So You Want To Be A Writer? That’s Mistake #1 | Hacker News Reader

So You Want To Be A Writer? That’s Mistake #1

ryanholiday.net

49 pointsclarkm25 comments

This is a really great point.

I'm a big advocate of Kathy Sierra's "minimum badass user" strategy. Basically, try to write as little about yourself and write what will be most useful to improve someone else's abilities. I'm not amazing at this (yet), but it's my main goal.

Identifying too closely with being a "writer" or "coder" or whatever can be detrimental to doing more meaningful work. That's because it's all about you. But really, it should be all about your users and how you are making their lives better.

The more you can focus on "What will help my reader be awesome?" instead of "What will I write?", the better your writing will be.

Nobody cares about how awesome I am (and they shouldn't!), but everyone cares about becoming more awesome themselves. Resist the temptation to focus on yourself and shift that focus to them and you'll automatically be better than 99% of writers out there.

If you spend a week learning something remarkable and then show others how to do it in only an hour, it's a huge win for them. By focusing on learning and then sharing what you learned in a succinct way, you are accelerating the progress of others. That, more than anything else, will make you a great writer. The metric should be how much more powerful your readers are after reading your writing.

(Naturally, I'm talking about a specific type of writing here, not fiction or historical writing, etc.)

"I'm a..."

What matters is that the topic about which a person is writing is something about which they feel passionate - for example the process of writing in the original article...and in your post...and in this post. So, while I agree that anyone who cares about how awesome I am will be sorely disappointed, my goal is to say something interesting and entertaining - not necessarily entertaining in the sense of amusement but in the sense of engaging the reader's mind.

I suppose that the Pythonic Mr. Anchovy has no more likelihood of going from a chartered accountant to writer in one go than he does of becoming a lion tamer. But that seems a wanting-to-be-a-writer-strawman.

I read somewhere that there's no such thing as a person who is passionate about writing who doesn't write, and I am too lazy to google it.

The strong sense of wanting to be a writer is wanting to be a better writer, and that means practicing the craft and throwing manuscripts over the transom and the internet is a great place for doing that, e.g. HN provides an excellent opportunity to obtain feedback about one's writing, and not just from internet trolls, but from "really fucking smart people."®

Of course that's just my opinion.

As I look at my office bookshelf--which runs from tech stuff to random stuff bought downtown and not taken home, I question "about which they feel passionate". It is certainly reasonable to say that Hennessy and Patterson have a consuming interest in hardware design, but do they feel passionate about it? Would Wright Morris or Anthony Burgess have used "feel passionate" as a reason for writing those volumes of autobiography?

The author sets up a dichotomy between living an interesting life and learning rules of grammar. But writing well is deeper than either. If you don't practice and learn from the masters, then even your most fascinating stories will turn to mush.

"Take any good piece of writing, something that matters to you. Why is it good? Because of what it says. Because what [sic] the writer manages to communicate to you, their reader. It’s because of what’s within it, not how they wrote it."

Obviously not true! Even our patron saint Paul is praised for his style as much as his insight. His clarity is a product of taste, training, and vigorous editing. And, I'm confident, of a strong wish to write good prose.

There's something to Ryan's point, but he doesn't express it very well. The article could be much better.

Just one example: the first paragraph namedrops Schopenhauer, but the article doesn't make use of the philosopher's thought. Instead, he's only brought in as a sideshow to support the author's point. Does he respect Schopenhauer's philosophy? If so, why not engage with it? If not, why cite him as authoritative? Sloppy!

These types of posts that deal with identity always bring me back to Paul Graham's identity post [1] and Bruce Lee's quote on limitation [2].

I feel that by being too focused on the identity, you fall in love with the action, not what the action does or can do. Like Ryan Holiday is saying, they don't write to say something, but for the sake of writing.

With Bruce Lee in regard, he went beyond his formal training in wing chun and studied other forms of fighting and also studied philosophy along with other topics. It seems beneficial to a person to seek out other interests and intertwine them, I feel that that's what creates more beautiful work.

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/identity.html [2] http://zenpencils.com/comic/36-bruce-lee-there-are-no-limits...

On a related note, you should probably just read Schopenhauer in general.

His philosophical works are very inaccessible (to those unprepared) but his essays are brilliant and casually consumable.

http://www.amazon.com/Essays-and-Aphorisms-Classics-ebook/dp...

FYI: He was the philosopher who influenced Nietzsche the most.

Yes they are very readable and his thoughts often feel like they were written last week. It's surprisingly timeless.

Schopenhauer was not a big proponent of empty, pointless philosophizing. His stuff is all practical and to the point.

He was the philosopher who influenced Nietzsche the most

If you don't count Emerson as a philosopher!

I think it's good advice, but I also think it is wrong. There are writers who I read for the sheer joy of the skilled way they construct their prose- Salman Rushdie would come to mind as one.

That doesn't mean he doesn't also have worthwhile things to say. But there is undoubtedly a skill to great writing that is only improved by doing more of it.

"I think it's good advice, but I also think it is wrong."

But our example is the exception, not the rule. That doesn't prove him wrong however.

They aren't writers they are entertainers.

Hmmm... so is it necessary for someone's writing not to be enjoyable or entertaining in order for them to be thought a proper writer?

No, professional mass market writers are entertainer. Not sure how else to say it.

The one point he makes there, which I find to be terribly important, is the bit about reading a lot.

I don't claim to be a great writer or anything, but I've managed to get an article or two[1][2] "out there" and have actually had a few people (including a former English professor) give me some praise for my style. But outside of Creative Writing 101 my first year of college, and H.S. grammar class, I have done little in the way of "training" to be a writer.

Except... I read a lot. I mean, a lot. Like, a really, really, lot. I read voraciously, which is a trait I appear to have inherited from my mother. And I can't help but think that if you read a lot, you'll inevitably absorb enough of something to go a long way towards becoming a decent - if not great - writer, if you choose to write.

So yeah, I think "read a lot" and "write a lot" are really the keys to writing well. Sure, this might not get you to James Joyce territory, but for writing marketing material, blogs, technical docs, etc., it can take you a long way.

And as far as that goes, somebody famous (Stephen King, IIRC) said pretty much the same thing in a book on writing. "Read a lot, and write a lot".

I'm with Ryan here... don't label yourself as "a writer" just read and write. If you really don't get basic grammar and punctuation, read Strunk & White, or Eats, Shoots & Leaves. That should be enough to enable you to write at a respectable level.

I would add one more thing though... since I started writing more for specific reasons (that is, beyond random ranting on my blog) I do read with more of a conscious eye on the details of what I'm reading, in terms of structure, voice, etc. And I freely admit I will shamelessly crib useful ideas from other writers. Of course, it might not be the best thing for my interest in writing technical content that my favorite writers include Dean Koontz, Stephen King and H.P. Lovecraft.

[1]: http://www.infoworld.com/d/application-development/why-you-s...

[2]: http://www.infoworld.com/d/application-development/how-provi...

If writing is only a means to an end and it's wrong to identify as being a writer, why shouldn't the same analogy apply to programming?

I've taken an excerpt from the article and replaced certain words with analogous words related to programming: "The problem is identifying as a [programmer]. As though assembling [code] together is somehow its own activity. It isn’t. It’s a means to an end. And that end is always to [create] something..."

Advice given to people who want to pursue programming versus pursuing writing seems really different.

1. Why is that the case, and why are the two not quite analogous?

2. Is it just the bias of our perspective, as the "techie" people?

He points out, part of the reason his advice holds is that getting published isn't hard. And also that readers enjoy anything written, regardless of its writing style, as long as it's a good read. The same isn't true for programming. Getting 'published' requires getting a compiler to agree to run your code, getting peers willing to work with you, and finding a company which thinks you should be hired (or starting your own). And computer users won't accept buggy programs, even though they may accept poor grammar. Also, the industry is perfectly happy to tell programmers exactly what programs to write and pays them well. In effect, being a "writer" isn't that great of a goal because writing (in itself) for readers isn't that hard--it's hard finding something worth saying. Programming is hard and most programmers write for companies who already have an audience.

edit:

Maybe a better analogy to this article is not to programmers, but to startup founders. Don't set out to be a founder, set out to make something people want, and to do that requires a little bit of life experience too.

If you write enough and are willing to study, you can learn the proper grammar or diction. That said, it is sad that we don't seem to have authors who write fantastic prose anymore. Rather, everyone writes to the lowest common denominator, because (as the author notes), the prose isn't what matters. I feel this same way about music - I think it's often harder to find successful skilled musicians than it is to find successful musicians who found something interesting or different to play, regardless of their skill.

> it is sad that we don't seem to have authors who write fantastic prose anymore

To spin this around a little: we don't talk about authors in the past whose prose isn't worth going back to. Shakespeare had many contemporaries, but you might be hard pressed to name more than a couple.

Good prose can be challenging, and people don't want to be challenged all the time. I admire Pynchon's writing in Gravity's Rainbow - I don't want every book I read to be like that.

Or to put it another way: there are many novels from the 19th century that were massively popular at the time, but totally forgotten about now. They were novels that were pretty average in terms of prose, but had stories that were relevant to people at the time, and gripped them.

I doubt if in a hundred years people will still be reading the Da Vinci Code - but I can guarantee books like Infinite Jest, The Satanic Verses, Nights at the Circus, and the like will be attracting critical attention.

You just have to keep looking. One thing to note is that typically great artists rise in popularity over time while mediocre artists diminish. Looking back in time you tend to only notice the great artists, and in the moment they tend to be lost amongst the weeds. But that's usually how it is, with rare exceptions.

You could go out and experience a bunch of crazy shit and at the end of it all, not know how to put it in words that people will understand. That's what makes writing a craft. You could write passionately and still not get to what you're trying to say because you don't know how to make the words work for you. But I do agree, there's no point in writing something unless people are compelled to read it.

> there's no point in writing something unless people are compelled to read it

I would probably disagree with this, if only in the sense that there are several works I can think of that at the time of publication were ignored, only to be re-appraised at a later date. It can be very hard to determine whether your writing is compelling, and even if your contemporaries decide it isn't there's no reason it may not be relevant in the future.

Pretty good post.

Writing on pure impulse is good for practice and discipline and short-length things, but it won't help you when you need to write a ton of stuff that has flow and needs to be coherent. It is great for a first 'driver' to get you doing something productive, but you need to combine it with additional 'drivers' along the way (planning, coherency, etc.)

For instance, I could not imagine GRRM being successful with ASOIAF if it was written without discipline and planning.

An interesting contrast is that this author praises unique ideas, but discards its execution as less important (or not important), while most programmers are more concerned with the execution of ideas, since the ideas in that realm are very common (usually).

In both cases though, it's ideal to have both a good idea and good execution. In the case of this post, the execution is in the word choice, word play, and other writing elements I don't remember from school because I was too busy writing drunk and editing drunk.

It's about what's within it, not how they wrote it. But at the same time what's within it evolves with practice. With novels and poetry imagination is the limit. Practice pushes that forward, probably more so than with the sort of writing Ryan is doing. He makes some great points though.

Oddly enough, a lot of that applies to programming as well, though to a lesser degree.

I think it would be exactly like programming if piracy was legal.

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