is taught in school somewhere? Certainly not in the place and at the time that I went to school but it could be that this style is perhaps actively encouraged somewhere else?
I was always confused about this, but learned copyright doesn't apply to recipes that are just lists of ingredients + instructions, and this is why people add stories etc to them, so they can't be easily ripped.
Seconded, especially when looking for a recipe on a tablet where I have to scroll endlessly to the bottom of the page to finally see the effing recipe.
Many people feel compelled to write in this way. They think that if they don't make it personal, the reader will get bored. It has to include some story you could relate to. A good example is Avi Loeb's Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth - for the first half of the book you can only wonder when the author stops talking about himself.
Sometimes, although rarely, this makes perfect sense, as in Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! - but in practice everybody thinks they're special.
I often speculate that this is associated with the rise of video content. So much information on YouTube is encrusted with the personality and brand of the presenter that I wonder if this verbal, story-oriented mode of presentation hasn't spilled over and become the default for general text channels as well.
No, I hate it too, it just reduces the signal-to-noise ratio. Sometimes a short story is perfectly fine in order to introduce a complex concept and then get to the point, that's all.
One benefit of seeing so much writing like this: it encourages me to get to the f’ing point. I’ve been working on tightening my writing for a few years. It’s motivating when someone adds to their reply to your email, “BTW your note was really clear and succinct.”
I would say it is not about writing style but more about the personality of the author. According to MBTI for example, people are either Thinking (T) or Feeling (F), and I would imagine that strongly Feeling people focus much more on emotions (as compared to Thinking people) when expressing anything - be it talking, writing, etc. To them, the expression of emotion towards a particular subject is as important, if not more, than the objective value / knowledge / information imparted.
I can also hazard a guess that there are more Thinking people lurking in HN vs Feeling people, thus the general repulsion towards that style of writing.
Professional writing for publication is usually about number of words. The emotional fluff is a version of double-spacing and large font. It's there to stretch an idea that could be stated in a single sentence into an essay. Writing classes teach people to indulge in that sort of thing under the pretense of being interesting or persuasive. But classes aren't necessary. If you're writing for the web or glossies, you'll pick it up through osmosis. It's just what you say when you don't have anything to say but need to say a lot of it.
Cooking recipes used to start with the name, then the list of ingredients and maybe cooking apparel, and finish with list of preparation steps.
I don't know if you have visited any online recipe website recently, but that's not how things are any more.
Now people preface all that with how they feel, their car problems, the last show they binged over on Netflix, and the entomology of the word "chinchilla".
My reaction is the same. I wonder if people write this way because most of the writing they've ever done has been prompted by teachers who ask them how they feel on a topic, or they're used to writing in a personal journal/diary, putting their impressions/feelings at the forefront.
I think it's the personal essay style that is quite popular at the moment - the mix of topic with the author's experience of that topic. (Personally, I quite like that style, but then I think I read for the experience of reading as much as for the practical takeaways).
A few years back I did an internship at a gaming magazine and one of the editors gave me a great tip to make writing a lot easier:
"Just start writing. Write whatever you want but write and write and keep writing. Eventually what you want will appear on the page and you'll edit out the random blabbering".
Made a huge difference for me because my problem was the initial blank page.
Writing is hard, no matter how you frame it. There a native English speakers who may have an advantage because they can produce clever phrasing more easily. But I found that actual content (e.g. having to say something that matters) always beats clever phrasing, albeit you need a bit of both.
As a non-native English speaker, I usually require about 8 months straight (4hrs/day) to produce a full paper with ~8000 words. Note that this is after all research is done and all results are already available. It is a multi-iteration process. It is also critical that I accept not keeping parts for just an end in itself (e.g. not throwing away text that took time to produce): If it does not support the main message of the paper, it gets removed eventually. Clinging to text was my biggest mistake as a beginner because it effectively prevented succinct synthesis (btw. this is mentioned in the blog post, too). Having mentors that point to redundant text helps.
Sometimes I feel that (proficient) non-native speakers are actually better because they tend to describe things plainly, directly, and clearly, without trying to be all clever about it.
Even in technical (non-fiction) writing there are different styles, and when in doubt it should really be clarity that wins. Especially in documentation and such.
I do notice that in my native language it's a bit easier to make a serious point while also writing in a somewhat entertaining style, but that's really just extra fluff. Like you say, at the end of the day people don't read what you have to say for your style, but for your content.
> It is also critical that I accept not keeping parts for just an end in itself (e.g. not throwing away text that took time to produce): If it does not support the main message of the paper, it gets removed eventually.
I copy/paste these things to a draft document for some future usage, where it's more appropriate. This way you're not "throwing it away" but just "re-organizing it".
This is precisely how I approach writing a journal. Some days are easier than others. On the not so easy days, simply writing anything, in an almost stream of consciousness way, gets the ball rolling and the thoughts and feelings finally gel in to something comprehensible.
A very interesting approach I have discovered recently is "Zettelkasten".
To summarize:
- Whenever you're reading/learning/researching/thinking something, you write down "fleeting" notes in your journal, just jotting down ideas you don't want to forget. It's effortless and natural, doesn't feel as scary as writing, you're not staring at the blank page, you're just collecting useful ideas as you live and work.
- Then you try to process these notes regularly (daily or weekly) - take the key insights you want to remember, add them to your "writing inbox", through the inbox and turn the notes into "evergreen atomic notes" - a cleaned up and organized version of your fleeting notes. You turn each useful idea into a single, concise note with a good title. One concept per note. Interlink the notes - link the note to related ideas, add tags, put notes into folders, whatever makes it easy to search through them later on.
- When it's time to write, you have an archive of all the most useful ideas you have learned, organized by subject, interlinked with each other. Now all you have to do is take several related notes, compose them into an article, edit and fill in the blanks.
So you never have to stare at the blank page. You naturally write as you live, then you organize your thoughts a little better into the evergreen notes, then you organize these notes into articles, videos, books, whatever you want to produce.
I got into the whole thing after learning about Obsidian (https://obsidian.md/), a cool app for writing and organizing such notes (no affiliation, I just like it).
I was already writing down all my notes in Editorial (a really cool iOS app, unfortunately hasn't been updated in a long time, 1Writer is a great alternative). But I would never reread them or turn them into anything useful to anyone. Taking the extra step of cleaning up and organizing my notes is very helpful, now I do this for everything - personal stuff, my work projects, everything Im learning about tech, writing, etc.
It's similar to sketching. I get the same sort of fear when I do it.
My solution is to be more forgiving. Paper is cheap. I can try bold concepts and fail miserably. I can stop halfway through a sketch and try something else, or revisit it years later. No one is keeping track. In the end, I learn more from drawing poorly than from not drawing at all.
I am also forgiving when I write. The content I publish gets revised several times over many years, like a family recipe that improves with every attempt. Through each iteration, I find better ways to explain things to my readers. On the internet, I can republish as often as you want, so there's no cost to getting it mostly right.
To reiterate what the comment above you was saying...
Putting words on paper is easy. Putting "good" words on paper is hard or editing the words you put on paper so they are "good" is hard. Use whatever definition of "good" that you would like.
Yes indeed. It is difficult to write in engaging way that gives the reader some insight into what you experienced.
But if you were just writing for the sake of it and putting down word afterword without really thinking about what you’re saying or not even caring what the reader is thinking at all just speaking whatever comes to mind in some sort of you know some sort of aSelf centred sort of a style which isn’t really a style it’s really just talking to yourself well you know that’s um yeah that’s not so hard really I’m just sort of do it you know? Yeah and you can and you actually don’t have to write it or you can just talk into your phone!
> You’ll flourish as a writer if you don’t fear writing and don’t force it
I think that goes for a lot of creative endeavors, and programming too for that matter. But I'm not sure that's very helpful advice when you must write, particularly about a topic you don't care as much about, need specific ideas/research for, and/or with a strict deadline. It's like "make something easier by doing it for your own satisfaction." Of course, but doesn't help if I'm doing something less interesting primarily for a paycheck.
I can write 10000 words on the spot on any random word picked out of the dictionary. Even a one I don't know at all.
Friends loved to test me on this, picking up some BS topic and see if I can come up with a scenario or a song. Then after a few minutes of my rambling they get bored of course. Having something to say doesn't mean it's interesting.
My problem is rather to learn to shut up about things and accept it's usually wiser to not have an opinion on most things.
The vast majority of words do not need to be spoken or written, but it's hard to do for me.
For me not really, it's just matter of spending more time on it.
If I spend 20 minutes, I will just produce BS. If I invest more time and energy, something good will come out.
When I was a kid I always assumed everybody was the same: you could always express what you had in mind. Took me years to realize not only it's not the case, but most people actually don't use words for their meaning at all.
Once I got that, my oral communication improved tremendously, but writing stayed mostly the same. Oral can be messy, sometimes it's even better than way. On paper, though, being clear is a virtue.
And if you can't be clear from the beginning, just babble until your brain gets in the flow, and you'll get to something eventually. Then strip the useless part, clean up the good one, and you got a winner.
I understand how others can suffer from writer's block even though it does not pertain to me. Have not happened and never will. Typically those who suffer writer's block go into writing on the false premise that all writing should be inspired. Like the first sentence you type on a blank page should be heavenly divine. There is this false notion in our society of a true, mythic writer that is a muse-inspired drunkard puking paragraphs reeking of genius. If that's how you think about writing then, of course, writer's block will be common.
When I write, the premise is I attempt to turn shit to gold, eventually.
Closer to the truth is as described in this article, writing is more like blind plumbing work. It's very revisional. Whole paragraphs and pages are reworked and outright deleted left and right. The final script is rarely in the order you started. Then your editor goes to work, butchering your baby. It's very painful, but you know this is the way to end up with something the reader finds readable.
Reading a published novel as a wannabe author, you must keep in mind that it's revised to perfection. Repeatedly hammered like a Japanese sword. Writing is definitely a forging process and not magic.
> Reading a published novel as a wannabe author, you must keep in mind that it's revised to perfection
Yes, in fact, I'm so used to that I sometimes edit my HN comments 10 to 15 times, and get frustrated when the "edit" link disappears.
But the initial one is always easy to write. I don't wonder "geez, what could I say?". It also often sucks, full of typo, things that could be badly interpreted, and so on.
Funny thing is, I'm currently learning to let it suck. Invest less energy. And as this thread proves, I'm failing miserably at it :)
It's the same, the only difference is filtering and shaping, and keeping up at it. It's a cycle. Babble, filter, shape. Then babble again. Sometimes you skip directly to write well shaped words because you are in the zone. Sometimes you just embarrass yourself because you are in public, and there is no opportunity to shape and filter.
But the process is the same, at least for me.
I assume other people do it differently, but the point is, writer's blocks seems alien to me. As long as you are not in a coma, I don't see how your mind cannot come up with something. And as long as it can, something worth committing too can be found.
It's not like sport when you have an actual physical limitation. You brain is literally a machine to produce ideas. It does that constantly, in mass.
Everybody has it, because everybody have weird dreams when they sleep.
Haha, this thread is amazing to read! People who reply to your post try to explain why the writer's block is a thing, and inadvertently demonstrate the reason it is a thing for them and not for you.
They talk about how easy it is to write random words and how hard it is to write well, and you keep explaining that you're supposed to remove the filters, start by writing random words, and then edit until it's good.
I think that's the difference between the people who have writer's block and the people who don't. People without the writer's block are able to relax their filters, people who suffer from writer's block are trying to write well right away, and it's hard and painful.
Ha said that, even understanding your advice consciously, I still find it incredibly difficult to apply. Logically, I see that there's no reason to be ashamed of writing a bad draft, I don't feel like I'm afraid of being judged by people, or like I judge myself, I think that I want to be able to just babble until I stumble upon something good I can refine. But for some reason, my brain just refuses to do that.
Maybe it's difficult because my brain feels like "babbling" is a waste of time and energy, and I always give up before it gets good. Maybe because it's difficult to motivate myself to do things when I don't have a plan, don't feel like I have control over what's going on, don't have the guarantee that my efforts will pay off. Maybe it has something to do with status or confidence or insecurities that apply these filters whether or not I choose to. I dunno. I know that these reservations are silly, but I see why people struggle with it, I do too.
I think that relaxing the filters, letting go of control, and trusting in your brain's ability to generate random words and make them good later on is also a skill, and some people find it easier than others.
But you're writing about a subject you know about - what about something new, something actually creative? Writing fiction? A subject you know nothing about and for which you can't look up anything?
The thing you are describing is not the opposite of writer's block. It's something orthogonal to it, at least in my experience. I'm also quite capable of stringing together endless seemingly coherent texts about anything when there are no true personal stakes involved.
However, when trying to tell a story or covering a subject that I really care about, that's a whole other ball game.
For me it's not. If the subject matters, the same process can be applied, and eventually something good emerges from it. You just filter the crap out, shape it, and you have the base for something great.
The good old advice of "just start writing" is easy to follow when words flow naturally.
Oh, but good writing can come out of it more easily than just trying to come up with something good from the start.
It's easier to filter than to shape. And easier to shape something already filtered than shaping from a blank page.
Also, not all writing have to be good. A lof of them already have value if they are not bad.
After all, writing for the purpose of writing is a beautiful endeavor, but writing for sharing information is a great in itself, and a perfect but non-existing reference will always worse than a dry but at hand paper.
I remember an author once saying there are two kinds of authors: those who like to write and those who like to have written. The interviewee was in the latter category.
Given that this article is about writing, here's a comment on the writing itself. It needs a rewrite. It's a good rough draft with maybe the kernel of a good idea, but in its current form is barely readable. It's stream of consciousness writing that doesn't fulfill the promise made in the title.
Or, maybe it does in fact fulfill that promise. If the goal is quantity of words - and 10,000 words a week in particular then never editing a rough draft is one strategy to get there. Just keep writing, never stopping to reconsider anything. Treat the screen you're typing on as an append-only log file. If so, well played!
There are readers who like to read and those who like to have read something. I went to this article with the intent of getting actionable advice to make writing easier. Half way through the article, this author hasn't even articulated a problem I can identify with.
Here's how to start the edit. Throw away half the words, then throw away the half that are left. Now start again.
Maybe the difference between writers who like to write and those who like to have written is that the latter take editing the mess they've created far more seriously than the former.