More people should write (2012)

The argument in the article does not involve anyone reading your writing: "That’s the promise: you will live more curiously if you write. You will become a scientist, if not of the natural world than of whatever world you care about. More of that world will pop alive. You will see more when you look at it."

I just did look. 19k karma is indeed nothing to sneeze at.

Difference is though that in the HN comments it's someone else who picks the topic and time.

Much as I appreciate the discussion here, occasionally I think there's some value in just doing a writeup on a topic. Or, a memory dump. If for no other reason, than for the therapeutic value of cleaning up the mind... And forcing the random musings that make sense in the head through the filter of written language just to see what actually makes sense.

I wonder if there is a way to easily export one's own Hacker News comments. It might be useful for you to back your comments up one day, as there can be value in searching through your past writing and also having a backup (which never hurts).

This is exactly my reason too for not putting up my own website/blog.

Did you paste a proper link?

I think posting is, in general, an extension of dialogues, i.e conversation. Writing involves dialogues, of course, but encompasses a much wider field of styles. Ephemerality of the text does not automatically implies reduced value. You’ll get some of the benefits of writing within dialogues but it’s limited by the fact there’s not much room from digression, so less creative freedom and exploratory potential compared to just actively choosing the subject and style, with no particular audience or pre established context in mind. I regard monologues as an expansion of dialogues (a dialogue participation is sort of a monologue if you think about), and there’s a low entry barrier for doing it, can be very enriching and even therapeutical. All in all, I think the author here is talking writing for the sake of writing, which is structured thinking.

As someone who has been doing both daily for a while, yes, they're different.

It's kind of like comparing speaking at a meeting or giving a speech, to talking to a long time friend over coffee, or talking to yourself in the mirror. In the abstract you could say the action is the same, speaking, but the experience as lived is very different.

Posts can go either way: I would say that some online exchanges have more of an oral cultural character and others have more of a literary cultural character.

(upon reading TFA, it seems it doesn't even care about the oral/literary distinction I had been trying to make; for TFA the important part of posting is the export of thoughts out of one's head, which can be done in either mode?)

Hello, I'm someone who's been through that and I'm "on the other side" in the sense that I did stick to it. I wrote this and I hope you find it helpful: https://medium.com/@vonjuice/4-important-words-for-writing-c...

> Now I see everything I start as part of a big experiment to test which things stick. So that I can learn which properties of a habit make it stick with me.

This is wise. In addition to watching the properties of the object, which could be considered static, be mindful of the properties in yourself and how these interact with the former, because yours are dynamic and can be developed as a skill, so you learn how to make beneficial habits stick more regardless of their perceived properties.

I’m the same way, I think.

It’s like the movie Groundhog Day.

Every moment is a new start, and you keep starting over and over again and trying to finish or to improve your navigation of a messy, random river that is life.

A piece of writing, a project, a trip to see friends is usually interrupted by life. And there’s never that perfect time for you to do the work. Perfection is a memory of the past.

We need to do things in between, simultaneously with all the mess, and keep starting over and over.

I feel you, but you should get over that. You’re only hurting yourself.

Counseling with a qualified professional is immensely helpful. With a decent counselor, you could start seeing results almost immediately.

I am rooting for you.

I find burning pages kinda therapeutic. Give it a try, write your least shareable thoughts and then watch them burn.

Bro(scillator), u fine. Just respond to that which is evocative to you and you won't be able to stop the words pouring out of you like... Ya you get the analogy ;)

Related to writing, I also high recommend Murakami's "What I Talk About When I Talk About Running." He wrote this as a memoir centred along running, and he often writes about how his habits of running carries over to other habits in his life, such as writing. I liked this excerpt from the memoir in particular:

"Right now I’m aiming at increasing the distance I run, so speed is less of an issue. As long as I can run a certain distance, that’s all I care about. Sometimes I run fast when I feel like it, but if I increase the pace I shorten the amount of time I run, the point being to let the exhilaration I feel at the end of each run carry over to the next day. This is the same sort of tack I find necessary when writing a novel. I stop every day right at the point where I feel I can write more. Do that, and the next day’s work goes surprisingly smoothly. I think Ernest Hemingway did something like that. To keep on going, you have to keep up the rhythm. This is the important thing for long-term projects. Once you set the pace, the rest will follow. The problem is getting the flywheel to spin at a set speed—and to get to that point takes as much concentration and effort as you can manage."

Did you try to make it neither about yourself nor about your interlocutor?

I think my memory of 2012 must be different from yours, though I’m not exactly sure what ‘taken over the world’ means.

Earlier this week I picked up a copy of On Writing Well by William Zinsser, a style guide on what he believes makes for good informal writing. It's yet to reflect in any of my comments but I'd recommend it if you struggle with being concise.

It does have a heavy focus on American writing and it's akin to a longform opinion piece, but I wouldn't let that get in the way of what makes for an accessible and pleasant read.

edit: What also helps is to sit down and write. Make a blog and even if you don't have a specific topic to focus on, just write and keep at it. Take a note of how you write, the style that you naturally develop with all of your quirks; do you overuse commas, do you routinely break up sentences with a dash or a semicolon? Does it have a sense of flow?

Before long something will click in your head, you'll become more cognisant of the world around you, and your head will be screaming at you to write certain thoughts and ideas down.

It's probably like photography: just do it a lot. Write about your home, your neighborhood. Edit: also read other writers' work, of course.

In novel writing there's very old advice: plan to throw away your first million words. Actually, that's good advice generally, not just for fiction.

Some great advice from Ben Kuhn on how & why of writing:

[1] https://www.benkuhn.net/writing

I also just published some structural tips for writing quickly at high quality:

[2] https://taylor.town/pseudoprose

Make sure to create a low-friction writing environment for yourself! Whether it's a notebook or text-editor, you should be able to get your idea onto paper within 90 seconds of having it.

Allocate a time of the day, every day, for writing. You can spend the time writing whatever comes to mind, working on a story, or staring out the window, or reading about writing. For the latter, I recommend this list:

https://www.themarginalian.org/2013/05/03/advice-on-writing/

At the risk of sounding smugly, just write. Perhaps ask someone to read your texts, but don't rely too much on random critics. Individual people have their own taste and pet peeves; what is unreadable for one may be enjoyable for others.

Writing is like hiking or skiing. While there are some important rules how not to kill yourself, you can only learn it by doing.

Also, read a lot, ESPECIALLY works by people who have a good command of your language (IDK if you are native English speaker; I am not). Writing style is a bit contagious. Don't worry if you occassionally sound like someone else, this kind of contagion is really unavoidable if you read a lot.

I would say that the optimal ratio of R:W time is about 5-6:1.

Depends what kind of writing you want to be better at, but for fiction Stephen King’s ‘On Writing’ is both interesting and useful. As for ‘more’, what’s worked for me is to make a routine for it.

I actually composed a free ebook about writing advice from many major writers.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vSMJ_VIYylRcKIpb...

Hopefully this should help.

It depends :)

Do you have an idea what stands in the way of your ambitions?

Here are some suggestions (dang, I'm starting to sound like ChatGPT here):

1. Try an accountability partner and call them once a week to discuss progress.

2. Share your work, preferably to an audience you trust, and nourish feedback.

3. Experiment and train creativity. Write a short story, write with a pen, write technical documentation, write code.

Hope this helps.

Read and think about you read.

You can't get better at writing without reading as much as you can, as widely as you can.

I do a daily writing exercise that is to write at least 1000 words, whatever comes to mind. No editing. Just let it flow and see where it takes you. When you get used to it (which you will do very quick) you will be surprised how it improves your writing skills.

Growing up, my brothers and I would play "I spy" by identifying a color. E.g., "I spy with my little eye something that is orange".

The author just recently published a nice piece in the New Yorker [1].

1 = https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/11/20/a-coder-consid...

He still writes[0], albeit not on his blog, but for New Yorker, The Atlantic and the likes.

[0] https://jsomers.net/#writing

This only follows if the only value/worth you consider is economic value, ie for trade. Which would exclude much of what people value: creativity, scientific knowledge, insights for living, personal growth etc. Obviously those have economic value in certain ways, but it’s not their only value.

Writing has a double value though, it’s intrinsically valuable to the writer themselves to illicit better thinking. it’s also valuable as form of communication and collaboration.

Why should one care about "worth"? If more people write then there will be more bad and more good writing. (good/bad in terms of personal enjoyment from reading)

If someone asks me if they should do something I do, I always lay out the pros and cons of doing what I do, and try to give them the questions whose answers they need to know in order to decide if they are the type of person who should. Why are there so many articles by writers telling other people they should be writing instead of telling them why they might or might not? I would never presume that any of my hobbies or habits is so universally beneficial.

Taking your argument, perhaps the thing that is being made scarce, through the act of writing, is ignorance

Which might have served us better before now

This is a coldly economic take. Does the sole motivation of writing have to be for the consumption of others?

Scarcity depends on the amount of openly published writing. You can publish only parts of your work or publish it to limited audience.

Are you trying to convince people to spend less time writing? Ive never disagreed with a comment more than this one

the more people that exercise, the less exercise is valuable