Ask HN: What are some blogs with great writing? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What are some blogs with great writing?

5 pointsiamjonlee13 comments

I'm a pretty terrible writer. I just spent 3 hours writing and rewriting my first blog post and it still doesn't sound right. I know it's a practice makes perfect kind of thing, but it's still pretty discouraging.

What are some of the blogs that you follow? I'm hoping that I'll be able to pick up one or two techniques from some of the top blogs on HN.

My blog: http://blog.grooovy.me (if it doesn't load, try again later. Sorry! the DNS was just updated to reflect the new blog URL)

View on HN

I have received many compliments about my writing now but I can tell you that two years ago my writing sucked.

Since then I have written hundreds of articles, a 270 page book and hundreds of thousands of words.

There truly is no substitute for practice, but its the right kind of practice that works.

I would highly recommend reading www.copyblogger.com, which covers all the major tips and techniques around writing online (Make sure to dig deep into the archives).

What you will find is that every few articles you read you will pick up a tip and if you make a concise effort to implement the tip into your next article then it becomes almost second nature and your writing improves immeasurably.

For now make sure your double if not triple checking all your posts looking for ways to make them more readable and fluid and get reading about writing techniques and skills.

Well... Not to be all self promotional about it or anything, but:

http://lookingbackaretrospective.posterous.com

I've received plenty of positive feedback about the writing, so hopefully you'll enjoy it.

It isn't any kind of major traffic success, however. Its only reached just under 3k views, and I imagine most of those come from the fact Posterous' new dashboard counts the stories that filter in your Reader as a "View" every time you log in. Kind of lame, as I feel that unnecessarily inflates the view counts of yourself, and the Posterous blogs you follow... So I'm not sure if I'm the guy to emulate if you're looking to make your blog a "success", haha.

:) I've read your blogpost early on from day one. Incredible writing.

Hey, cool! Thanks man!

I just read through yours, and was about to come back and comment on how we seem to be touching on a common theme.

I'm not sure if this blog is meant to be ongoing, or a chronicle of past events (like mine was), but if you guys are still developing and trying to succeed, I wish you nothing but the best of luck.

From one failure to another: It's journey, not the destination.

Just started reading after seeing this thread. Great stuff - I'm laughing my butt off. Keep it up

Haha Thanks, but sadly the story itself has ended.

Hopefully whats there can keep you entertained well enough on its own.

Also have been reading since the beginning. As good of writing as you'll find.

Can one split writing from the content? When I look at my own site (http://www.gwern.net), the best-written ones to me seem to be the ones with the best content. I could point to none of them (except maybe some of the fiction) where I could honestly say 'the content is jejune and juvenile, but man that's some slick writing!'

And if that's the case, then all you are really doing is asking 'hey what's popular guyz' - which is not an interesting question at all and something you can figure out yourself by looking at votes.

I like the writing style of the Wired Danger Room guys, specifically Spencer Ackerman and Noah Shachtman.

Tim Bray and Marco Ament are other writing styles I like.

Daring Fireball is an interesting read from the standpoint of subjective debate club tactics (no offense). He's not a particularly good writer, but Gruber has an keen sense for arguing. It's interesting to examine his tactics for "winning" a debate, even if he's completely wrong.

I am a fan of http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/ . He writes very well and happens to share some very interesting information.

Your writing seems ok to me. As someone pointed out below, content is king. Mine:http://colabopad.blogspot.com/

James Altucher has a great writing style.

www.jamesaltucher.com

For technical writing, I've always liked Kevin Kelly[1].

Whether or not you personally agree with Gruber, I think his writing is exceptional on DaringFireball[2].

[1] - http://kk.org/ [2] - http://daringfireball.com/

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