It is time that I apply the principle of more dakka and just start writing (or rather publishing) more. I know deliberate practice works for writing. If you want to be good at something, you need to do it badly and then just keep going with doing the thing is very common advice. I still find it very hard to do.
Things I ran into when writing before that stopped me:
It’s hard to decide what to write about
I get anxiety about writing something that is not good enough
Topics that go into my head about what to write about revolve mostly about how it is hard to write.
Some of the writers that I admire would see it as below their standard to write a post like that? Lots of unproductive self-reinforcing status anxiety follows.
Perfectionism around writing and what I can do on the platform that I am writing on.
The real pain: All the small decisions at the end. “Do I also post this on my blog or is it too much work?”, deciding to try and in the worst case I can eliminate that part of the process tomorrow. Noticing those annoyances could also be added to the post, then noticing how this is taking over the post
At the end, I fell for the trap of editing again (I could have been done in 1h, and now it is 1h 46 minutes).
Things that worked in my favor this time, so I ended up publishing this.
I decided to stick with 1 hour of writing and just publishing what I have at that point sounds safe to my brain.
I decided to just put it on Twitter and hope for the best on the distraction front.
Instead of editing my earlier drafts, I gave each draft an iteration number (feels more like progress!) and then I just started writing again and completing things with copilot. (This was draft 3)
I decided to stick with a nested list format, which is my favorite format for writing.
I decided no actually this nested list doesn’t work on Twitter, so I will put this in an lw shortform
gave up on adding more relevant links. That is valuable in general, and maybe I can find ways to make this easier and less distraction prone (I end up searching for a specific blogpost I like and then don’t end up finding it and read something else interesting from that blog).
Ah, there is that weird relation between writing and publishing. On one hand, publishing gives you the incentive to write. On the other hand, publishing gives you the anxiety about writing.
I have an intuition that a good solution to this would be some kind of multi-layered publishing system. Where you publish the article first to your close friends, and then if you feel okay about it, you promote it to larger audiences. At each step you can update the article; generally because you want to impress the larger audience more, but also based on the feedback from the previous audience. Probably each audience would have a separate comment section. At the first step, there would be no anxiety, because only your close friends will see it; and the next step, you would be encouraged by the feedback from the previous step.
Something similar could be achieved by having two blogs, one only accessible for friends. Maybe as a mutual help, for a small group of bloggers who want to overcome their writing blocks.
Topics that go into my head about what to write about revolve mostly about how it is hard to write.
Yeah, that is a trap. Although you might write an article like that, without publishing it, as a therapy.
I decided no actually this nested list doesn’t work on Twitter, so I will put this in an lw shortform
By the way, some of my LW posts started as shortforms that grew too long, so I decided to publish them separately. This reduces the anxiety a lot, because as long as I am writing in the shortform editor, I don’t really try to make it perfect. And when I switch to article form, I already have a large part of it written.
I wonder, maybe I should try writing all my article ideas as shortforms. To start writing, and commit to publishing it today, either as a shortform or as an article, depending on how well the shortform writing will go.
I think more posts should be formatted as a nested list. They are especially clear, since indentation ≈ elaboration, which is not visible in continuous text.
Weekly has been feeling good to me, in terms of publishing! I write every day, but maybe 90% of it stays ~private lately. Weirdly, the most painful experience in a year of weekly posting is when a post of mine DID blow up! Attention ain’t all you need after all.
I am not sure if this random other person’s experience is welcome, but I often struggle with little local peer group to viscerally ground what I should be doing, so, here’s hoping it’s nice for you (and bystanders!) to see.
It is time that I apply the principle of more dakka and just start writing (or rather publishing) more. I know deliberate practice works for writing. If you want to be good at something, you need to do it badly and then just keep going with doing the thing is very common advice. I still find it very hard to do.
Things I ran into when writing before that stopped me:
It’s hard to decide what to write about
I get anxiety about writing something that is not good enough
Topics that go into my head about what to write about revolve mostly about how it is hard to write.
Some of the writers that I admire would see it as below their standard to write a post like that? Lots of unproductive self-reinforcing status anxiety follows.
Perfectionism around writing and what I can do on the platform that I am writing on.
The real pain: All the small decisions at the end. “Do I also post this on my blog or is it too much work?”, deciding to try and in the worst case I can eliminate that part of the process tomorrow. Noticing those annoyances could also be added to the post, then noticing how this is taking over the post
At the end, I fell for the trap of editing again (I could have been done in 1h, and now it is 1h 46 minutes).
Things that worked in my favor this time, so I ended up publishing this.
I decided to stick with 1 hour of writing and just publishing what I have at that point sounds safe to my brain.
I decided to just put it on Twitter and hope for the best on the distraction front.
Instead of editing my earlier drafts, I gave each draft an iteration number (feels more like progress!) and then I just started writing again and completing things with copilot. (This was draft 3)
I decided to stick with a nested list format, which is my favorite format for writing.
I decided no actually this nested list doesn’t work on Twitter, so I will put this in an lw shortform
gave up on adding more relevant links. That is valuable in general, and maybe I can find ways to make this easier and less distraction prone (I end up searching for a specific blogpost I like and then don’t end up finding it and read something else interesting from that blog).
Ah, there is that weird relation between writing and publishing. On one hand, publishing gives you the incentive to write. On the other hand, publishing gives you the anxiety about writing.
I have an intuition that a good solution to this would be some kind of multi-layered publishing system. Where you publish the article first to your close friends, and then if you feel okay about it, you promote it to larger audiences. At each step you can update the article; generally because you want to impress the larger audience more, but also based on the feedback from the previous audience. Probably each audience would have a separate comment section. At the first step, there would be no anxiety, because only your close friends will see it; and the next step, you would be encouraged by the feedback from the previous step.
Something similar could be achieved by having two blogs, one only accessible for friends. Maybe as a mutual help, for a small group of bloggers who want to overcome their writing blocks.
Yeah, that is a trap. Although you might write an article like that, without publishing it, as a therapy.
By the way, some of my LW posts started as shortforms that grew too long, so I decided to publish them separately. This reduces the anxiety a lot, because as long as I am writing in the shortform editor, I don’t really try to make it perfect. And when I switch to article form, I already have a large part of it written.
I wonder, maybe I should try writing all my article ideas as shortforms. To start writing, and commit to publishing it today, either as a shortform or as an article, depending on how well the shortform writing will go.
I think more posts should be formatted as a nested list. They are especially clear, since indentation ≈ elaboration, which is not visible in continuous text.
Weekly has been feeling good to me, in terms of publishing! I write every day, but maybe 90% of it stays ~private lately. Weirdly, the most painful experience in a year of weekly posting is when a post of mine DID blow up! Attention ain’t all you need after all.
I am not sure if this random other person’s experience is welcome, but I often struggle with little local peer group to viscerally ground what I should be doing, so, here’s hoping it’s nice for you (and bystanders!) to see.