Writing is hard, so do it | Hacker News Reader

Writing is hard, so do it

kyan.com

88 pointsrobin_reala33 comments

"Writers don't write because they can write. They write because they can't not write."

Writing is an incredibly important communication skill, and it is a forcing function for understanding a topic. But still, writing a book is rarely the best use of your time nor the best way to learn to communicate or analyze.

Blog posts might be a better form of writing than a book. Preparing and delivering a talk might be a better way to improve your communication (and "brand," for that matter).

However, if after thinking it through you still have an itch to write a book, it could be that you simply can't not write a book. In which case, go for it and do it well, and don't worry about justifying it.

It could be that the reason you should write is that you can't not write.

"Writers don't write because they can write. They write because they can't not write."

This certainly describes my relationship with programming.

For me, writing and programming feel very much of a piece. They seem to fire up the same parts of my brain, the feel like the same kind of mental exercise, and a completed project in writing or programming gives me the same kind of satisfaction.

Absolutely. Programming is writing, except in addition to targeting an audience of humans, you're also writing for computers.

On the other hand: I'm a full-time author, but not because I feel any sort of compulsion to write. Writing books just happens to be one of the best ways to turn what I do feel compelled to do (reading/research) into something that benefits other people, and allows me to use what I'm good at doing in a way that supports my family.

Left to my own devices, I wouldn't write very much at all aside from note-taking. Turning random thoughts into readable long-form prose requires a ton of effort. It's worth it, but the work is difficult on the best of days.

I agree that blog posts, short essays, or private journaling are better tools for using writing for thinking. You don't have to worry so much about structure or the potential for misinterpretation, and most topics don't require hundreds of pages to explore.

Some time ago I tried to distill what I had learnt about writing into a blog post: http://blog.jgc.org/2012/07/some-things-ive-learnt-about-wri...

And this post is so much better than the submitted article.

Just one small example: I think writing is a vital skill for almost everyone because good writing is simply good communicating and good communicating matters enormously in any job.

That is a much better article.

I try to think of writing as more like design or engineering, not (just) an art or skill.

No one would say: "coding a compiler is hard, so do it" or "curing alzheimhers is hard, so do it" or "teaching is hard, so do it"

Like in design/engineering, when writing or teaching or other similar activities there will be a lot of trial and error, you need to keep the audience/user/learner in mind, and it is critical to get as much feedback as you can. Not because you suck at it, but because it's essential to effective design of an argument or design of a lesson.

i enjoyed reading your post. genuinely curious about why you chose Times New Roman all over the site?

Because I've spent no time at all designing my site. If someone wants to redesign it I'd be happy to publicize their efforts :-)

More so than working out, video games, eating, taking a walk, or any of the typical "zoning-out" activities I've tried over the years, the one that never fails to relax me is stream-of-consciousness writing.

I've found that on nights where I have trouble sleeping, taking 20 minutes and writing out every single thought in my skull (into a notebook; not onto a computer) pulls me out of the mental block and brain thunderstorm that is resisting calls to slumber. When it's out on paper, it becomes real. It doesn't sit and dwell as an empty, half-complete thought.

I've had a similar experience recently with trying to make sense of my life using spreadsheets.

For instance, while I was trying to sort out my enormous TODO list, I decided to prioritize projects by assigning them scores based on a few different features. This was straight in the OS X Stickies app, but after I had more than three features/attributes, I realized it would be better done on a spreadsheet. That has been enormously useful and has really taken the stress off. I wrote about it in this post: http://noisytyping.com/quantify-your-personal-values/

It turned out that this was an established method in Operations Research, btw.

Edit: I'll note the attributes I use in my real spreadsheet (as opposed to the example in the blog post): - Time to completion - Time to first results - Expected earnings - Possible windfall - Intrinsic fun - Outreach - Special commitments - Learning new skills "opportunity benefit" - Execution risk (misc factors) - Familiarity - Novelty (not mutually exclusive with Familiarity) - Competition - Autonomy - Reputation building

As noted in the post, some factors can have a weight of zero. I still give them a co-efficient per project because the factor weight could change in the future.

> (into a notebook; not onto a computer)

I've been thinking about getting an electric typewriter just for this reason - to force myself to write without editing, but with a bit more speed than handwriting generally allows.

Plus, I mean, come on -- typewriters are just cool. I had a mechanical one as a kid that my sister-in-law now uses as a handsome display piece. Probably my most favorite childhood toy besides Legos.

The ability to write, especially a long but coherent technical document, is dependent the ability to analyse and structure a vast number of ideas and concepts according to importance and how they fit together.

This is strategic planning, and it's an extremely important skill to develop. As well as other benefits in communication, writing is a good way to practice with a static target.

Also, as the article says, often you need to write a lot down just to get it out there before you can have a good feel for how it connects together. The same is true for developing new strategy - if you don't have to write pages and wish for bigger sheets of paper†, you're doing it wrong.

† Metaphor alert; you don't actually have to.

Neil (kyan.com) says that he doesn't find the act of writing to be hard. I found it to be torturous when working on Cooking for Geeks until I learned this simple rule: dedicated time, dedicate space. By dedicated time, I mean a regular schedule where other activities weren't "allowed" to intrude. And as for dedicated space, for me it came down to having a desk at which I wrote and only wrote.

John Cleese puts it so much better (and funnier): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VShmtsLhkQg

I suppose I should get down to it and write that blog post... ;-)

I think that's applicable to any kind of work, really.

I can't find any examples (my Google-fu is failing me), but I think a generally accepted practice that leads to productivity is having a space that you only work in. When you're in that space, all your brain is used to is doing work, and so it becomes much more difficult to be distracted. It's sort of the spatial equivalent of a routine you do every day.

This is often why people have an office or study at their home.

As for a schedule, that's a no-brainer (not discrediting you at all). Obviously if I say "I will work on this project from 7-10 every night, 5 days a week", then I get 15 hours of work in every week. This also factors into the whole space-routine thing, but I think far less-so, because the trickier part, I think, is figuring out that time in your schedule when you are least likely to be distracted.

Stephen King mentions the technique of dedicated places in his book On Writing (which is great by the way).

He suggests the idea place is a room with a door that you can close.

To clarify this point a little - I tend to find that once I know /what/ I'm writing and /how/ I'm writing it, it flows out with reckless abandon, and I'm able to get the words out very easily. Due to this, editing also comes quite easy as I find I've written the copy in a natural conversational way (as the article is written in).

However, I realise that this isn't normal, and may also be a big problem when not writing in a style that I can choose.

I've been toying with the idea of writing a book recently. Probably not a big 200 page job but even 50 pages on some niche subject. I always remember Jeff Atwood once said: "If I had to make a list of the top 10 things I've done in my life that I regret, "writing a book" would definitely be on it." (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2012/07/coding-horror-the-b...) - he means specifically a proper printed book by the way.

I'm really intrigued by the success of people like Nathan Barry who wrote The App Design Handbook (http://nathanbarry.com/app-design-handbook/) and Designing Web Applications (http://nathanbarry.com/webapps/).

I'd imagine the best way to approach it would be to just try to write a bunch of semi-disjointed blog post type articles on a particular subject, say Customer Development, then edit them together with an introduction, conclusion and some filler content to manage the transitions between articles. That way even if you never actually finish the book you can still release the articles on a blog or email list if you feel like it.

That said, your situation is definitely different since you were approached about writing a book on a particular subject. Most hackers who sit down to write a book probably won't have that going for them.

I find that in writing, I have the same problem as I do in most other undertakings. I have come to call it "paralysed by technique." I have no idea if this is a legitimate thing or not, so if there is a more apt name, I'm all ears. Basically, I get bogged down on the minutiae of how to do something, and quickly lose sight of what I'm trying to do.

Easy examples would be how the section where the author compared text editors has already given me some stuff where I am looking to see if the editor mentioned would be of benefit to me. Or, where to put notes that I want to trigger a thought later? There are more ways to do this than I can really consider, but I'll try. How many strokes should be used in writing a capital B? Is my version with 5 truly more readable than one with just 3? Should I care if I have a passive sentence anywhere? ...

With writing, the specific difficulty I have is in coming up with a narrative. I have the same problem in writing code. The computer wants things one way, of course. It is somewhat easy to talk to a computer. Making it so that the code is approachable by myself later, however, is tough. I've been lured into literate programming time and time again, but with no accepted toolchain in any of the languages I use, that really is not an option at work.

Anyway, ramble off.

> I have come to call it "paralysed by technique." I have no idea if this is a legitimate thing or not, so if there is a more apt name, I'm all ears.

You are thinking of "yak shaving". Or possibly analysis paralysis, but the rest of your comment screams of yak shaving.

I love that that originated with a Ren & Stimpy skit. Regardless, yes, that sounds like what I mean. Is there not a more technical term for it? (I haven't tried searching journals for "yak shaving," but I'm doubting that will be a highly used term.)

Edit: I see originated isn't right. Still, amusingly tied to Ren & Stimpy.

By the way, if you don't like the colour of your asciidoc, http://leanpub.com (with whom I have a material association) is a markdown-specific self-publishing platform.

For some reason, on the 5th or so time I saw this headline, it struck me as somewhat flawed. Something is not necessarily worth doing just because it is hard.

Seems with writing, the real appeal is that it can be highly rewarding, and with pretty much no downside. Not unlike most every other creative endeaver. Programming included. (Now, I realize I'm predicating this on the fact that you do not necessarily have to release what you did for others to see.)

The headline "Writing is hard, so do it" is a good example of one way in which writing is hard. I believe the writer is trying to say "Writing is hard, but becomes easier with practice" but writes something closer to "Since writing is hard you should write".

Still, just because something gets easier with practice is not an intrinsic reason for people to do it. I could claim the same for juggling. Something I find a lot of fun in doing, and which has gotten doable with practice. Which is why I said this is true for most any artistic endeaver. (I suppose juggling is not necessarily artistic, but I don't know what to categorize it as.)

Two bits of advice I've found helpful.

1) Don't write the whole book before you write it, just focus on small steps, pick up a pen, find some paper, etc.

2) Practice, push yourself, like lifting weights, or anything else, you'll get better at it.

Writing is a challenge indeed. Especially for me since the last one year. It used to be that if I had a collection of thoughts, I would try to flesh them out into a blog post of atleast 300 words with relevant links.

Today, I try to _compress_ my thoughts into 140 characters or atmost a status update on Facebook/Google+. This makes me (and most of my regular blogger friends) guilty of neglecting my blog for the longest period of time.

Long form of writing is extremely satisfying. It organised one's thoughts and more importantly useful for a future reading. I am impelled to continue practicing it atleast for the sake of posterity.

Original unsanitised version here: http://neilmiddleton.com/writing-is-hard-do-it/

For anyone writing non-fiction, read "On Writing Well", by William Zinsser. It will change the way you approach writing for the (much) better. Books, articles, blog posts, as long as it's non-fiction, it applies.

Needless to say, this book is a great read itself..

An article I would like to promote on writing: http://ninazumel.com/2012/10/11/i-write-therefore-i-think/

Does anyone here have any resources on writing technical content that would be useful for someone writing a technical book?

I'm writing two books right now. It was a stupid stupid idea.

But I think when it's all over with, I will look back on this time ... and still think it was a terrible idea.

Seriously, don't write more than one book at a time. One is enough.

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