This is the same for website templates, IDEs, to-do lists, etc.
I wrote about this awhile back: http://www.techdisruptive.com/2012/06/29/the-cyclical-nature...
My writing is bad. Do you have any recommendations for how I could improve?
Better question: Would you mind describing what your own path was like going from "I'm a bad writer" to "Hey, I'm fairly good"?
My lack of writing skill has bothered me quite a lot over the last year or so. I've sent emails to various HNers asking that question, "What did your path from beginner to master look like?" but no one responds. (... Perhaps I didn't write the email very well...) :)
I have a lot I'd like to write about, but expressing myself well turns out to be the hard part for me. If I can figure out how to do that, then I think people will find the topics interesting. But I'm finding it very difficult because I'm a complete beginner. I've never written any long articles/essays/books before.
Thank you for your time!
EDIT: Here's something specific: I'd like to get better at using metaphor. I'm finding that even though I've been writing a lot, I seem to have reached a "plateau" of quality. It's.. well, it's just dull. I don't use many metaphors, and I know my writing comes off as very dry. So I'd like to get better at whatever skill or mindset that lets me spice up my writing, rather than my writing plodding dutifully along its lackluster course without any flair in presentation. Has anyone else found themselves in a similar situation? How'd you overcome it?
EDIT2: Thank you for the great responses!
1 - I think (though perhaps I'm putting words in his mouth) jgrahamc's point is that dicking around with sites and tools and blah blah blah is, well, just dicking around and not actually writing;
2 - lots of authors I respect have basically said that the way to get good at writing is to write a lot, revise a lot, and be prepared for early writing to suck. I wish there where a shortcut.
Did I mention practice? Oh and this book is pretty good: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000SEIW9E/ref=kinw_myk_ro_... (hint - one of the tips is to practice!)
EDIT: ProTip - "I've sent emails to various HNers asking that question, "What did your path from beginner to master look like?" but no one responds. (... Perhaps I didn't write the email very well...) :)" Act like a hacker and treat this like A/B testing. Send out more emails and see which tone/message/etc sticks the best. Revise and refine over time!
I personally haven't tried it so I can't vouch for it.
Write more. Criticize yourself, but temper that with feedback from people you trust. There's a very high chance that while your writing is not perfect, it's probably not as bad as you think it is. (Note, this also works the other way, if you think this is the most wonderful piece of writing ever committed to bytes, it's probably not as good as you think it is either.)
I am not going to comment on why metaphors are a bad idea. Especially if you want to get into prose. One trick that would work is writing pastiches [1]. Pick up a few writers you admire. Reconstruct material in their style. The same paragraph in several different styles will help. Repeat, re-do. The hardest thing about writing is not writing well. It is about being ok with your writing being utter shit. You have to climb that hill. Maybe write 'n' pages every day or so.
Everyone goes through this. I read Bukowski's Ham on Rye a few weeks back. Loved it. Today, I opened Post Office, his first book (I think). It was utter shit. Read like Hemingway. Yet, over twenty years. The man's prose had changed into something beautiful. Something uniquely Bukowski. You will find your voice.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pastiche
P.S: Feel free to get in touch. I am fascinated by both the pedagogy of writing and writing itself.
But metaphors are most royal among analogies and they are all we have to describe and understand the world by. Essentially we have a collective metaphor for the universe that undergoes a shift every so often (don't confuse the instrument readout for what you are measuring). Not even physics can escape them: solar system metaphor for atoms, wave-particle metaphor, curved space metaphor, many world metaphor for a deterministic interpretation of quantum mechanics. On and on (IMO part of the difficulty of physics is emphasis of metaphor over simile).
Metaphors are powerful because when they get the angle wrong, they have the capacity for a lot of damage. On that we are in agreement. Software is constantly trying to shove (admittedly poor) metaphors down our brains. Programming languages themselves are stuffed with metaphors. Mathematics is made unnecessarily harder from expectations set by adjectives which were once metaphor. Random variables for example are an easy concept that are hard to learn because the brain finds rewriting difficult (bad design 101). Or another: 'What do you mean Complex Analysis is much less pathological than Real Analysis' :S
Metaphors are little programs to bootstrap understanding. Words we write are not just a series of symbols, they are more than mere pixelated shadows of intention. Instead, they are meant to be read such that the receiving brain parses them into hopefully, a similar set of experiences. Experiences which capture the essence of the original intent in full dimensionality, even if not in detail. When we read of an act, the parts of the brain that are involved in the actual act are triggered, an actual honest to goodness simulation. So in a manner of speaking, writers were the first programmers. They had a model of the audience and tried to place words together in just the right way so as to stimulate a certain set of experiences.
When we explain things in metaphor we are trying to share how we experience our understanding, how our deeper more intuitive 'fast brain' works with the concept rather than spitting out an unhelpful series of definitions for the 'slow brain'.
So yeah. My defense of metaphors. Apologies if I went overboard.
Here's the amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-30th-Anniversary-Edition/...
Just like coding, the "shortest" path to becoming a good writer is practice - practice everyday.
I don't think you do. Metaphors aren't something that are easy to avoid in writing. Their purpose is to illustrate a concept; if you aren't illustrating a concept, you generally don't need a metaphor. If you are, then you'll be making a metaphor anyways. (Or failing to explain the concept.)
> It's.. well, it's just dull. I don't use many metaphors, and I know my writing comes off as very dry. So I'd like to get better at whatever skill or mindset that lets me spice up my writing, rather than my writing plodding dutifully along its lackluster course without any flair in presentation.
But this is what you seem to be after. This is style, whereas metaphor is just mechanics. You're looking for cadence, tone, color. So, here's my suggestion:
Pick someone in your life who you like listening to. Not for the content of what they say, but the sound of their voice. Give them samples of your writing and have them read it to you. Listen for where they get tripped up or start losing their luster. Those are your problem spots. Ask them what they'd say instead, to achieve the same meaning.
This isn't something I've personally done. I'm egotistical enough to appreciate the sound of my own voice, and I've had a lifetime of drinking in affectations of character dialogue. I've had people tell me how my writing and speaking style changes... and traced it back to the fact that I'd been re-watching Firefly recently and was unconsciously affecting a drawl.
/shrug Hope that helps.
Don't discount metaphors -- they're a critical part of everyday communication because our conceptual system is largely metaphorical. We think in metaphors. They're the concepts we live by. They're the abstractions that help us relate and understand.
For an in-depth perspective, read George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's classic "Metaphors We Live By" (http://www.amazon.com/Metaphors-We-Live-George-Lakoff/dp/022...). Here's Peter Norvig's review of it: http://norvig.com/mwlb.html .
1) Write often.
2) If something sucks, make it shorter.
3) If it still sucks, make it more specific.
I think you would have done a lot better asking just 1 specific, targeted question that could be answered in a sentence. Successful people are generally busy and as much as they want to help others, they generally don't have the time to help everyone.
A focused, short question can open a door and possibly get a dialogue going. In addition, trying to phrase such a question will get you concentrating on what is important to you, which can only help.
1. Read great writing. If you want to write better nonfiction, read the masters of nonfiction. Michael Lewis. Tracy Kidder. Atul Gawande. Joseph Mitchell. Jon Krakauer. Christopher Hitchens. Tom Junod. If you want to write great fiction, read Murakami, Marquez, Palahniuk, Eggers, Hosseni, Oates, Atwood. (Shameless plug here, you can find stories by these folk at Byliner: http://www.byliner.com )
2. Read about writing. Some worthy books on this:
On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, by Stephen King (really!)
The Practice of Writing, by David Lodge
The Writing Life, by Annie Dillard
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott
Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction, by Tracy Kidder and Richard Todd
To Show and to Tell: The Craft of Literary Nonfiction, by Phillip Lopate
3. As already mentioned upthread, practice. Write something every day.
4. If you're not confident in your writing, apply your MVP lessons. Write short sentences. Use as few words as possible. Rid your sentences of adjectives and adverbs. Study your verb choices. Ditch the complex punctuation and dependent clauses. Ask yourself, What's the least amount of "writing" necessary to convey this idea or image?
5. Have fun.
For a good variety of nonfiction, try longform.org.
If you are able to get interested in a wide range of topics, longform is a treasure trove.
I can't second this enough. I read it once a year, at least. King's writing nonfiction, he's writing nonfiction about writing, and yet his command of his own literary voice is so strong that you feel like he's sitting on the other side of the table from you. It's an amazing, honest book.
Writing shouldn't be a choice: it's write or die from your wounds.
Right now you're training in the gym, you need a beast on your neck to start running for real.
[edited slightly]
You realize talking about "writing plodding dutifully along its lackluster course" was a metaphor, right? Writing doesn't really plod down courses, only animate actors do that. And you, the writer, weren't _actually_ plodding down any tracks either (unless you were writing on your iphone while plodding down some course somewhere). METAPHOR, MAN!
Might be a bit of a mixed metaphor when you switch to "flair in presentation."
Oh, and talking about 'spicing up' writing is another metaphor, although maybe a kind of tired trite one.
Write often. Solicit critique from colleagues who write well. Academic papers with peer review helps. Critique others' writings. Find good role models and analyze their style. Most importantly, have an interesting story to write about, and focus on developing the story.
Story is king, not metaphor. Perhaps try to be more cinematic in your story telling. Build up to a climax, then unwind from there. Try the fork in the road approach where you can contrast your ideas to other ideas, putting them into better context. Also, it helps to be angry at the status quo and be a bit provocative.
You can always make your message better by making it shorter and more concise. Delete anything that is redundant, superfluous, and gratuitous. Prioritize your messages and delete the lowest priorities ones that are not essential.
Finally, dot your eys, cross your tees, and kill your orphans (if using latex).
> Better question: Would you mind describing what your own path was like going from "I'm a bad writer" to "Hey, I'm fairly good"?
My adviser (when I was a PhD student) first beat good writing habits into me. However, I didn't get good at it until I found good role models and was able to become very self critical about my own writing. Even now, I only seem to write well when writing papers that will undergo peer review; format is important. Find the format that you prefer, and optimize your style for it.
It's definitely true for writing. For a long time my vice of choice was mailing lists. Lately it's Quora, because you get a lot of feedback, and because you know you're writing for someone specific who actually wants to hear what you have to say, and because you get to read other people's takes on the same thing.
But the specifics don't matter. Just keep writing and reading. You'll get there. Just listen to Ira Glass: "Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through."
A bit off topic, but one of the few X where this does not hold is marriage. Statistically, first marriages are more likely to succeed than any subsequent marriage.
Think about getting sent back to the beginning of your marriage, would you be better (with that one)? You would... that's the point.
[1] http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/vsob1/divorces-in-england-and-...
My point was that there exist skills (or goal oriented behavior, here the presumed goal being to stay married) that do not necessarily improve with "practice." Nothing else comes to mind, but I would be interested in other things that break the common notion of always getting better with "practice." Human beings are very complicated, and I can imagine other situations where practice does not make perfect.
I remember reading some research about divorced people where many reported that they had underestimated the emotional devastation that they felt after the divorce, and that if they had known how hard it would be, they would have tried much harder to rebuild their marriage.
As another off topic comment about how complicated people are, in marketing it is important to let people know that what you are selling is easy and quick and convenient and ... Except for one area, where it is critical to tell people how hard it will be and how much work they will have to do if they buy your product. And that field is body building. Body builders buy products that pitch how hard they will have to work and how much pain they will need to endure. Go figure.
I think you might have confused "getting married" with "being married". People who get married several times are probably pretty good at the getting married part. People who stay married, though, probably work hard on the day-to-day experience of being married. In the same way good writers work hard each day on the writing.
The "master hackers" you are targeting probably haven't carved out time to answer all the random email they receive and their mental mail filter is probably pretty tight.
"What's was your path from beginning to master?" is a big contemplative question. Answering it properly would require someone to pause and reflect over what could be a 20-40+ year journey and then take time to distil it down into an email. That's a lot to ask of someone you don't know
Instead, get a dialogue going with a relevant two or three line email that can be answered quickly and doesn't require someone to write their memoir in response.
One strategy I like is laying out the initial analogy, then exploring it and sprinkling in the details. It helps readers keep track of where a detail is used and how it relates to others. "On Writing Well" is a great book if you're looking for a more formal treatment.
Paul Graham's essay http://www.paulgraham.com/essay.html talks a lot about how he does essays. It is likely to be helpful if you want to write like he does. And if not, it is still interesting.
In a very different light, http://perl.plover.com/yak/presentation/ has a lot of useful information. Most of it is about presentations, but his suggestion of getting to the point and embellishing is very good. And it is wise to understand what he says about people's ability to pay attention. Long form writing can easily exceed normal human limitations. Presentations and writing are very different mediums, but both hit the same human limits.
And finally be aware that people are not simply "good at writing". There are many different forms of writing, and they are at most correlated skills. For example I became good at answering specific questions in ways that are likely to stimulate further thought due to answering many thousands of them on Perlmonks. However I would not be able to write a decent fiction book to save my life.
You can spell. Grammar seems good enough. I can understand what you are trying to say.
How is your writing bad?
BTW. Always amuses me that some of the best selling authors are said by the writing snobs to be bad writers. Funny that. Might be that the writing snobs having got much of a clue.
IMHO, if you are getting your message across, then the writing is good. Maybe not "art", or "excellent", but "good" is often more than good enough.
My advice: just write.
Also, Michael Bay is the greatest director in the history of cinema.
Better question: Would you mind describing what your own path was like going from "I'm a bad writer" to "Hey, I'm fairly good"?
Read a lot, write a lot, and get an editor. Here are more specifics: https://jseliger.wordpress.com/2009/08/19/the-very-very-begi....
Here's something specific: I'd like to get better at using metaphor
Read Metaphors We Live By and How Fiction Works.