11 ms·
More people should write (2012)
- adamquek 3y agoInsightful. Too bad the author apparently stopped writing for 10 years now.
- tea-coffee 3y agoThe author just recently published a nice piece in the New Yorker [1]. 1 = https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/11/20/a-coder-considers-the-waning-days-of-the-craft https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/11/20/a-coder-consid...
- ketanhwr 3y agoHe still writes[0], albeit not on his blog, but for New Yorker, The Atlantic and the likes. [0] https://jsomers.net/#writing https://jsomers.net/#writing
- georgejefferson 3y ago[dead]
- hasoleju 3y agoAs someone who just started writing regularly a few weeks ago this piece is very encouraging! I'm very curious if I will be able to make writing a habit. In the past I often quit new behaviors after a few months. I discovered this quitting behavior a year ago and since I'm aware of it I found a lot of examples where this happened in my past. Now I see everything I start as part of a big experiment to test which things stick. So that I can learn which properties of a habit make it stick with me.
- hypertexthero 3y agoI’m the same way, I think. It’s like the movie Groundhog Day. Every moment is a new start, and you keep starting over and over again and trying to finish or to improve your navigation of a messy, random river that is life. A piece of writing, a project, a trip to see friends is usually interrupted by life. And there’s never that perfect time for you to do the work. Perfection is a memory of the past. We need to do things in between, simultaneously with all the mess, and keep starting over and over.
- vonjuice 3y agoHello, I'm someone who's been through that and I'm "on the other side" in the sense that I did stick to it. I wrote this and I hope you find it helpful: https://medium.com/@vonjuice/4-important-words-for-writing-c82bdf5f2f15 https://medium.com/@vonjuice/4-important-words-for-writing-c... > Now I see everything I start as part of a big experiment to test which things stick. So that I can learn which properties of a habit make it stick with me. This is wise. In addition to watching the properties of the object, which could be considered static, be mindful of the properties in yourself and how these interact with the former, because yours are dynamic and can be developed as a skill, so you learn how to make beneficial habits stick more regardless of their perceived properties.
- narinxas 3y agothe more people out there that write, the less writtings by people are worth scarcity never creates value, but it always incresases it but also: the more pople have written, the cheaper text and AI bot training become which makes me feel in a funny situation, the more I write, the better I get at it, but it also makes it simpler for AIs bots to learn my style and make it worthless by the inverse-scarcity phenomenon
- kingkongjaffa 3y agoWriting has a double value though, it’s intrinsically valuable to the writer themselves to illicit better thinking. it’s also valuable as form of communication and collaboration.
- clircle 3y agoAre you trying to convince people to spend less time writing? Ive never disagreed with a comment more than this one
- narinxas 3y agoI'm asking a question without an answer
- reg_dunlop 3y agoTaking your argument, perhaps the thing that is being made scarce, through the act of writing, is ignorance Which might have served us better before now
- camel-cdr 3y agoWhy should one care about "worth"? If more people write then there will be more bad and more good writing. (good/bad in terms of personal enjoyment from reading)
- tene80i 3y agoThis only follows if the only value/worth you consider is economic value, ie for trade. Which would exclude much of what people value: creativity, scientific knowledge, insights for living, personal growth etc. Obviously those have economic value in certain ways, but it’s not their only value.
- kingkongjaffa 3y agoI love reading and writing. Do you all have any advice for writing more and writing better?
- tene80i 3y agoDepends what kind of writing you want to be better at, but for fiction Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’ is both interesting and useful. As for ‘more’, what’s worked for me is to make a routine for it.
- tuatoru 3y agoIt's probably like photography: just do it a lot. Write about your home, your neighborhood. Edit: also read other writers' work, of course. In novel writing there's very old advice: plan to throw away your first million words. Actually, that's good advice generally, not just for fiction.
- smokel 3y agoIt depends :) Do you have an idea what stands in the way of your ambitions? Here are some suggestions (dang, I'm starting to sound like ChatGPT here): 1. Try an accountability partner and call them once a week to discuss progress. 2. Share your work, preferably to an audience you trust, and nourish feedback. 3. Experiment and train creativity. Write a short story, write with a pen, write technical documentation, write code. Hope this helps.
- surprisetalk 3y agoSome great advice from Ben Kuhn on how & why of writing: [1] https://www.benkuhn.net/writing https://www.benkuhn.net/writing I also just published some structural tips for writing quickly at high quality: [2] https://taylor.town/pseudoprose https://taylor.town/pseudoprose Make sure to create a low-friction writing environment for yourself! Whether it's a notebook or text-editor, you should be able to get your idea onto paper within 90 seconds of having it.
- inglor_cz 3y agoAt the risk of sounding smugly, just write. Perhaps ask someone to read your texts, but don't rely too much on random critics. Individual people have their own taste and pet peeves; what is unreadable for one may be enjoyable for others. Writing is like hiking or skiing. While there are some important rules how not to kill yourself, you can only learn it by doing. Also, read a lot, ESPECIALLY works by people who have a good command of your language (IDK if you are native English speaker; I am not). Writing style is a bit contagious. Don't worry if you occassionally sound like someone else, this kind of contagion is really unavoidable if you read a lot. I would say that the optimal ratio of R:W time is about 5-6:1.
- Apocryphon 3y agoIs to post different from writing? Considering that so much of online user-generated content these days are posts, comments, replies. I’m not even talking about fluffy exhibitionist social media posts or incoherent comments on news articles. I mean supposedly more highbrow comments on special interest aggregator sites such as this. Forums and bulletin boards. Does that constitute writing? Or are we just creating more ephemeral chaff?
- pilgrim0 3y agoI think posting is, in general, an extension of dialogues, i.e conversation. Writing involves dialogues, of course, but encompasses a much wider field of styles. Ephemerality of the text does not automatically implies reduced value. You’ll get some of the benefits of writing within dialogues but it’s limited by the fact there’s not much room from digression, so less creative freedom and exploratory potential compared to just actively choosing the subject and style, with no particular audience or pre established context in mind. I regard monologues as an expansion of dialogues (a dialogue participation is sort of a monologue if you think about), and there’s a low entry barrier for doing it, can be very enriching and even therapeutical. All in all, I think the author here is talking writing for the sake of writing, which is structured thinking.
- 082349872349872 3y agoPosts can go either way: I would say that some online exchanges have more of an oral cultural character and others have more of a literary cultural character. (upon reading TFA, it seems it doesn't even care about the oral/literary distinction I had been trying to make; for TFA the important part of posting is the export of thoughts out of one's head, which can be done in either mode?)
- broscillator 3y agoAs someone who has been doing both daily for a while, yes, they're different. It's kind of like comparing speaking at a meeting or giving a speech, to talking to a long time friend over coffee, or talking to yourself in the mirror. In the abstract you could say the action is the same, speaking, but the experience as lived is very different.
- photochemsyn 3y agorelated & useful: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20061078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20061078 Undervalued Engineering Skills: Writing Well (pragmaticengineer.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37033403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37033403 Some tactics for writing in public (jvns.ca) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37118883 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37118883 Writing about what you learn pushes you to understand topics better (addyosmani.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19143853 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19143853 Vim Is Saving Me Hours of Work When Writing Books and Courses (nickjanetakis.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22854332 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22854332 Writing a Book with Pandoc, Make, and Vim (keleshev.com) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24628549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24628549 Writing a book: is it worth it? (kleppmann.com)
- jheriko 3y agoA good, solid and old argument... https://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt/literature/authorspchb.html https://www.ucl.ac.uk/museums-static/digitalegypt/literature...
- inglor_cz 3y agoI love writing. I have more than 1000 articles under my belt and eight books, all in the last 7 years. Writing helps you discipline your thoughts. All too often, logical gaps or nuggets of ignorance in a seemingly watertight argument only turn up when you commit your thoughts to the paper. (Well, word processor.) And, vice versa, thinking without writing things down tends to be infected with sloppiness. Write things, if only for yourself and your future self. You may also find out that you have a knack for it. In that case, godspeed.
- BizarreByte 3y agoI don’t write because writing is tied to some very bad memories. I’m terrified of people reading what I write and humiliating me, it wouldn’t be the first time. Me innermost thoughts remain mine alone as a result.
- broscillator 3y agoI find burning pages kinda therapeutic. Give it a try, write your least shareable thoughts and then watch them burn.
- jerrre 3y agoHow do you you do this in practice?
- SlickNixon 3y agoWell-ventilated area, non-flammable container, lighter/matches. Liquor, cigarette, thousand-yard stare optional.
- jodrellblank 3y agoYou just gave me a sad idea where there are people who exist to adulthood who have never burned paper or seen it burn first-hand. Like city children who have never seen animals, or lakes or seas or oceans, or never seen the stars, deprived of some deeply human experiences. (I grew up with a log fireplace at home, but I also played with friends using a magnifying glass to concentrate sunlight and ignite paper out on the street). Do you mean "how does one burn a piece of paper" literally? Or, how does that person arrange their life to have a fire regularly?
- mdorazio 3y agoMy gut reaction was the same, but then I realized that in order to burn anything more substantial than a match on a regular basis I’d have to go to the outdoor grills or something. There’s no way to do it in my apartment without setting off a fire alarm.
- Obscurity4340 3y agoDialectical formats and "responding" to shit is seemingly the most I can generally handle. If I was "comfier" I would probably put my heart into it a bit more but I think I do ok on the creating/consuming balance
- mrcsd 3y agoI've recently started writing daily, since September. Setting a daily word target was what worked for me, I do at least 1600 a day and try not to write too much more. If you're writing a first draft of around 90k words then it will take only 56 days to get there at 1.6k a day. My realisation that this was actually a pretty small time commitment really helped me finally take the plunge. This is obviously an old idea, and indeed I'm just copying a similar process to Haruki Murakami's. I definitely recommend his series of essays on being a novelist: Novelist as a Vocation (this really helped me). On to second draft now and moving from daily word count to number of chapters or paragraphs edited has helped as just a metric for pace. Doesn't mean it's quality writing, just that I have a sensation of movement and progress.
- jyunwai 3y agoRelated to writing, I also high recommend Murakami's "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running." He wrote this as a memoir centred along running, and he often writes about how his habits of running carries over to other habits in his life, such as writing. I liked this excerpt from the memoir in particular: "Right now I’m aiming at increasing the distance I run, so speed is less of an issue. As long as I can run a certain distance, that’s all I care about. Sometimes I run fast when I feel like it, but if I increase the pace I shorten the amount of time I run, the point being to let the exhilaration I feel at the end of each run carry over to the next day. This is the same sort of tack I find necessary when writing a novel. I stop every day right at the point where I feel I can write more. Do that, and the next day’s work goes surprisingly smoothly. I think Ernest Hemingway did something like that. To keep on going, you have to keep up the rhythm. This is the important thing for long-term projects. Once you set the pace, the rest will follow. The problem is getting the flywheel to spin at a set speed—and to get to that point takes as much concentration and effort as you can manage."
- ravenstine 3y agoThe reason I don't write is that I'm unconvinced that a worthwhile number of people will find my writings and actually read them in 2023. I'm fine with doing all my writing on HN. If you look at the comments section of my profile, it might as well be a microblog.
- MezzoDelCammin 3y agoI just did look. 19k karma is indeed nothing to sneeze at. Difference is though that in the HN comments it's someone else who picks the topic and time. Much as I appreciate the discussion here, occasionally I think there's some value in just doing a writeup on a topic. Or, a memory dump. If for no other reason, than for the therapeutic value of cleaning up the mind... And forcing the random musings that make sense in the head through the filter of written language just to see what actually makes sense.
- jodrellblank 3y agoThe argument in the article does not involve anyone reading your writing: "That’s the promise: you will live more curiously if you write. You will become a scientist, if not of the natural world than of whatever world you care about. More of that world will pop alive. You will see more when you look at it."
- jyunwai 3y agoI wonder if there is a way to easily export one's own Hacker News comments. It might be useful for you to back your comments up one day, as there can be value in searching through your past writing and also having a backup (which never hurts).
- krapp 3y agoWrite a script to download them using the Hacker News API.[0] First, get the user endpoint: https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/user/<username>.json https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/user/<username>.json (ex: https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/user/jl.json?print=pretty https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/user/jl.json?print=pre...) then iterate the "submitted" array and make a request to each ID at the item endpoint: https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/<ID>.json https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/<ID>.json (ex: https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/8863.json?print=pretty https://hacker-news.firebaseio.com/v0/item/8863.json?print=p...) Then save each JSON response somewhere. You won't be able to get the content of flagged and banned messages. If you do this more than once you'll also need to keep track of the last ID you downloaded, or the updates endpoint to catch edits, I think, although the readme is a bit vague about how exactly that works. [0]https://github.com/HackerNews/API https://github.com/HackerNews/API
- jodrellblank 3y ago> "It’s like what happens to a room during a game of “I Spy”: if your friend spies something red, the red stuff glows." The only I Spy I know is "I spy with my little eye something beginning with...". Is there another common version where people describe the appearance of the thing instead of the spelling of the name?
- privong 3y agoGrowing up, my brothers and I would play "I spy" by identifying a color. E.g., "I spy with my little eye something that is orange".
- burritofanatic 3y agoYour writing has stayed with me, and I occasionally remember bits of your essays many years later. Pleased to see your articles in recent months in the New Yorker. Congrats on being a dad!
- Animats 3y ago> write full sentences about themselves and the things they care about. This is from 2012, when social media had not yet taken over the world. Now we're drowning in a sea of verbiage from people writing about themselves.
- dan-robertson 3y agoI think my memory of 2012 must be different from yours, though I’m not exactly sure what ‘taken over the world’ means.
- yawnxyz 3y agoWhat about people who write for themselves, and somehow end up on the homepage of Hacker News? You'll end up getting roasted by people like this guy: > Disagree. Writing a blog post is like getting on stage. You need to come on stage with a dream that you’re going to dazzle the audience with your show. Your blog is so interesting that it’s worth the time to read it! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38324486 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38324486
- gala8y 3y agoDid you paste a proper link?
- imhoguy 3y agoI don't write because: 1) I don't find writing in my native language interesting, 2) I am not fluent enough to write in English, 3) I think I would feel quite embarrassed to share my views under my name. But I am contemplating about writing under pseudonyms with LLM proofreader assistant. Actually I do it right now with HN but without AI part although these are short creations.
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoI agree about the topic. I'm not really a fan of "You should" stuff. I always try to word it as "I do this," or "When we do this", etc. Little less "dictatorial," but then, I'm used to dealing with folks that are very contrarian, and have learned the futility of trying to get others to do something; even when it directly benefits them. Because of this, I have been accused of "narcism," and "making it all about me." I guess we can't win for losing. But I love to write. The problem is, it takes a lot of time and energy. I have been quite occupied with a project, the last couple of years, and that has interfered with my writing.
- maksimur 3y agoDid you try to make it neither about yourself nor about your interlocutor?
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoI'm sorry. I'm a bit dense. I'm not sure I understand the question.
- banzz 3y agoI would write but the problem is that I write (and say) things that at first are mildly incoherent, not particularly well formed -- as you can see in my comment -- and don't always align with what I think. First impressions matter, and I don't want people to remember the bad ones. I regret writing about Python when I was just starting out in programming as a kid, and then having that blog post mentioned on Reddit almost 20 years later, with people being rude about it because it's trendy to be like that online. Fortunately I was smart enough not to post under my real name.