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I’m not denigrating anyone’s effort here, but the greatest trick behind blogging consistently is simply picking up the keyboard and starting to write. There’s no other secret sauce.
As you write more, you’ll find your own style and the set of methods that work for you. This is one thing I’ve learned from continuously putting out stuff[1] for the last six years.
LLMs can be helpful, but they aren’t a replacement for thought. Pretty, JS-infested sites are mostly a big time waster unless you’re writing about something interesting. The same goes for scripted processes. You write, read, edit, and hit publish. How many eyeballs your blog gets has little to do with how perfectly you nail your theme. More often than not, it’s a bit of luck and being authentic.
It took four years before my write-ups started hitting the front page here. That was never my intention. I wrote for myself, and some people eventually found it useful. I don’t follow any of these scripted processes and would rather focus on the topic than the process itself. Too much focus on the process and a little too little on the subject.
[1]: https://rednafi.com/
This is reproducing the process with a LLM, which is a great option when you are self-publishing and when hiring a professional editor is hardly justified, as it is typically the case for blogs. LLMs are very good when it comes to the technicalities of writing, which can make them great allies for writing better blog posts. Any kind of writing, really.
Another thing to consider is that the author of the blog post here is presumably not a native English speaker, judging by his use of Italian to make a point. Even proficient non-natives will sometimes use some odd phrasing that may be distracting, even to another non-native.
All this editing is additional work people may not want to do, and that's fine, but for those who do the work, I think the result can only be better.
English is the third language I learned, and editing is indeed one of the ways I improved my writing.
What I meant to say is that there’s too much focus on the process and not enough on the substance. Emphasizing the latter is more important but gets less attention on HN.
Everyone seems to write for different reasons, for better or worse. Maybe for some people, getting to think long about the process itself, is the goal, then they're successful even if they never even publish a post.
With that said, I'm guessing most people start a blog because they want to say something, and then you're right, the only way to succeed is to put your fingers to the keyboard and finally publish something. But its worth keeping in mind that not everyone have the same goal.
I see this as a signal. Many would like to write more, but they don't. I met quite a few developers at a conference last week, and did a rather statistically insignificant survey. I didn't get a single one to say they enjoyed writing. However, a good 80% said they would like to write more.
> the greatest trick behind blogging consistently is simply picking up the keyboard and starting to write
This reminded me of this post[1] from a few months ago. "Simply" doing something is usually not that simple, for whatever reason.
I think putting some structure to a process, defining a clear goal, is a good way to learn.
Finally, I really don't believe in the whole "writing for myself" thing, sorry. In fact, I used to think the same, until I realised it was (at least for me) sour grapes. Personally, when it truly is for myself, it stays in my Logseq journal.
I now "write for an audience". I try to imagine who I'm writing for, what they know, why they may be interested, and what I want to share with them. If I publish something, it is because I think somebody may care.
Then, I'm not really bothered if nobody reads what I write (or build). Meaning, I don't think I'm worthless or what I'm doing is useless when I get ignored. But I do consider it as some valuable feedback: if I broadcast something and get 0 replies, maybe I'm not building the right thing, or I am writing about something that nobody really cares about. Or I just presented it in a very poor way, and I can then figure out how to do better next time. Which is why I do think it's wise to spend some time reflecting and perfecting our craft but hey, whatever works for you!
Having said that, really happy for you that you manage to write so much, I wish I were able to be that productive!
[1]: Stop saying "just" (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42038139
I would love gmail (or any mail composing tool) to trigger my defined list of unit tests whenever I click on "send". Something similar to OP. For me it would probably be:
- the email must be direct and concise
- the email must be respectful of the recipient and of anyone else would could read
- the email must use proper English
And the AI would give suggestions to reach the goals if some of them failed.
There are a couple of things I'd like to do next:
- make it into a public API - so that it's easier to create plugins; - provide multiple "blueprints" for different types of text (in this case, for emails).
I think with these 2 features it should then be trivial to make it available in email clients, or as a browser extension.
Is this something you commonly struggle with? Sounds like something that could be a deeper issue than just "writing emails in a weird way", as you'd hit that issue using your natural voice, which you can kind of hack away in emails with LLMs, but what about communication outside the computer?
It's just that I don't always ask myself whether the email I am about to send may contain unnecessary anger and would deserve an extra 5 minutes of cool down.
I don't really like it, but apparently it's what cool kids do these days ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and it came with the template. But if it randomly breaks, too, off it goes!