I don’t blog as much as I would like to. I would like to blog more because I think it would make me a better writer, because I sometimes have sufficiently interesting thoughts such that I would like to flesh them out in writing and/or be able to share them with others, and because it’s a low risk method of decreasing my self-consciousness. Oh and also because sometimes keeping records of what I thought/did at particular times in the past is extremely useful.
Barriers:
1) It feels egotistical/arrogant to think that anyone wants to hear about what I did today and how it affected me, and other ‘diary’ type things. So writing about those things would be a waste of other peoples’ time, and a turn-off for any future visitors to my blog. (Note: I do write privately about those things sometimes, mostly when something happens that has the potential to change my beliefs. But I often start out with such posts as public and then change them to private halfway through writing them, because the idea of publishing them makes me cringe)
2) My thoughts on non-personal topics are usually not completely thought out. Writing them in non-complete form ends up being rambly and inconclusive, which is again a waste of peoples’ reading time. So I often decide to wait until I’ve thought about it in more detail, or to write a rough draft elsewhere before writing a polished post, and then never get around to writing any of it.
3) My writing style in general is often more long-winded and opaque than I would prefer. This causes a mild ugh field around seeing my own writing anywhere in the public domain, especially if it’s more than a paragraph or two long.
4) I am self-conscious in general about exposing myself/my work in public. Blogging was supposed to help with this but I’ve actually gotten more self-conscious about it over time, not less.
Keep a public blog under a psuedonymn, where you post the ramblings, daily life, and so forth. Your friends might enjoy reading it, and it lets you practice writing. Whenever you write something particularly interesting on your personal blog, do a second draft that cuts down on the rambling and post it on your main blog.
This is largely what I already do (keep a pseudonymous public blog) but as I said, my self-consciousness about posting material there has increased over time. I have ‘daily life’ posts on it from years back that would make me cringe hard if I were to go and look at them.
Come to think of it, my self-consciousness is strongly correlated with the number of people that I’m not close friends with who follow my blog. So starting a new secondary blog would remove that barrier. Alright, I’m going to commit to trying to keep a primary and secondary blog for at least a month, and see how it goes.
What is “suggestion-driven fiction”? Googling was unhelpful.
What it sounds like is fiction in which the author has no particular story in mind as (s)he begins the narration, but rather the author generates plot and characters in response to reader suggestions as each chapter is published.
If that is the kind of thing you are talking about, it sounds very intriguing. But I wonder how a beginner captures enough initial readers to generate the suggestions. Reciprocity? If someone wants to organize a circle of three or four novice writers producing serialized fiction on their blogs and providing suggestions to each other, I would like to join the group.
Yea, that’s basically it, or at least that falls squarely into the category together with some other things. The most common by far is a sort of communal roleplaying where the actions of the protagonist are determined by the community but you do everything else.
If you wait a week or so, the lesswrong forums will probably be a good place for you to start a tradition of them, in case you don’t want to learn the culture of some existing place. You could also run it on that biog you already have and rely on the comments functionality.
I follow a lot of these things, in a lot of places, and know a fair bit about how to make one successful, so if you’re ever in doubt or interest or inspiration is inexplicably dying feel free to ask me.
Oh, and please post a link here whenever you start so I can read it and suggest things.
You can also write stories set in a collaboratively-created world. I think this is commonly called ‘conworlding’, but I don’t know enough about it to know if I’m actually using the term correctly.
Here are twoexamples of the kind of thing I’m talking about. (If you sign up for the former, which has a rather high proportion of transhumanists playing, let them know that Adelene sent you—I get imaginary currency for recruiting.)
Not the kind of writing I was talking about, unfortunately. Fiction is another area where I would like to eventually put in some work but it’s not even close to a priority at the moment.
See 3), I have an ugh field around looking at my writing that means if I waited until I felt proud of something I wrote I would never publish anything. My current workaround, which I’ve used for academic coursework, involves pre-committing to aiming for a minimum level of quality rather than trying to be happy with my work. After sufficient time has passed since writing, I can usually look at it more objectively. Which suggests that I should commit to posting privately and then revisiting posts a week or two later after the ugh field has faded
Maybe set things up so that, once you write something for the blog, it’s automatically released to the public three weeks later unless you come back at least one week after initially writing it and manually keep it private? That way, the embarrassment acts as a reminder to review and revise.
I don’t blog as much as I would like to. I would like to blog more because I think it would make me a better writer, because I sometimes have sufficiently interesting thoughts such that I would like to flesh them out in writing and/or be able to share them with others, and because it’s a low risk method of decreasing my self-consciousness. Oh and also because sometimes keeping records of what I thought/did at particular times in the past is extremely useful.
Barriers:
1) It feels egotistical/arrogant to think that anyone wants to hear about what I did today and how it affected me, and other ‘diary’ type things. So writing about those things would be a waste of other peoples’ time, and a turn-off for any future visitors to my blog. (Note: I do write privately about those things sometimes, mostly when something happens that has the potential to change my beliefs. But I often start out with such posts as public and then change them to private halfway through writing them, because the idea of publishing them makes me cringe)
2) My thoughts on non-personal topics are usually not completely thought out. Writing them in non-complete form ends up being rambly and inconclusive, which is again a waste of peoples’ reading time. So I often decide to wait until I’ve thought about it in more detail, or to write a rough draft elsewhere before writing a polished post, and then never get around to writing any of it.
3) My writing style in general is often more long-winded and opaque than I would prefer. This causes a mild ugh field around seeing my own writing anywhere in the public domain, especially if it’s more than a paragraph or two long.
4) I am self-conscious in general about exposing myself/my work in public. Blogging was supposed to help with this but I’ve actually gotten more self-conscious about it over time, not less.
Keep a public blog under a psuedonymn, where you post the ramblings, daily life, and so forth. Your friends might enjoy reading it, and it lets you practice writing. Whenever you write something particularly interesting on your personal blog, do a second draft that cuts down on the rambling and post it on your main blog.
This is largely what I already do (keep a pseudonymous public blog) but as I said, my self-consciousness about posting material there has increased over time. I have ‘daily life’ posts on it from years back that would make me cringe hard if I were to go and look at them.
Come to think of it, my self-consciousness is strongly correlated with the number of people that I’m not close friends with who follow my blog. So starting a new secondary blog would remove that barrier. Alright, I’m going to commit to trying to keep a primary and secondary blog for at least a month, and see how it goes.
If your blog has gained readers, that seems like a pretty good sign to me that you’re not just wasting peoples’ time.
Good point, and one I should remind myself of more often
Write suggestion-driven fiction.
What is “suggestion-driven fiction”? Googling was unhelpful.
What it sounds like is fiction in which the author has no particular story in mind as (s)he begins the narration, but rather the author generates plot and characters in response to reader suggestions as each chapter is published.
If that is the kind of thing you are talking about, it sounds very intriguing. But I wonder how a beginner captures enough initial readers to generate the suggestions. Reciprocity? If someone wants to organize a circle of three or four novice writers producing serialized fiction on their blogs and providing suggestions to each other, I would like to join the group.
Yea, that’s basically it, or at least that falls squarely into the category together with some other things. The most common by far is a sort of communal roleplaying where the actions of the protagonist are determined by the community but you do everything else.
There are a lot of sites with communities that do these things, usually the games/roleplaying section of various forums or image boards. There are also sites that specialize in them, in which case it’s usually some specific type of them such as illustrated ( http://www.mspaforums.com/forumdisplay.php?85-Forum-Adventures ), branching+anonymous+collaborative ( http://www.epicsplosion.com/epicsploitation/adventures ), etc.
If you wait a week or so, the lesswrong forums will probably be a good place for you to start a tradition of them, in case you don’t want to learn the culture of some existing place. You could also run it on that biog you already have and rely on the comments functionality.
I follow a lot of these things, in a lot of places, and know a fair bit about how to make one successful, so if you’re ever in doubt or interest or inspiration is inexplicably dying feel free to ask me.
Oh, and please post a link here whenever you start so I can read it and suggest things.
You can also write stories set in a collaboratively-created world. I think this is commonly called ‘conworlding’, but I don’t know enough about it to know if I’m actually using the term correctly.
Here are two examples of the kind of thing I’m talking about. (If you sign up for the former, which has a rather high proportion of transhumanists playing, let them know that Adelene sent you—I get imaginary currency for recruiting.)
Not the kind of writing I was talking about, unfortunately. Fiction is another area where I would like to eventually put in some work but it’s not even close to a priority at the moment.
Keep a private blog, and consider posting to a public one those essays that you’re particularly proud of.
See 3), I have an ugh field around looking at my writing that means if I waited until I felt proud of something I wrote I would never publish anything. My current workaround, which I’ve used for academic coursework, involves pre-committing to aiming for a minimum level of quality rather than trying to be happy with my work. After sufficient time has passed since writing, I can usually look at it more objectively. Which suggests that I should commit to posting privately and then revisiting posts a week or two later after the ugh field has faded
Maybe set things up so that, once you write something for the blog, it’s automatically released to the public three weeks later unless you come back at least one week after initially writing it and manually keep it private? That way, the embarrassment acts as a reminder to review and revise.