How to Make Writing a Lot Easier

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.

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'd be grateful for any insights / experiences.

"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.

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.

You can learn more about it in the amazing series of posts here: https://publish.obsidian.md/andymatuschak/Evergreen+notes

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.

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.

Writing legible, interesting, persuasive, succinct, informative, insightful, lucid, precise or revealing copy is more difficult.

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.

As in "write a lot of stuff, in an easy way" and not "make writing much less difficult".

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.

Case in point: was this comment worth writing?