4 ms·

A Version 1.0

48 points by marvin 19y ago

m0nty 19y ago
"I probably write three to four words for every one that appears in the final version of an essay." Writing is cutting. Most things are: a lot of crap is produced for everything worth keeping. "Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it - whole-heartedly - and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings." (Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch.)
- canoebuilder 19y ago
  Ira Glass on a similar theme http://youtube.com/watch?v=3qmtwa1yZRM http://youtube.com/watch?v=3qmtwa1yZRM
  - m0nty 19y ago
    Good quotation: "Not enough is said, about the importance of dropping crap."
  - keizo 19y ago
    A person named canoebuilder on hacker news? I thought I was the only one.
    - canoebuilder 19y ago
      It's mostly a metaphor for early peoples who used the empty space they created in cut down trees for more efficient means of progress. The literal sense does interest me as well, though. Where do you pilot your canoes?
      - keizo 19y ago
        Haha, yeah... I literally am building canoes. see our website http://kamanucomposites.com http://kamanucomposites.com
mdemare 19y ago
I liked the comparison of studying the classics in the middle ages to "Alien Studies". Very revealing metaphor!
- yters 19y ago
  pg makes a point of devaluing the classics in his essays. I don't know why. Let's assume there are consistent patterns to how people work, and these patterns are consistent because people forget about them. So, the best way to learn about the patterns are by reading the classics and history. Now let's come back to the present day. People give this idea lip service, but no one really takes the classics seriously anymore. Because of metanarratives like evolution, we think progress happens automatically and that there is no intrinsic human nature. We don't realize this worldview is very recent and people thought it was a bad idea in the past. Consequently, our worldview becomes a local optimum that limits us from looking for anything else. This is called hubris in classical literature. Think Oedipus.
  - yters 19y ago
    "the best way to learn about the patterns are by reading the classics and history" "ways" I hate it when I put time into creating a good response and a grammar mistake makes my writing look retarded.
Alex3917 19y ago
There seem to be some clear patterns in what was cut: anything angsty, opinions lacking empirical support, personal feelings, etc. Which isn't to say that all of these weren't needed to get the thoughts down on paper.
mdemare 19y ago
Probably the revised version is "better", but I enjoyed reading the deleted parts. By condensing an essay you can make it more syropy and thus increase the number of people who will consider it worth reading. But I think it's doubtful whether you're doing a service for the readers who would have liked the original version. The same phenomenon is being played out with music and bootlegs, and movies and director's cuts. Most people want the short version, the fans want as much as they can get.
- gnaritas 19y ago
  Nah, it's the lack of all that unsupported unnecessary fluff that makes Paul's writing enjoyable. This is a critical step in good writing, stop trying boring your reader to death and get to the damn point already, and Paul does it well, Steve Yeggi on the other hand must have missed this lesson. If you had to read all that stuff everytime, you may not come to enjoy Paul's writing as much as you do now in the first place. Fans only want more after they've become fans.
  - mdemare 19y ago
    Speak for yourself. Yegge was never terse, yet he may count me a fan.
    - gnaritas 19y ago
      I didn't say he didn't have fans, some people like all that verbal diarrhea!
      - wanorris 19y ago
        Steve Yegge generally makes unfiltered work for him. PG treats his essays like oil paintings, and keeps working on them over time until he's satisfied with the results. Yegge's "drunken blog rants" are more like sketches -- when they work, the spontaneity is part of the appeal, but they tend to be much more uneven. Neither style is necessarily better than the other, just very different.
  - 19y ago
mdemare 19y ago
I'm now wondering whether it's worth spending a day a week writing, instead of coding. It's true that you can generate much more ideas by writing, and it allows you to cast your gaze a lot further than whatever particular method you're working on. Any thoughts?
- JesseAldridge 19y ago
  I think writing is more about teaching others than helping yourself. pg can afford to write because he's made his fortune. Simple notes to yourself should be sufficient for generating and refining ideas.
  - danohuiginn 19y ago
    "writing is more about teaching others than helping yourself." I disagree. I write a lot of stuff that nobody else sees, just to clarify my thinking. My head's full of vague ideas, and it's only when I write them down that I can pick apart the contradictions. It's no different from coding: once you actually start writing code (rather than just planning it) you suddenly notice a host of edge cases and potential bugs.
    - rantfoil 19y ago
      It's true, writing is a great way to capture thought. The brain just can't hold enough things at one time to fully understand many problem spaces, but a Word doc can be infinitely long.
      - philh 19y ago
        That's not it. The brain can hold far more than any hard drive. And you don't really understand something that's not in your brain: all the neural links just don't exist on paper. It's the writing that helps. I'm not entirely sure how, but something about putting thoughts into sentences makes the thoughts themselves more coherent. Maybe because it forces you to think them in new ways => more connections => better understanding.
ubudesign 19y ago
I think language is also a factor. English grammar is dependent on word order. a thought is more free. so transforming that into sentences that reflect the thought order is a challenge. maybe this is only true for people like me who speak a different language (Farsi) which has free word order. I can write a long sentence putting all my thoughts in it without much problem. but when I write it in English it turns into run-on sentence. The only solution I've found is short senses that follow my thoughts. While English is a simple language it's an art to be able to write well so maybe that's why Paul's well written work include revisions in the process. I'm sure there are more to this but I'm not a language expert :)
- aflag 19y ago
  I'm not sure that's really true. You tend to think more or less in the terms of the language you speak most of the time. For example, I lived in the US for one year and, when I got back to Brazil I'd often think like "I like this better", wheras in portuguese you'd say something like "I like more of this". My point being that we adapt to think how we speak and write, so that's not really the issue when writing down your thoughts. I think the hardest thing is to be coherent, when you think you often skip steps that you look with greater care when you write. It's not uncommon that some of the steps you're skiping are crucial ones.

48 points by marvin 19y ago

m0nty 19y ago

"I probably write three to four words for every one that appears in the final version of an essay." Writing is cutting. Most things are: a lot of crap is produced for everything worth keeping. "Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it - whole-heartedly - and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings." (Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch.)

canoebuilder 19y ago
Ira Glass on a similar theme http://youtube.com/watch?v=3qmtwa1yZRM http://youtube.com/watch?v=3qmtwa1yZRM
- m0nty 19y ago
  Good quotation: "Not enough is said, about the importance of dropping crap."
- keizo 19y ago
  A person named canoebuilder on hacker news? I thought I was the only one.
  - canoebuilder 19y ago
    It's mostly a metaphor for early peoples who used the empty space they created in cut down trees for more efficient means of progress. The literal sense does interest me as well, though. Where do you pilot your canoes?
    - keizo 19y ago
      Haha, yeah... I literally am building canoes. see our website http://kamanucomposites.com http://kamanucomposites.com

mdemare 19y ago

I liked the comparison of studying the classics in the middle ages to "Alien Studies". Very revealing metaphor!

yters 19y ago
pg makes a point of devaluing the classics in his essays. I don't know why. Let's assume there are consistent patterns to how people work, and these patterns are consistent because people forget about them. So, the best way to learn about the patterns are by reading the classics and history. Now let's come back to the present day. People give this idea lip service, but no one really takes the classics seriously anymore. Because of metanarratives like evolution, we think progress happens automatically and that there is no intrinsic human nature. We don't realize this worldview is very recent and people thought it was a bad idea in the past. Consequently, our worldview becomes a local optimum that limits us from looking for anything else. This is called hubris in classical literature. Think Oedipus.
- yters 19y ago
  "the best way to learn about the patterns are by reading the classics and history" "ways" I hate it when I put time into creating a good response and a grammar mistake makes my writing look retarded.

Alex3917 19y ago

There seem to be some clear patterns in what was cut: anything angsty, opinions lacking empirical support, personal feelings, etc. Which isn't to say that all of these weren't needed to get the thoughts down on paper.

mdemare 19y ago

Probably the revised version is "better", but I enjoyed reading the deleted parts. By condensing an essay you can make it more syropy and thus increase the number of people who will consider it worth reading. But I think it's doubtful whether you're doing a service for the readers who would have liked the original version. The same phenomenon is being played out with music and bootlegs, and movies and director's cuts. Most people want the short version, the fans want as much as they can get.

gnaritas 19y ago
Nah, it's the lack of all that unsupported unnecessary fluff that makes Paul's writing enjoyable. This is a critical step in good writing, stop trying boring your reader to death and get to the damn point already, and Paul does it well, Steve Yeggi on the other hand must have missed this lesson. If you had to read all that stuff everytime, you may not come to enjoy Paul's writing as much as you do now in the first place. Fans only want more after they've become fans.
- mdemare 19y ago
  Speak for yourself. Yegge was never terse, yet he may count me a fan.
  - gnaritas 19y ago
    I didn't say he didn't have fans, some people like all that verbal diarrhea!
    - wanorris 19y ago
      Steve Yegge generally makes unfiltered work for him. PG treats his essays like oil paintings, and keeps working on them over time until he's satisfied with the results. Yegge's "drunken blog rants" are more like sketches -- when they work, the spontaneity is part of the appeal, but they tend to be much more uneven. Neither style is necessarily better than the other, just very different.
- 19y ago

mdemare 19y ago

I'm now wondering whether it's worth spending a day a week writing, instead of coding. It's true that you can generate much more ideas by writing, and it allows you to cast your gaze a lot further than whatever particular method you're working on. Any thoughts?

JesseAldridge 19y ago
I think writing is more about teaching others than helping yourself. pg can afford to write because he's made his fortune. Simple notes to yourself should be sufficient for generating and refining ideas.
- danohuiginn 19y ago
  "writing is more about teaching others than helping yourself." I disagree. I write a lot of stuff that nobody else sees, just to clarify my thinking. My head's full of vague ideas, and it's only when I write them down that I can pick apart the contradictions. It's no different from coding: once you actually start writing code (rather than just planning it) you suddenly notice a host of edge cases and potential bugs.
  - rantfoil 19y ago
    It's true, writing is a great way to capture thought. The brain just can't hold enough things at one time to fully understand many problem spaces, but a Word doc can be infinitely long.
    - philh 19y ago
      That's not it. The brain can hold far more than any hard drive. And you don't really understand something that's not in your brain: all the neural links just don't exist on paper. It's the writing that helps. I'm not entirely sure how, but something about putting thoughts into sentences makes the thoughts themselves more coherent. Maybe because it forces you to think them in new ways => more connections => better understanding.

ubudesign 19y ago

I think language is also a factor. English grammar is dependent on word order. a thought is more free. so transforming that into sentences that reflect the thought order is a challenge. maybe this is only true for people like me who speak a different language (Farsi) which has free word order. I can write a long sentence putting all my thoughts in it without much problem. but when I write it in English it turns into run-on sentence. The only solution I've found is short senses that follow my thoughts. While English is a simple language it's an art to be able to write well so maybe that's why Paul's well written work include revisions in the process. I'm sure there are more to this but I'm not a language expert :)

aflag 19y ago
I'm not sure that's really true. You tend to think more or less in the terms of the language you speak most of the time. For example, I lived in the US for one year and, when I got back to Brazil I'd often think like "I like this better", wheras in portuguese you'd say something like "I like more of this". My point being that we adapt to think how we speak and write, so that's not really the issue when writing down your thoughts. I think the hardest thing is to be coherent, when you think you often skip steps that you look with greater care when you write. It's not uncommon that some of the steps you're skiping are crucial ones.