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Comment by idlewords | Hacker News Reader

A really good book on improving your (nonfiction) writing is Zinsser's On Writing Well.

For me the hardest part of effective writing is revision. There are the few lucky writers who get things right in the first draft. Then there are the rest of us, who need to spend 10x the time or longer on rewriting and fussing. Unfortunately many people in the latter group think they fall into the first.

In tech essays in particular, you can get far by trying to sound as little like Paul Graham as possible. Let his style be your anti-lodestar.

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It’s hard to argue that pg isn’t one of the most influential tech writers of all time. YC’s original batches came largely from people who read his essays and joined YC.

I’d agree with you that his writing doesn’t have much personality; it’s designed not to have any. But you’re saying that you can get “quite far” by going in the other direction. By what metric? You can go quite far by jumping off a cliff, at least till you hit the ground.

Kenny G is the best-selling instrumental artist of all time, but a serious saxophone player would do well not to sound like him. By that metric.

I figured your criticism was just a “look at me, I hate pg” with no substance, but it’s always disappointing to see it confirmed. Having substance would require having reasons, which always seem to be in short supply whenever people argue against pg’s style.

I’m not personally a fan of smooth jazz, but at least Kenny G is well-known. That’s a pretty good metric to aim for when writing, isn’t it?

Kenny G and smooth jazz get a lot of hate, and most of it is from people who are hating on Kenny G as a kind of “etiquette” to mark that they’re in the right social group—same kind of thing you do by talking about your Prius or whatever other annoying thing people do to put themselves in the right group.

Smooth jazz and related genres like adult contemporary are easy targets here (maybe we can pick on Phil Collins next). People love to talk about how much they hate these genres. And then there’s all the people who say they listen to “everything but country and rap”, which is at this point a cliché.

It’s all just to show that you’re in the right social group, and less about whether you (personally) took a chance and listened to smooth jazz, then decided what your personal feelings are about it. We’re social creatures and it takes a ton of effort to give music, culture, or people a chance without trying to evaluate our choices through the lens of what is acceptable for our social in-group or the social in-group we aspire to.

Most people who “listen to everything” are just saying that because it’s the kind of sentiment that their social in-group values, and if you dig into the actual listening habits “listens to everything” you won’t find anything surprising or unusual.

You all know that by having an extended discussion of how underrated Kenny G is, you're proving some kind of point about the reverence people here have for Paul Graham's writing, right? I don't know precisely what point it is, but it's unlikely to be one that Paul Graham himself would be thrilled about. Graham certainly does not see himself as the Kenny G of technical and business essayists.

> I don't know precisely what point it is

Could you give us a hint? I honestly have no idea what you’re getting at.

I’d also like to clarify that this is not a discussion about whether Kenny G is underrated, but whether people hate Kenny G simply because it’s fashionable to do so. The whole problem I have here is that it was irrelevant in the first place whether Kenny G is good or not, because “whether Kenny G is actually good” is not a question some people are willing to investigate.

It seems like it's not exactly a compliment to Paul Graham to suggest that maybe he is just like Kenny G, and the problem is that people don't appreciate Kenny G enough.

I'm sure some people hate Kenny G because it's fashionable, but a lot of people hate Kenny G because they hate him, and either way: people fucking hate him.

I'm only in this leg of the thread because I think it's super funny that somebody compared Graham to Kenny G and it had the predictable result of a bloom of rhetorical hyphae about how actually Kenny G is probably good.

Late edit

I am obligated, against my own rhetorical interests, to acknowledge that Kenny G is beloved by many in the country of Israel for introducing to them to concept of unlimited free soda refills, which he did through his unsuccessful attempt to open a fried chicken franchise there.

> It seems like it's not exactly a compliment to Paul Graham to suggest that maybe he is just like Kenny G […]

Pardon the allegory, but that’s a shadow on the cave wall.

> …predictable result of a bloom of rhetorical hyphae about how actually Kenny G is probably good…

That isn’t present in the conversation; I think you may have misread one of the comments.

If you’re going to say that it’s good or bad to imitate Paul Graham’s style, then by all means, do so, but it would serve you well to provide some kind of reasoning or rationale for the advice. (To be clear, general “you” here, not you, specifically.) You can equally advise saxophonists to try sounding like Kenny G or avoid sounding like Kenny G, again, without any reasoning or rationale for it, but I think we can do better.

There’s something kind of banal about this taste-making in the first place. It’s much easier to find reasons to say that something is bad. It gives you a much more defensible position, which is why people find it easy to hate Kenny G. Saying you like something would expose you too much to criticism.

For whatever reason, some people decided that it’s cool to hate Kenny G, and nowadays you see people dropping Kenny G’s name into the conversation as an example of something you want to hate, by people who have no particular reason to hate Kenny G. Whether Kenny G is actually good or bad was never relevant, because the only relevant fact is that it’s cool to think that Kenny G is bad.

I don't totally agree with 'idlewords about Paul Graham's writing, which I find generally effective (especially when he's writing about programming), if dry and often distractingly conclusory. But I think it is in fact a good rule of thumb that if you yourself want to write effectively, it's best to avoid off-putting styles.

So one point to make here is: it doesn't matter why people hate Kenny G. They hate Kenny G. That's indisputable. So: unless the reason you're playing music is to make a statement about smooth jazz, it's best to avoid sounding like Kenny G.

If you want to write as effectively as Paul Graham, it helps a lot to have started one of the industry's most important investment firms, based on no previous experience in finance, and then to write a long string of posts about startups, startup financing, and startup engineering. People accept a lot of "it turns out that" from Graham because he's a credible authority on some of the topics he writes about. If that's not you, people are more likely to laugh at your "it turns outs". I'm sure there's an analogy we can draw to Kenny G there somewhere, too.

The advice to sound unlike Kenny G is equally unjustified as the advice to sound unlike Paul Graham.

Most people who dislike Kenny G have opinions which aren't informed by the way that Kenny G plays the saxophone in the first place, that's the whole problem.

What did Kenny G say when he got into the elevator?

"This place rocks!"

> People love to talk about how much they hate these genres.

Such a good point. There are genres that I tend to dislike (although I can point to specific works in them than I love). But my response is really just to not listen to them rather than advocate against them. These are issues of preference, not right and wrong.

> We’re social creatures and it takes a ton of effort to give music, culture, or people a chance

This is true. With music, I noticed a long time ago that much of the music that I love the most is music that I didn't care for at first listen. It was only after listening (really listening, not just playing in the background) multiple times that I learned they were great.

Idlewords is a better model of good writing than Paul Graham. Maciej might be bloody annoying at times, but I find his writing far more interesting than Graham's, both in its topics and its style.

Reasons are a dime a dozen. A good immediate gut feeling is priceless...

Just because he didn't humor your cross-examination with a 3 paragraph response doesn't mean that there's no substance behind what he's saying. If you want to learn things from people, a good starting place is not framing your questions with a bunch of sentences about how they're probably wrong.

I mean, if you're looking for a long-form takedown, Maciej already wrote "Dabblers and Blowhards" nearly two decades ago.

https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm

Kenny G follows the rules of his chosen musical style. And knows when to break them.

Writers should do the same.

>his writing doesn’t have much personality; it’s designed not to have any

I completely disagree. It's possible to be so used to it that you don't notice it. To me his style has very clear voice, one that speaks in a very calm, self-assured manner, always mixing fact and opinion. Yes, it's not quirky like mango.pdf.zone or dry like a research paper, but it still has a very recognizable personality.

If you've published any writing advice, I'd be interested to take a look at it.

Thank you, but I feel completely unqualified to give it. The Zinsser book I mention above really taught me a lot, even though I approached it with deep skepticism. Maybe you'll find it rewarding too.

Horse shit. That excuse works for me but does not get you off the hook.

(I liked Style: Towards Clarity & Grace a lot; it's like "Effective C Programming" but for writing, and is a Richard Gabriel recommendation. But, uh, you can see what it did for my writing.)

Thanks. I like On Writing Well, too.

Can you expand on that last advice?

You know how when you hear a Dave Matthews song, you know instantly that it's him, and also that you're not going to hear anything interesting? Don't write like that. If you start noticing you have a style, cut those bits out.

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