4 ms·

Tweet threads cured my writer's block: Twitter as a medium for sketching

43 points by polm23 6y ago

tomhoward 6y ago
I often feel down on myself for not having time to focus on blogging. I've written things in the past that have been well received, attracted lots of traffic and opened up opportunities, but doing it regularly seems like too big an undertaking. Then I remind myself that I routinely bash out HN comments of 200-300 or more words, and it takes only a few minutes. And you get instant feedback through votes and replies, which makes crafting the ideas and editing the copy so much easier and faster. The combination of having something specific to respond to, the rapid feedback, and not having the pressure of posting a standalone piece that needs to justify its own existence, makes HN place I can write very freely. Now I sometimes think of my longer HN comments as blog post drafts just waiting for me to dig them up and publish them.
- Waterfall 6y ago
  The issue with blog posting is that you need to have a capture for the audience or a funnel. On HN you can be read immediately in the sea of comments but in a blog post it would have to be published and I would need to have someone find it for me or find it. It would be cool if there was a better way than reading comments on the blog post about their similar article.
  - cercatrova 6y ago
    That's only if you're writing to be read. Often I find the best way to write well is to write for yourself and assume that if you just so happen to be read by others, then that's a good thing but not to be expected necessarily.
- aliceryhl 6y ago
  I have exactly the same experience with things I write on some other forum, while having published one article since 2017.
cborenstein 6y ago
> Twitter has a low barrier to finishing. On Twitter, a single sentence is a completely acceptable unit of publication... In contrast, most of my blog posts go unpublished because I fear they’re not complete, or not good enough in some dimension. This is a great point. Getting out quick sketches of ideas is a faster way to learn. Small, incremental steps are key to making consistent progress. My co-founder and I have been thinking about how to harness this "sketching" mentality when it comes to daily work notes. For our notes app, bytebase.io, we've found what works best is: - create notes in short chunks, like a tweet. - use a designated dumping ground to get ideas down fast, without worrying about where. - use a lightweight process to triage notes into categories (with keyboard shortcuts).
Waterfall 6y ago
I disagree, especially for the constraints. The best thing for writer's block is a few random generations of GPT2 until you like it. It lacks the feeback of Twitter but maybe that's a good thing.
renewiltord 6y ago
Twitter is a cultural masterpiece. The medium is rapid-iteration, information-dense, with checkpoints. The community is 100% selective: if your Twitter feed sucks, only you are to blame since you start with no follows and your feed only shows things from the people you follow, and there is no societal conflation of the notion of relationship and following. It permits you to restrict yourself to your bubble or to open yourself to the world.
- kjakm 6y ago
  >> your feed only shows things from the people you follow This is untrue. It used to be the case but now Twitter shows content from people I don't follow based on actions taken by people I follow. Although everyone I follow only ever tweets things I'm interested in they like tweets I have no interest in (which get randomly shown in my feed) and they follow people I have no interest in (which gets randomly shown in my feed). This has driven my away from Twitter. I try to block the latest news/trends/outrage online because it's generally fleeting (and if it's not I will find out through friends) but Twitter now makes this impossible and it makes the service so much less enjoyable I regularly consider deleting my account. Edit: If anyone knows a solution to this please let me know. If tried a well known trick to mute certain strings but it doesn't seem to work anymore.
  - abalaji 6y ago
    Lists, use twitter lists.
    - kjakm 6y ago
      That's a great idea.
  - abdullahkhalids 6y ago
    I don't really see tweets from people I don't follow (outside of retweets and likes). I don't know which ones help with your problem. Here are my settings: 1. Timeline in chronological order. 2. In settings->content preferences->languages. I have turned off everything. 3. In settings>content preferences>personalization and data, I have turned off everything. 4. I have Turned off Retweets for certain people (go to their page and click the three dots), as they retweet crap, but tweet good stuff. 5. Every time Twitter shows me any recommendations, I click "Show less often". 6. I have blocked pretty much every politician who are retweeted by my follows. I have also muted their names.

43 points by polm23 6y ago

I often feel down on myself for not having time to focus on blogging. I've written things in the past that have been well received, attracted lots of traffic and opened up opportunities, but doing it regularly seems like too big an undertaking. Then I remind myself that I routinely bash out HN comments of 200-300 or more words, and it takes only a few minutes. And you get instant feedback through votes and replies, which makes crafting the ideas and editing the copy so much easier and faster. The combination of having something specific to respond to, the rapid feedback, and not having the pressure of posting a standalone piece that needs to justify its own existence, makes HN place I can write very freely. Now I sometimes think of my longer HN comments as blog post drafts just waiting for me to dig them up and publish them.

Waterfall 6y ago
The issue with blog posting is that you need to have a capture for the audience or a funnel. On HN you can be read immediately in the sea of comments but in a blog post it would have to be published and I would need to have someone find it for me or find it. It would be cool if there was a better way than reading comments on the blog post about their similar article.
- cercatrova 6y ago
  That's only if you're writing to be read. Often I find the best way to write well is to write for yourself and assume that if you just so happen to be read by others, then that's a good thing but not to be expected necessarily.
aliceryhl 6y ago
I have exactly the same experience with things I write on some other forum, while having published one article since 2017.

cborenstein 6y ago

> Twitter has a low barrier to finishing. On Twitter, a single sentence is a completely acceptable unit of publication... In contrast, most of my blog posts go unpublished because I fear they’re not complete, or not good enough in some dimension. This is a great point. Getting out quick sketches of ideas is a faster way to learn. Small, incremental steps are key to making consistent progress. My co-founder and I have been thinking about how to harness this "sketching" mentality when it comes to daily work notes. For our notes app, bytebase.io, we've found what works best is: - create notes in short chunks, like a tweet. - use a designated dumping ground to get ideas down fast, without worrying about where. - use a lightweight process to triage notes into categories (with keyboard shortcuts).

Waterfall 6y ago

I disagree, especially for the constraints. The best thing for writer's block is a few random generations of GPT2 until you like it. It lacks the feeback of Twitter but maybe that's a good thing.

renewiltord 6y ago

Twitter is a cultural masterpiece. The medium is rapid-iteration, information-dense, with checkpoints. The community is 100% selective: if your Twitter feed sucks, only you are to blame since you start with no follows and your feed only shows things from the people you follow, and there is no societal conflation of the notion of relationship and following. It permits you to restrict yourself to your bubble or to open yourself to the world.

kjakm 6y ago
>> your feed only shows things from the people you follow This is untrue. It used to be the case but now Twitter shows content from people I don't follow based on actions taken by people I follow. Although everyone I follow only ever tweets things I'm interested in they like tweets I have no interest in (which get randomly shown in my feed) and they follow people I have no interest in (which gets randomly shown in my feed). This has driven my away from Twitter. I try to block the latest news/trends/outrage online because it's generally fleeting (and if it's not I will find out through friends) but Twitter now makes this impossible and it makes the service so much less enjoyable I regularly consider deleting my account. Edit: If anyone knows a solution to this please let me know. If tried a well known trick to mute certain strings but it doesn't seem to work anymore.
- abalaji 6y ago
  Lists, use twitter lists.
  - kjakm 6y ago
    That's a great idea.
- abdullahkhalids 6y ago
  I don't really see tweets from people I don't follow (outside of retweets and likes). I don't know which ones help with your problem. Here are my settings: 1. Timeline in chronological order. 2. In settings->content preferences->languages. I have turned off everything. 3. In settings>content preferences>personalization and data, I have turned off everything. 4. I have Turned off Retweets for certain people (go to their page and click the three dots), as they retweet crap, but tweet good stuff. 5. Every time Twitter shows me any recommendations, I click "Show less often". 6. I have blocked pretty much every politician who are retweeted by my follows. I have also muted their names.