Publish Everything (Pretty Much)

Very rarely do I write an article, know it will go viral, and then have it do well. It’s still hard when I have a string of bad weeks where nothing does well, because I still want to grow my audience and viewership. I have to remind myself that I started writing because I just desperately wanted to see a certain type of content put out into this world. This means that there are lots of times I write about things I know won’t do well ( a history about BSD, a tutorial about using xml with C#). As my readership grows it can be hard to write those types of articles, but I’m trying to stay true to myself.

Most of the time writing is fun, but there are definitely weeks were it’s hard to feel inspired. But for some reason for me writing just feels like breathing. It’s something I have to do, even if I don’t always enjoy it.

I like my published stuff / comments etc getting attention. But only as a sign of people internalizing it, learning, enjoying, reflecting on their views & so on. Transferring knowledge, exchanging ideas, sharing projects, help fix problems others are having, that kind of thing.

Like on HN: if there's a story with maaany comments, I don't usually bother aside from reading. For a story no-one cares about, same thing. In between, if what I'd like to add is already mentioned, not much point in elaborating. But if not: sure, add your opinion or datapoints.

Same with science papers (I don't write those): if your paper advances the state of the art, then publish! If it might, or adds datapoints to hotly debated subject, yes plz. But if it's just 101st attempt that's been chewed on by everyone and their dog & few if any peers will ever read your paper, why bother? (and why bother with such research - find more interesting subject). More crap out there just makes the interesting stuff harder to find.

Btw: doesn't mean you can't re-visit a subject that's last been done long ago, or by few others, and where tools / environment / knowledge has changed since then.

Or if you publish some project which has been done by many, but yours is more up-to-date or better documented than existing ones, sure add value to what's out there.

Personally, I’d rather spend time doing something that enriches my life and/or the lives of people I care about.

Or are we all looking for an aesthetic that we love and want to see more of but we know it when we see it?

I've been journalling about computers since 2013. I am looking for something higher and beautiful.

As you can see, I disagree with the idea of publishing "everything" and hoping that some of it might go viral or get a lot of likes.

I know the op isn't about this but love putting nuggets like this out there

I realise that most typographic style guides recommend not putting spaces around em-dashes which separate clauses in a sentence, but I always have trouble distinguishing between em-dashes and hyphens in most fonts. As a result, I often mistake non-spaced em-dashed clauses with hyphenated words, leading to confusion.

I note that the original article does not use the word "land" anywhere at all; not in the title, nor the body. The un-editorialised headline "Publish Everything (Pretty Much)" is (IMO) much clearer.