I Will Write More | Hacker News Reader

I Will Write More

candrewlee14.github.io

88 pointscandrewlee1442 comments

I've found the quality of my inputs to be extremely important if I want to sustain any sort of writing habit. It's hard for me to write frequently if I'm not reading frequently. It almost has to be books, not necessarily related to the sort of things I write, but it's like the act of reading plants seeds for new thoughts and ideas that eventually grow and form into text.

Ryan Holiday talks about this a bit in "Success Is A Lagging Indicator" [1]. The way he puts it, "writers block" doesn't exist. What people call writer's block is a symptom of not having done enough preparation work. It means the writer hasn't researched or structured their ideas to enable the writing process to occur smoothly. I tend to agree, but I would add that there is an "analysis paralysis" failure mode where you fall in a trap of constantly revising the outline instead of getting the words on the page and refining from there.

[1]: https://ryanholiday.net/all-success-is-a-lagging-indicator/

I prefer an agricultural metaphor. I think interesting ideas are planted and nurtured rather than manufactured. If you seeds for interesting ideas by engaging with the thoughts of others (may be through talking or reading), make sure to sleep well and take care of your body, then you'll think interesting thoughts and if you enjoy writing like I do, most likely be inspired to write about them.

But as Ryan is suggesting, having things to write about is a side-effect or consequence of minding your "garden" (to avoid confusion, this is not a nod to Candide).

I fall into that trap a lot. I have stuff to say, but it can be approached in so many ways and I find it hard to choose one.

Any tips?

One thing I guess works is "just blurt it out spontaneously". Ryan Holiday also has a motivating line on that (https://ryanholiday.net/so-you-want-to-be-a-writer-thats-mis...):

> No one ever reads something and says, “Well, I got absolutely nothing out of this and have no idea what any of this means but it sure is technically beautiful!” But they say the opposite all the time, they say “Goddamn, that’s good” to things with typos, poor grammar and simple diction

Steve Jobs put it more succinctly: "Real artists ship". At some point you have be very honest and ask yourself, "Do I really need to revise my outline once again before I start writing?"

I’m growing more and more jaded by the notion that a new calendar year should involve some sort of personal reinvention.

If you wanted to do that, you’d be doing it already. So quit making promises and just do the thing, or don’t.

Just enjoy where you are in life and focus on whats most important now.

I think this is needlessly discouraging.

The end of a year really does correspond to a lot of things that end. The tax year, project deadlines, the big holiday season is over, reconnecting with family via reunions, etc. There very much can be a feeling of wiping the slate clean and starting fresh, and that isn't just a superstition; it aligns with things that actually happen in our lives.

So there's nothing wrong with using that extra bit of space of psychic room to do some reflection and come up with some new goals.

I agree with you. I don’t understand why some people get annoyed about this. Any desired life change starts with goal setting.

Easy to say “just do what you’re supposed to do” as if that phrase by itself had magic powers. It is known that motivation and habit is a fairly complex process, so I don’t get why we still get such reductionist comments around here.

We need more empathy and less criticism toward others, specially when they’re trying to improve themselves.

It just needs a bit of rewording to sound more encouraging.

If you failed the last new years resolution, then reduce the scope of the goal and then start today. Lumping goals into the new year tends to make them too difficult to achieve. Start small and snowball. Don't wait.

It's easy to see this behavior when it comes to the flood of gym memberships that coincide with the new year. Everyone simultaneously decides, "THIS is the year I finally get in shape!".

Right. Except by March all of these people are back to sitting on the couch. I'm sure if it were as measurable as gym memberships, we'd see the same thing happen with all resolutions.

In my experience, people underestimate what these endevors actually include.

Going to the gym is so much more than getting a membership. It's also a training plan that fits you, maybe a change of social circle that helps you to be consistent, a change of diet, etc.

I often started new things just to notice weeks to months in that they don't require the work I expected.

One might look to the words of Morrissey for a similar approach:

https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/morrissey/jimjimfalls.html

" If you're gonna jump then jump Don't think about it If you're gonna run home and cry Then don't waste my time If you're gonna kill yourself Then to save face Just kill yourself"

I agree. Every night is potentially a new years eve.

But every night is not part of the second long weekend in a row¹ which is rare², and we spend more of this couple of weeks mixing with (or at least thinking of) people we don't see very often compared to other parts of the year, this change sometimes resulting in different reflections in our own heads.

The prominence of resolutions around the day count's rollover point isn't directly due to that rollover, but is due to the collective stop-start of our usual routines.

[1] I know it isn't for everyone, service sector workers in particular, but I suspect it is for the majority here.

[2] Again, for most but not all. I know a few people on shift patterns that involve three or four days off in a row every 7/8/14 rather than following the more common 5-on-2-off rotation.

I do both.

Making changes during the year and new year's resolutions.

Sometimes one works, sometimes the other.

I can relate to this post, but it does seem to be a little idealistic. The plan is: consistently set aside time, write any ideas that seem fun, then see if it's valuable and does not exist (and don't release it otherwise). So, basically it's "write for the sake of writing." As someone who has written many long high effort blog posts (1000s of words long), the amount of work a solid post usually takes for me is too great for this write-and-see-what-happens plan; I simply would not want to put things out there that are redundant or uninteresting. But that's just me - maybe this'll work for the author of this post.

Just for once, I'd like to see some prominent (or even not so prominent) person embark on a New Year's resolution to write less.

I've definitely seen this sentiment. It's in avoiding burnout. It's in noticing that one is going hard but the returns just aren't there and focusing instead on onesself or their family. But of course this isn't going to be written down about ;)

I guess my reaction is more about the fact that writing more is an instrumental goal, rather than a terminal goal. Writing is a tool. It is not an end in itself. Saying, "I want to write more," is like saying, "I want to buy more flour." Okay, sure, but what are you buying the flour for? Bread? Cookies? Cake? Just throwing into the air and making a mess? Similarly, writing more is a goal that only makes sense if you have some goal in mind and see writing as a tool to accomplish that goal. Otherwise, "I want to write more," is a goal that's so vague, it becomes impossible to achieve.

Read the article. This author’s specific goal is 500 words a day. There is nothing vague about that!

For example, in my own journaling today, I’ve written 646 words. So clearly the goal is not “impossible to achieve”, as you’ve claimed.

    This author’s specific goal is 500 words a day. There is nothing vague about
    that!

It's extremely vague. It's like saying, "I wish to turn a screwdriver five hundred times today." It's reasonable to ask, "For what purpose are you turning the screwdriver?"

    For example, in my own journaling today, I’ve written 646 words. So clearly
    the goal is not “impossible to achieve”, as you’ve claimed.

And what terminal goal are you trying to achieve with this journal? And why is necessary for you to write > 500 per day to achieve that goal?

  >It's extremely vague. It's like saying, "I wish to turn a screwdriver five hundred times today." It's reasonable to ask, "For what purpose are you turning the screwdriver?" ... what terminal goal are you trying to achieve with this journal? And why is necessary for you to write > 500 per day to achieve that goal?

On the chance that you are asking these questions in good faith, I can point you to a very deep and well written counter argument to your stance. Among his 20 or so other books, The prolific Japanese Author Haruki Murakami has written a book: Novelist as a Vocation. I encourage you to read it in whole, as my attempts to summarize will only take it out of context and butcher it. However, I will say that Haruki lays out the personal opinion that for him consistency is the bedrock of his writing practice. That above all, he sees writing as a daily commitment. He strives for 2,000 words a day. He typically takes on one wholly creative work at a time, such as the next novel. On days he just doesn't feel passionate about that project, he will translate works from English to Japanese until the passion for the project naturally returns. He makes the argument that the days he spends translating give him time to think and digest the next steps in his novel while also allowing him to keep a whole collection of "writer's habits".

---

You can argue that his methods don't seem right for you... but you can hardly argue that his methods aren't right for him (and perhaps others).

It's in the article. Literally under the "Why" paragraph.

I presume this is the passage you're referring to:

    The problem is that I’m not getting much better at unprompted creative
    work. Observing problems and solving them, coming up with ideas and
    executing… those opportunities come few and far between in the university
    classroom.

The problem is that writing is a total non sequitir of a answer to, "How can I get better at unprompted creative work?" There are lots of other things, from painting to programming to just going on walks that could make one better at unprompted creative work. So my question stands. Why writing? And why writing 500 words, specifically?

Literally two lines below

> But I’ve decided it’s time to take my creative development into my own hands and I’m starting with writing.

He's starting with writing. He didn't say that writing is the only way to be more creative. Just that the author has decided to start with writing. Because you gotta start somewhere and he already has a blog.

I disagree. One can also want to write more as an end itself, simply to become a better writer.

    I disagree. One can also want to write more as an end itself, simply to
    become a better writer.

You've contradicted yourself. Writing to become a better writer is a goal that's different than writing as an end in itself. Moreover, writing just for the sake of writing is not a very good way to become a better writer. Using word count goals to improve one's writing is like counting the number of times you kick a ball each day and using that as a measure of your progress as a soccer player.

Well, that would be a measure.

The number of lay-ups you do each day as a measure of basketball.

The number of miles run as the measure of my ability to finish a marathon.

As you write, you'd become better at getting ideas out of your head. Regardless of the grammar/vocabulary. You would be better at the act.

Writing can be therapy.

It can be a process where one learns by trying to explain it to someone else (the reader) so it helps to find holes in your argument or thinking.

It’s a tool used daily to communicate - arguably the greatest invention of mankind.

There are plenty of reasons to write.

None of those things translate into a specific word count goal. That's the thing I'm specifically pushing back on here. Word count goals for a journal or blog or some other personal writing project make no sense. If you have to finish a book, and there's a specific deadline that you need to have that project done by, then a word count goal can be helpful in pushing you to make forward progress towards that objective. But for journaling? A word-count goal is a cargo-cult practice.

I'm not prominent at all (which I think is a fact about me that I like so have no desire to change), and this is not specifically a new year based resolution (it is a decision I came to a while ago), but I'm actively trying to stop trying (well, planning) to do so much.

The reason: I find myself getting frustrated at the ever elongating list of things I might like to do/develop/improve in all my walks of life, and the fact that I try to do so many of the things on that list means I never seent to do (or even properly start) any one thing particularly well.

I miss the focus I had at certain points earlier in life when time seemed less at a premium and I would just spend a complete weekend tinkering on a personal project and on feel guilty about missing anything else. I miss the focus I had ahead of my first marathon, that allowed me to find the many blocks of time needed to more-or-less follow a decent training plan, particularly now as I want to return to my pre-covid-and-long-recovery levels of "fitness & not being overweight".

Of course I'm bending the resolution right now as part of it is to spend less time commenting in discussion threads and more time concentrating on my own stuff (little tech projects, fixing my home up a bit, getting out for runs and bits of cross-training, wasting time with friends instead of online, etc.).

Of course there might be many who embark on a resolution to write less, who you don't see talking about it because not posting about it is one of the first steps to achieving it!

The author of The Wandering Inn [1], a web serial, has been trying to write less the past few months (the past year?). They peaked around 80k words/week, and have been aiming closer to 30-40k words/week with more breaks. They've had mixed success (e.g. last week they wrote and released 70k).

They only post updates/reflections on their progress towards this goal in the author's notes on the biweekly chapter releases, so I'm not sure how you could follow along, if that's what you're looking for. I guess you could just follow the releases and only read the notes. Or you could try catching up haha.

[1] https://wanderinginn.com/

I was just thinking the same thing!

I think I use writing as an excuse to procrastinate, so this coming year my goal is to release useful products rather than blog posts.

Hear hear. Isn't anyone exhausted of blasting their lives on the internet?

That would be impossible for me :-). Unless I sabotage other blogs for a negative word count.

I like to write. Now that I am retired I usually work on a book project about two hours a day.

I started a private journal six months ago and tried to write every day. Then I stopped two months ago. I journaled today because it is the last day of the year, and felt much better after a five minute personal brain dump. It is very different writing for oneself! I hope that I do personal journaling more consistently next year because the process is very centering. As individuals we have a lot of stuff that other people either shouldn’t hear or wouldn’t want to hear. Personal journaling into /dev/null seems appropriate.

I will read less text from LCDs and more from dead trees.

> However, my brain feels like it’s become very intake-optimized at the expense of creativity.

Bingo.

I find the volume of ideas I have far outstrips my time to write meaningfully about most of them, so now I have a Backlog page on my website where I can just post a single paragraph and leave the idea floating there. That way I have a record of it, and someone else can pick it up if they have time and interest, and I don't feel like I have to write a comprehensive treatment for every idea.

My favorite part of this post is the distinction between writing and posting. Picking an audience is important for me when I write. If a post is mostly self reflection for yourself, it’s ok to not post it.

I can recommend to Op reading the book “If you want to write.” by Brenda Ueland.

The questions that one asks themselves before writing a blog post such as whether it's valuable, exists, whether we have time is what leads to the downfall of 99% of blog posts.

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