6 ms·

To write better, develop a habit of writing

174 points by pavelegorkin 6y ago

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
m52go 6y ago
I see this perspective posted a lot, and while I think it's generally true, it's a bit vague. What do we mean by writing better? If we're referring to an improved ability to articulate thoughts and produce more text, then sure, writing more will help with that. Maybe quality will improve marginally over time. But if we're talking about actually producing writing of a higher quality, I'm afraid simply writing more can only help so much. Improving the quality of the craft requires readers to provide feedback on the writing itself and/or writers to actively learn how to actually write better. The former is rare, and I'm not sure many writers actively take part in the latter.
- detritus 6y ago
  Perhaps it's more about creating at whatever cost and then having a chance to review and appreciate what works and what doesn't, then learn from that and adapt? If you don't try, you can't know.
- iainctduncan 6y ago
  Looks like you beat me to my exact points. +100! :-)
Snitch-Thursday 6y ago
I have two major tools for my writing habit. 1) writingstreak.io which is great for daily word dumps. 2 ) writing.com which is a writer's community and very much reminiscent of the web 1.0 days. It may not be a nostalgia trip in terms of blinking marquees, but it has simple links, a website-specific markup, forums, and probably a LAMP stack based on its unsophisticated styling. You can post your writings there, and review other's writings for in-site currency, which you can spend on getting others to review what you've written for said currency. The community there is friendly and also has other groups for journal passing, mailed handwriting practice, poetry/story contests and more. Edit Bonus: doing NANOWRIMO each year really helps the writing habit since you are trying to get to 50,000+ words written in a month.
chrismeller 6y ago
For anyone interested in writing “for real” (professionally or as a hobby) I highly recommend John Scalzi’s blog [1]. He’s cynical, he’s funny, and above all he’s practical. Among his advice over the years a few things have really stuck with me: 1) Don’t get an MFA, it’s a waste of money. If you need a grammar class, take one. If you need more of a basis in x literary genre because that’s what you want to write in, take a class or just read a ton in that genre. 2) Set up the habit of writing. If you don’t write a lot of crap on a regular basis you’ll never write anything. You will throw away a TON of what you write, but it’s only by writing that 99% of crap that you’ll find the 1% that’s worth keeping. 3) Don’t quit your day job. You will never, ever, ever write for 8 hours a day straight. Rather than sitting around depressed all day because you haven’t written anything worth a damn, you may as well have a basic 8 to 5 office job that pays the bills, health insurance, etc. Not only does it remove money as a concern, but it gets your mind off of the fact that you haven’t written anything good and frees up your creative juices for that next scheduled writing period. 4) Don’t be pretentious and refuse to write anything that isn’t “pure” or “worthy”. All the advertisements you see and brochures you read are written by someone. Being persuasive with your writing can pay really well and give you the security to pound out that next great American novel. 1: https://whatever.scalzi.com/ https://whatever.scalzi.com/ Edit: line breaks
- estrela 6y ago
  Do you have experience as a professional writer? I'm curious, how you think a person without a degree on journalism, writing, etc, can get a job writing? I'm a software engineer, by the way. Not that I'm interested in changing my career or anything, but your comment was interesting and I do like writing, so I think it's worth knowing!
  - shagie 6y ago
    Incidentally, Scalzi also had that problem. He wrote Agent to the Stars to try to figure out if he wanted to write and what it was to write. http://scalzi.com/agent/ http://scalzi.com/agent/ > In the summer of 1997, I was 28 years old, and I decided that after years of thinking about writing a novel, I was simply going to go ahead and write one. There were two motivations for doing so. First, I was simply curious if I could; I'd had up to that time a reasonably successful life as a writer, but I'd never written anything longer than ten pages in my life outside of a classroom setting. Two, my ten-year high school reunion was coming up, and I wanted to be able to say I'd finished a novel just in case anyone asked (they didn't, the bastards). > In sitting down to write the novel, I decided to make it easy on myself. I decided first that I wasn't going to try to write something near and dear to my heart, just a fun story. That way, if I screwed it up (which was a real possibility), it wasn't like I was screwing up the One Story That Mattered To Me. I decided also that the goal of writing the novel was the actual writing of it -- not the selling of it, which is usually the goal of a novelist. I didn't want to worry about whether it was good enough to sell; I just wanted to have the experience of writing a story over the length of a novel, and see what I thought about it. Not every writer is a novelist; I wanted to see if I was.
ApolloVonZ 6y ago
I'm a big fan of Scrivener (the mac version) for my writings. Not only fiction, but also academic writings, or organizing projects with custom templates. But besides that I think the post lacks a bit of information. For an article about writing, it's pretty basic and feels as if it's written and posted only to create some content and traffic for the website.
- tyre 6y ago
  Scrivener is great. Also probably overkill for people just getting started. It's easy to lose yourself in setting up and optimizing the tools, and thinking of that as "writing work".
  - ApolloVonZ 6y ago
    True there are some simpler - no distraction - tools out there, some of them are pretty great and for some this might be much better. And of course nothing beats a hand written text. It's just a pain in the a to type the whole thing after. But for me it wasn't until using Scrivener that I managed to write more than a dozen pages before giving up. Scrivener just makes it easy for me to write piece by piece. While a long Word or Pages document just gets too much and demotivates me eventually. But yeah, everyone needs to find their own tool :)
    - ghaff 6y ago
      I like Scrivener for longer-form writing because it helps me to keep a project-level view while working on the details. Unfortunately, most things I write have to sooner or later get dumped into a different format for collaboration/editing.
      - ApolloVonZ 6y ago
        Yes, that's unfortunately true. Once you need to collaborate you need to export. Earlier versions of Scrivener still had the option to work on individual files with external editors. But I'm not even sure if this is still possible, it might be, but the files are all randomly numbered now and not named, so it kind of makes it impossible to use an external collaborative editor.
NewOrderNow 6y ago
I have been doing morning pages for 10 years and have been attempting to to force the habit of writing for longer. I don't like writing. You definitely get better at writing, but some things just don't get easier. Same for running. Daily runner. It is the best thing I have ever done. But it sucks and never gets easier. Is there anything to get rid of this feeling of suck?
- wsinks 6y ago
  No pain, no gain? I think it's just learning to be uncomfortable and that it's 'part of the process'. Imagine how good you'll feel after. It's all I can come up with.
  - bovermyer 6y ago
    For me it's not that running is uncomfortable. It's that running is boring.
    - NewOrderNow 6y ago
      I thin this plays a huge factor. Running on a treadmill is almost impossible for me (without watching a movie or something visual), but running in real life is more bearable. I feel engagement certainly helps.
    - SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
      I use it as podcast or audiobook time. Which is good because with everyone working from home I've lost my commute listening time.
- finnh 6y ago
  That's interesting about running - for me the feeling of discomfort only lasted a week or two at the start (this is years ago) and then i completely fell in love with it... doesn't suck, got very easy. I suppose choices of music or might help? I don't know what to say - if you run daily and still hate it, that just blows my mind. EDIT: coming back to say - maybe you just aren't a runner? Try lifting instead? I know a few people who, like you, totally hate running but love to lift heavy things.
wholien 6y ago
Practice makes perfect! As William Faulkner says: “I only write when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes at nine every morning.” With writing (as with many things), there is this myth that you should only do it when inspiration compels you to write. But that is total rubbish. You need to create conditions so that inspiration will strike, and creating a habit of writing frequently will lay the groundwork for inspiration striking. Tyler Cowen, for example, talks about how he writes every morning - whether it's the weekend, Christmas, or anything else [1]. This is an example you agree with his philosophy/economics or not. Other recommendations: - "War of Art" is a fun little book that lays this idea out, and frames what's stopping you from creating as "resistance"[2]. In the end, the book can be summarized as: create and stick to a daily ritual of creation. If you do that long enough, you'll create something worthwhile. - Someone else posted Writing Streak [3] which can be fun to use as well. - Others use Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way" [4] ("morning pages") to develop a "daily writing practice". Honestly, they are all the same. No matter what you choose to do, the most important thing is consistency! Do it enough and you'll get to some level of ability and more than a few finished pieces (Can't guarantee a Nobel Prize in Literature, though, unfortunately :/ ) 1: https://www.writingroutines.com/tyler-cowen/ https://www.writingroutines.com/tyler-cowen/ 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_Art_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_Art_(book) 3: https://writingstreak.io/ https://writingstreak.io/ 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Artist's_Way https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Artist's_Way
- dang 6y ago
  Probably not Faulkner, unless he said it to Herman Wouk: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/10/30/inspire-nine/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/10/30/inspire-nine/
  - wholien 6y ago
    oh TIL!
- lemonberry 6y ago
  I was going to mention "The War of Art". Great read. At one point Pressman writes "inspiration is for amateurs". He's all about honing your craft so that you're ready when inspiration does strike. Great advice.
edgarvaldes 6y ago
In chess, you are expected to play a lot versus marginally better opponents in order to get better yourself. If you only play against worse players, you don't learn. If you play against masters or computers at full strength, you get demotivated. In literature this strength handicap doesnt matter, in fact you need to read a lot of great autors, and write a lot. I guess you must read more than write. But you also need feedback, so writing alone is not as effective to get better over time.
woozyolliew 6y ago
Strongly considering making the first 90s of the linked reading of the LeWitt-Hesse letter my alarm clock! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnSMIgsPj5M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnSMIgsPj5M
usernameanother 6y ago
If I had to optimize good writing, choosing between reading and writing, I'd prefer reading.
- themarkn 6y ago
  The translation of thoughts, ideas and intentions into unified written works that have the desired effect on a reader is not something you can read your way into. Obviously you can’t _not read_ but to get good at writing you have to practice. How do you organize your thinking to end up with writing that works for you? What are the invisible things you need to figure out, that the people who wrote the work you like did? There is no choice between reading and writing, you definitely need both.
  - usernameanother 6y ago
    Thank you for your comment, I agree btw. It's just that I see reading as having more benefit for me than just writing (without reading as much). As in, the relative importance of reading to writing is higher. By reading someone I can implicitly understand how they structure their thoughts and how they think (where and when they stop to explain something.) This, opposed to me experimenting how to structure my own thoughts as to make sense for someone who might then be reading (which might be myself). It's in this sense that I prefer to have various inputs as to how different people write their thoughts rather than just experiment on my own (with the corollary that when I have to write something, when I really have to explain something -- it will just come up in the page without giving too much thought to the structure of the text. The structure is inherent and can be traced back to me reading different authors.)
cynik_ 6y ago
I tried to do a 100 days of writing a few months into the pandemic for exactly the same reason (petered out around ~90 days in, but now I write without tracking religiously) -- https://explog.in/notes/100days.html https://explog.in/notes/100days.html. It was definitely worth it in terms of making writing easier, and also in helping me get better at thinking through writing. Now trying to make it a permanent daily habit.
TeaDrunk 6y ago
A tip to me, to write better as an exercise- Rewrite something (a short story, a paragraph, a chapter, etc) you love, word by word, to understand the craft of it. The act of writing something vs reading it can best be reflected in this way. Then attempt to rewrite that thing from memory, and see what you came up with and how that changes the story. If you practice this repeatedly, you will inevitably write better. This is copying the brush-strokes of the previous greats in painting, but in prose.
stakkur 6y ago
Yes, and of course this applies to everything: 'To get better at [x], you need to develop a habit of doing [x]'.
joubert 6y ago
I have found that editing other people's drafts (e.g. a colleague's proposal / memo at work) also helps me improve my own writing skills.
CptFribble 6y ago
My favorite writing advice bears repeating: Writer's block is what happens when you try to write a final draft on the first try.
jodrellblank 6y ago
In the recent pianojacq discussion there were tons of people commenting "don't try to learn an instrument on your own just by doing, all you'll learn is bad habits and limit your progress". How come there's never much comment like that in writing threads?
- iainctduncan 6y ago
  Serious answer? Because if you sit down at the piano, you know you can't play right away. And thus starts a culture of practice. But with writing... most everyone thinks they can already write well and just need to do it. Sigh. Just like the 80% or whatever of the public who think they are the great drivers.
samcgraw 6y ago
Bit of a shameless plug, but I started a project for people (like myself) looking to get better at fiction writing through practice in collaborative storytelling: https://storylocks.com https://storylocks.com
MrLeap 6y ago
I'm furiously working on a project that I want to do a Show HN on at some point that's relevant to this. I'm basically making a Lovecraftian text editor / puzzle game / walking simulator(?) where progress is gated by writing. My goal has been to nudge players into being more prolific writers. There's little content aware changes to the environment based on what you write, and lots of little touches intended to spark ideas. If you play it "right", you'll have a pile of art you created that's yours, that you can export. It's not opinionated on what you write, there will be some prompts you can take advantage of if you want, but players can type nonsense if their hearts and souls are truly, irredeemably empty. I apologize for the shameless self promotion. My suspicion is that my target audience is rare and razor thin. I feel pressure to evangelize for a genre that to my knowledge doesn't exist. ( latest tweet showing this crazy thing. https://twitter.com/LeapJosh/status/1316830278644531200 https://twitter.com/LeapJosh/status/1316830278644531200 )
- ccvannorman 6y ago
  I'm your target market. Twitter thread looked messy. How do I sign up?
  - MrLeap 6y ago
    Sorry about that. My marketing hat is my shabbiest hat. I've been posting nearly daily updates to twitter. If you follow me there you'll have almost as real time a view of development as my cats. If that's anathema, what's your preferred method of hearing news? Mailing lists? My email address is in my profile, I'll write you personally when it's done if you email me there. That goes for anyone.
justicezyx 6y ago
I practice in HN comments sections. I evaluate my writing based on how much my comments were incorrectly perceived by the readers, based the replies of the comments. So far works quite well. I have noticed my writing becomes more precise and accessible.
asdfman123 6y ago
You could generalize this to "to X better, develop a habit of X." Consistency beats intensity 10 times out of 10.
iainctduncan 6y ago
Personally, I find this overly simplistic and I believe it's misleading. I write, review, and edit professionally as about 1/2 of my current job, and I see tons of awful writing by people who write every week. Believing you just need to write regularly to improve is like believing that if you play tons of gigs on your instrument you'll get better. How many really bad musicians have you seen who have been stuck at basically the same level for many years, but play all the time? So, so many. It's just not true. To really improve, in addition to writing you need to: - Read really good writing. A lot. Every good writer I've met is a voracious reader and has been for a long time. - Read about writing, as in, actually study writing - Edit and review your writing, and get your writing reviewed and critiqued by people actually qualified to comment on quality writing If you aren't doing this, a daily habit might get a lot written, but it could stay crappy for your whole life. I would argue that real study and less production writing is actually a better use of your time. Some of my favourite books to start on serious study: "A Sense of Style" - Steven Pinker "The Making of A Story" Alice LaPlante "Steering the Craft" - Ursula Le Guin "On Writing Well" - William Zinsser "Dreyer's English" - Benjamin Dreyer The problem is that everyone thinks their writing is great. You need to be willing to think it could be better. :-)
- markc 6y ago
  >Read really good writing Any favorites? I like the writing style of some authors in your study books (Pinker, Le Guin, Zinsser) but what books really inspire you in terms of sheer writing genius? (in both fiction and non-fiction)
  - mr_overalls 6y ago
    Not the person you're replying to, but try to at least read award-winning works in the genre of interest. E.g. if interested in sci-fi, read the Hugo and Nebula award winners going back a few years. Read Pulitzer winners for non-fiction. Etc.
  - iainctduncan 6y ago
    oh man that's tough, and especially hard to separate how much of what you love is the writing vs the content. But what springs to mind right now ... hmm. Frans de Waal, is IMHO the best at writing science for regular people, his last two are brilliant. Oliver Sacks too. Ted Gioia on music history. Peter Drucker on business. OTOH that's what I have! :-)
pxtail 6y ago
In the wake of recent GPT-3 related news I'm wondering how writing and written content perception is going to change. For me perspective of reading through a novel partially or completely generated by software makes it completely unappealing. I noticed that even knowledge that GPT3 exists and is being actively used experimentally right now for co-authoring written content reduces my eagerness to search for new fiction books. I think that I'll have higher than usual dose of distrust and skepticism towards previously unknown, non established authors.
tall 6y ago
Writing doesn’t need to be flashy or even good to express a point. Simple is better.

174 points by pavelegorkin 6y ago

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

I see this perspective posted a lot, and while I think it's generally true, it's a bit vague. What do we mean by writing better? If we're referring to an improved ability to articulate thoughts and produce more text, then sure, writing more will help with that. Maybe quality will improve marginally over time. But if we're talking about actually producing writing of a higher quality, I'm afraid simply writing more can only help so much. Improving the quality of the craft requires readers to provide feedback on the writing itself and/or writers to actively learn how to actually write better. The former is rare, and I'm not sure many writers actively take part in the latter.

detritus 6y ago
Perhaps it's more about creating at whatever cost and then having a chance to review and appreciate what works and what doesn't, then learn from that and adapt? If you don't try, you can't know.
iainctduncan 6y ago
Looks like you beat me to my exact points. +100! :-)

Snitch-Thursday 6y ago

I have two major tools for my writing habit. 1) writingstreak.io which is great for daily word dumps. 2 ) writing.com which is a writer's community and very much reminiscent of the web 1.0 days. It may not be a nostalgia trip in terms of blinking marquees, but it has simple links, a website-specific markup, forums, and probably a LAMP stack based on its unsophisticated styling. You can post your writings there, and review other's writings for in-site currency, which you can spend on getting others to review what you've written for said currency. The community there is friendly and also has other groups for journal passing, mailed handwriting practice, poetry/story contests and more. Edit Bonus: doing NANOWRIMO each year really helps the writing habit since you are trying to get to 50,000+ words written in a month.

chrismeller 6y ago

For anyone interested in writing “for real” (professionally or as a hobby) I highly recommend John Scalzi’s blog [1]. He’s cynical, he’s funny, and above all he’s practical. Among his advice over the years a few things have really stuck with me: 1) Don’t get an MFA, it’s a waste of money. If you need a grammar class, take one. If you need more of a basis in x literary genre because that’s what you want to write in, take a class or just read a ton in that genre. 2) Set up the habit of writing. If you don’t write a lot of crap on a regular basis you’ll never write anything. You will throw away a TON of what you write, but it’s only by writing that 99% of crap that you’ll find the 1% that’s worth keeping. 3) Don’t quit your day job. You will never, ever, ever write for 8 hours a day straight. Rather than sitting around depressed all day because you haven’t written anything worth a damn, you may as well have a basic 8 to 5 office job that pays the bills, health insurance, etc. Not only does it remove money as a concern, but it gets your mind off of the fact that you haven’t written anything good and frees up your creative juices for that next scheduled writing period. 4) Don’t be pretentious and refuse to write anything that isn’t “pure” or “worthy”. All the advertisements you see and brochures you read are written by someone. Being persuasive with your writing can pay really well and give you the security to pound out that next great American novel. 1: https://whatever.scalzi.com/ https://whatever.scalzi.com/ Edit: line breaks

estrela 6y ago
Do you have experience as a professional writer? I'm curious, how you think a person without a degree on journalism, writing, etc, can get a job writing? I'm a software engineer, by the way. Not that I'm interested in changing my career or anything, but your comment was interesting and I do like writing, so I think it's worth knowing!
- shagie 6y ago
  Incidentally, Scalzi also had that problem. He wrote Agent to the Stars to try to figure out if he wanted to write and what it was to write. http://scalzi.com/agent/ http://scalzi.com/agent/ > In the summer of 1997, I was 28 years old, and I decided that after years of thinking about writing a novel, I was simply going to go ahead and write one. There were two motivations for doing so. First, I was simply curious if I could; I'd had up to that time a reasonably successful life as a writer, but I'd never written anything longer than ten pages in my life outside of a classroom setting. Two, my ten-year high school reunion was coming up, and I wanted to be able to say I'd finished a novel just in case anyone asked (they didn't, the bastards). > In sitting down to write the novel, I decided to make it easy on myself. I decided first that I wasn't going to try to write something near and dear to my heart, just a fun story. That way, if I screwed it up (which was a real possibility), it wasn't like I was screwing up the One Story That Mattered To Me. I decided also that the goal of writing the novel was the actual writing of it -- not the selling of it, which is usually the goal of a novelist. I didn't want to worry about whether it was good enough to sell; I just wanted to have the experience of writing a story over the length of a novel, and see what I thought about it. Not every writer is a novelist; I wanted to see if I was.

ApolloVonZ 6y ago

I'm a big fan of Scrivener (the mac version) for my writings. Not only fiction, but also academic writings, or organizing projects with custom templates. But besides that I think the post lacks a bit of information. For an article about writing, it's pretty basic and feels as if it's written and posted only to create some content and traffic for the website.

tyre 6y ago
Scrivener is great. Also probably overkill for people just getting started. It's easy to lose yourself in setting up and optimizing the tools, and thinking of that as "writing work".
- ApolloVonZ 6y ago
  True there are some simpler - no distraction - tools out there, some of them are pretty great and for some this might be much better. And of course nothing beats a hand written text. It's just a pain in the a to type the whole thing after. But for me it wasn't until using Scrivener that I managed to write more than a dozen pages before giving up. Scrivener just makes it easy for me to write piece by piece. While a long Word or Pages document just gets too much and demotivates me eventually. But yeah, everyone needs to find their own tool :)
  - ghaff 6y ago
    I like Scrivener for longer-form writing because it helps me to keep a project-level view while working on the details. Unfortunately, most things I write have to sooner or later get dumped into a different format for collaboration/editing.
    - ApolloVonZ 6y ago
      Yes, that's unfortunately true. Once you need to collaborate you need to export. Earlier versions of Scrivener still had the option to work on individual files with external editors. But I'm not even sure if this is still possible, it might be, but the files are all randomly numbered now and not named, so it kind of makes it impossible to use an external collaborative editor.

NewOrderNow 6y ago

I have been doing morning pages for 10 years and have been attempting to to force the habit of writing for longer. I don't like writing. You definitely get better at writing, but some things just don't get easier. Same for running. Daily runner. It is the best thing I have ever done. But it sucks and never gets easier. Is there anything to get rid of this feeling of suck?

wsinks 6y ago
No pain, no gain? I think it's just learning to be uncomfortable and that it's 'part of the process'. Imagine how good you'll feel after. It's all I can come up with.
- bovermyer 6y ago
  For me it's not that running is uncomfortable. It's that running is boring.
  - NewOrderNow 6y ago
    I thin this plays a huge factor. Running on a treadmill is almost impossible for me (without watching a movie or something visual), but running in real life is more bearable. I feel engagement certainly helps.
  - SketchySeaBeast 6y ago
    I use it as podcast or audiobook time. Which is good because with everyone working from home I've lost my commute listening time.
finnh 6y ago
That's interesting about running - for me the feeling of discomfort only lasted a week or two at the start (this is years ago) and then i completely fell in love with it... doesn't suck, got very easy. I suppose choices of music or might help? I don't know what to say - if you run daily and still hate it, that just blows my mind. EDIT: coming back to say - maybe you just aren't a runner? Try lifting instead? I know a few people who, like you, totally hate running but love to lift heavy things.

wholien 6y ago

Practice makes perfect! As William Faulkner says: “I only write when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes at nine every morning.” With writing (as with many things), there is this myth that you should only do it when inspiration compels you to write. But that is total rubbish. You need to create conditions so that inspiration will strike, and creating a habit of writing frequently will lay the groundwork for inspiration striking. Tyler Cowen, for example, talks about how he writes every morning - whether it's the weekend, Christmas, or anything else [1]. This is an example you agree with his philosophy/economics or not. Other recommendations: - "War of Art" is a fun little book that lays this idea out, and frames what's stopping you from creating as "resistance"[2]. In the end, the book can be summarized as: create and stick to a daily ritual of creation. If you do that long enough, you'll create something worthwhile. - Someone else posted Writing Streak [3] which can be fun to use as well. - Others use Julia Cameron's "The Artist's Way" [4] ("morning pages") to develop a "daily writing practice". Honestly, they are all the same. No matter what you choose to do, the most important thing is consistency! Do it enough and you'll get to some level of ability and more than a few finished pieces (Can't guarantee a Nobel Prize in Literature, though, unfortunately :/ ) 1: https://www.writingroutines.com/tyler-cowen/ https://www.writingroutines.com/tyler-cowen/ 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_Art_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_Art_(book) 3: https://writingstreak.io/ https://writingstreak.io/ 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Artist's_Way https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Artist's_Way

dang 6y ago
Probably not Faulkner, unless he said it to Herman Wouk: https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/10/30/inspire-nine/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/10/30/inspire-nine/
- wholien 6y ago
  oh TIL!
lemonberry 6y ago
I was going to mention "The War of Art". Great read. At one point Pressman writes "inspiration is for amateurs". He's all about honing your craft so that you're ready when inspiration does strike. Great advice.

edgarvaldes 6y ago

In chess, you are expected to play a lot versus marginally better opponents in order to get better yourself. If you only play against worse players, you don't learn. If you play against masters or computers at full strength, you get demotivated. In literature this strength handicap doesnt matter, in fact you need to read a lot of great autors, and write a lot. I guess you must read more than write. But you also need feedback, so writing alone is not as effective to get better over time.

woozyolliew 6y ago

Strongly considering making the first 90s of the linked reading of the LeWitt-Hesse letter my alarm clock! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnSMIgsPj5M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnSMIgsPj5M

usernameanother 6y ago

If I had to optimize good writing, choosing between reading and writing, I'd prefer reading.

themarkn 6y ago
The translation of thoughts, ideas and intentions into unified written works that have the desired effect on a reader is not something you can read your way into. Obviously you can’t _not read_ but to get good at writing you have to practice. How do you organize your thinking to end up with writing that works for you? What are the invisible things you need to figure out, that the people who wrote the work you like did? There is no choice between reading and writing, you definitely need both.
- usernameanother 6y ago
  Thank you for your comment, I agree btw. It's just that I see reading as having more benefit for me than just writing (without reading as much). As in, the relative importance of reading to writing is higher. By reading someone I can implicitly understand how they structure their thoughts and how they think (where and when they stop to explain something.) This, opposed to me experimenting how to structure my own thoughts as to make sense for someone who might then be reading (which might be myself). It's in this sense that I prefer to have various inputs as to how different people write their thoughts rather than just experiment on my own (with the corollary that when I have to write something, when I really have to explain something -- it will just come up in the page without giving too much thought to the structure of the text. The structure is inherent and can be traced back to me reading different authors.)

cynik_ 6y ago

I tried to do a 100 days of writing a few months into the pandemic for exactly the same reason (petered out around ~90 days in, but now I write without tracking religiously) -- https://explog.in/notes/100days.html https://explog.in/notes/100days.html. It was definitely worth it in terms of making writing easier, and also in helping me get better at thinking through writing. Now trying to make it a permanent daily habit.

TeaDrunk 6y ago

A tip to me, to write better as an exercise- Rewrite something (a short story, a paragraph, a chapter, etc) you love, word by word, to understand the craft of it. The act of writing something vs reading it can best be reflected in this way. Then attempt to rewrite that thing from memory, and see what you came up with and how that changes the story. If you practice this repeatedly, you will inevitably write better. This is copying the brush-strokes of the previous greats in painting, but in prose.

stakkur 6y ago

Yes, and of course this applies to everything: 'To get better at [x], you need to develop a habit of doing [x]'.

joubert 6y ago

I have found that editing other people's drafts (e.g. a colleague's proposal / memo at work) also helps me improve my own writing skills.

CptFribble 6y ago

My favorite writing advice bears repeating: Writer's block is what happens when you try to write a final draft on the first try.

jodrellblank 6y ago

In the recent pianojacq discussion there were tons of people commenting "don't try to learn an instrument on your own just by doing, all you'll learn is bad habits and limit your progress". How come there's never much comment like that in writing threads?

iainctduncan 6y ago
Serious answer? Because if you sit down at the piano, you know you can't play right away. And thus starts a culture of practice. But with writing... most everyone thinks they can already write well and just need to do it. Sigh. Just like the 80% or whatever of the public who think they are the great drivers.

samcgraw 6y ago

Bit of a shameless plug, but I started a project for people (like myself) looking to get better at fiction writing through practice in collaborative storytelling: https://storylocks.com https://storylocks.com

MrLeap 6y ago

I'm furiously working on a project that I want to do a Show HN on at some point that's relevant to this. I'm basically making a Lovecraftian text editor / puzzle game / walking simulator(?) where progress is gated by writing. My goal has been to nudge players into being more prolific writers. There's little content aware changes to the environment based on what you write, and lots of little touches intended to spark ideas. If you play it "right", you'll have a pile of art you created that's yours, that you can export. It's not opinionated on what you write, there will be some prompts you can take advantage of if you want, but players can type nonsense if their hearts and souls are truly, irredeemably empty. I apologize for the shameless self promotion. My suspicion is that my target audience is rare and razor thin. I feel pressure to evangelize for a genre that to my knowledge doesn't exist. ( latest tweet showing this crazy thing. https://twitter.com/LeapJosh/status/1316830278644531200 https://twitter.com/LeapJosh/status/1316830278644531200 )

ccvannorman 6y ago
I'm your target market. Twitter thread looked messy. How do I sign up?
- MrLeap 6y ago
  Sorry about that. My marketing hat is my shabbiest hat. I've been posting nearly daily updates to twitter. If you follow me there you'll have almost as real time a view of development as my cats. If that's anathema, what's your preferred method of hearing news? Mailing lists? My email address is in my profile, I'll write you personally when it's done if you email me there. That goes for anyone.

justicezyx 6y ago

I practice in HN comments sections. I evaluate my writing based on how much my comments were incorrectly perceived by the readers, based the replies of the comments. So far works quite well. I have noticed my writing becomes more precise and accessible.

asdfman123 6y ago

You could generalize this to "to X better, develop a habit of X." Consistency beats intensity 10 times out of 10.

iainctduncan 6y ago

Personally, I find this overly simplistic and I believe it's misleading. I write, review, and edit professionally as about 1/2 of my current job, and I see tons of awful writing by people who write every week. Believing you just need to write regularly to improve is like believing that if you play tons of gigs on your instrument you'll get better. How many really bad musicians have you seen who have been stuck at basically the same level for many years, but play all the time? So, so many. It's just not true. To really improve, in addition to writing you need to: - Read really good writing. A lot. Every good writer I've met is a voracious reader and has been for a long time. - Read about writing, as in, actually study writing - Edit and review your writing, and get your writing reviewed and critiqued by people actually qualified to comment on quality writing If you aren't doing this, a daily habit might get a lot written, but it could stay crappy for your whole life. I would argue that real study and less production writing is actually a better use of your time. Some of my favourite books to start on serious study: "A Sense of Style" - Steven Pinker "The Making of A Story" Alice LaPlante "Steering the Craft" - Ursula Le Guin "On Writing Well" - William Zinsser "Dreyer's English" - Benjamin Dreyer The problem is that everyone thinks their writing is great. You need to be willing to think it could be better. :-)

markc 6y ago
>Read really good writing Any favorites? I like the writing style of some authors in your study books (Pinker, Le Guin, Zinsser) but what books really inspire you in terms of sheer writing genius? (in both fiction and non-fiction)
- mr_overalls 6y ago
  Not the person you're replying to, but try to at least read award-winning works in the genre of interest. E.g. if interested in sci-fi, read the Hugo and Nebula award winners going back a few years. Read Pulitzer winners for non-fiction. Etc.
- iainctduncan 6y ago
  oh man that's tough, and especially hard to separate how much of what you love is the writing vs the content. But what springs to mind right now ... hmm. Frans de Waal, is IMHO the best at writing science for regular people, his last two are brilliant. Oliver Sacks too. Ted Gioia on music history. Peter Drucker on business. OTOH that's what I have! :-)

pxtail 6y ago

In the wake of recent GPT-3 related news I'm wondering how writing and written content perception is going to change. For me perspective of reading through a novel partially or completely generated by software makes it completely unappealing. I noticed that even knowledge that GPT3 exists and is being actively used experimentally right now for co-authoring written content reduces my eagerness to search for new fiction books. I think that I'll have higher than usual dose of distrust and skepticism towards previously unknown, non established authors.

tall 6y ago

Writing doesn’t need to be flashy or even good to express a point. Simple is better.