- it's okay if you don't follow all of the advice; just do whatever you feel like doing, otherwise you'll make it a chore and you won't end up publishing
- Reddit's a great place to have conversations, but be prepared for many negative ones
- if you want to have readers, you need to account for the time you spend sharing your post and engaging with commenters. I might not publish a post this month, just because I had to spend time talking to people about a post I made on Cloudflare pay-per-crawl viability that turned quite popular.
- use AI LLMs to talk about how you feel and should reply to hostile comments. It's helped my mental health a ton.
> In fact, my suggestion is to make all your writing-related choices to optimize for this. If something seems like a good idea in principle, but would make it harder for you to write consistently or slower to get feedback, don’t do it.
But what if the thing that seems to be making it harder to write consistently (on a blog; I seem to have no problem commenting on forums) is just being me?
> (on a blog; I seem to have no problem commenting on forums)
Then write for forums. Let me briefly elaborate.
In a forum, the conversation is already going,and you catch it at a place that interests you, and throw in your two cents.
In a blog, there's too much ceremony: find "blog worthy" idea, do "blog worthy" research, write "blog worthy" prose, review and edit "blog worthily", publish.
Too many hassles, and perhaps some psychological barriers here or there too.
When you have an intetesting thought, use the forum as the audience in your mind, and write your response to your thought. Take this or that position, turn them on their heads, contrast and combine them, play around with them.
Then save and close the file, and let it steep. Come back to it when you remember it, or when it starts bugging you, and when you feel ready make a paper plane out of it and chuck it out the window to the winds, i.e. turn it into HTML and put it somewhere online. Ask some friends for feedback and their thoughts, retouch your thinking and your text. Lather, rinse, repeat.
You will consistently have ideas and counters ideas, it's unavoidable. After you have a rudimentary technique down (and forums grade/conversational is perfectly adequate) the rest is just imprinting your thought process on paper/into a file. It doesn't need to be written for fanciful reasons, thinking through writing is perfectly legit.
Then one file will lead to another, and then another, when you feel like it, because your writing muscle will strengthen. You don't need a daily/weekly/monthly schedule, unless you want to adopt one on purpose.
You can also read around the tech blogosphere for more inspiration, posts on writing or blogging is a frequent blogging subject :)
Given how we're on HN, I'd be amiss not to recommend a read through PG's essays on writing, and I also find Dan Luu's also interesting (https://danluu.com/writing-non-advice/).
Reading these, don't take them as gospel but as tasters, gauging your feelings about this or that approach, and fleshing out a process that works for you, understanding your likes and dislikes. Then accept your process.
But don't start with writing a blogging engine, for God's sake :)
Great guide! A few things I'd add, after starting my own blog https://developerwithacat.com in Feb:
- it's okay if you don't follow all of the advice; just do whatever you feel like doing, otherwise you'll make it a chore and you won't end up publishing
- Reddit's a great place to have conversations, but be prepared for many negative ones
- if you want to have readers, you need to account for the time you spend sharing your post and engaging with commenters. I might not publish a post this month, just because I had to spend time talking to people about a post I made on Cloudflare pay-per-crawl viability that turned quite popular.
- use AI LLMs to talk about how you feel and should reply to hostile comments. It's helped my mental health a ton.
> In fact, my suggestion is to make all your writing-related choices to optimize for this. If something seems like a good idea in principle, but would make it harder for you to write consistently or slower to get feedback, don’t do it.
But what if the thing that seems to be making it harder to write consistently (on a blog; I seem to have no problem commenting on forums) is just being me?
> (on a blog; I seem to have no problem commenting on forums)
Then write for forums. Let me briefly elaborate.
In a forum, the conversation is already going,and you catch it at a place that interests you, and throw in your two cents.
In a blog, there's too much ceremony: find "blog worthy" idea, do "blog worthy" research, write "blog worthy" prose, review and edit "blog worthily", publish.
Too many hassles, and perhaps some psychological barriers here or there too.
When you have an intetesting thought, use the forum as the audience in your mind, and write your response to your thought. Take this or that position, turn them on their heads, contrast and combine them, play around with them.
Then save and close the file, and let it steep. Come back to it when you remember it, or when it starts bugging you, and when you feel ready make a paper plane out of it and chuck it out the window to the winds, i.e. turn it into HTML and put it somewhere online. Ask some friends for feedback and their thoughts, retouch your thinking and your text. Lather, rinse, repeat.
You will consistently have ideas and counters ideas, it's unavoidable. After you have a rudimentary technique down (and forums grade/conversational is perfectly adequate) the rest is just imprinting your thought process on paper/into a file. It doesn't need to be written for fanciful reasons, thinking through writing is perfectly legit.
Then one file will lead to another, and then another, when you feel like it, because your writing muscle will strengthen. You don't need a daily/weekly/monthly schedule, unless you want to adopt one on purpose.
You can also read around the tech blogosphere for more inspiration, posts on writing or blogging is a frequent blogging subject :)
Given how we're on HN, I'd be amiss not to recommend a read through PG's essays on writing, and I also find Dan Luu's also interesting (https://danluu.com/writing-non-advice/).
Reading these, don't take them as gospel but as tasters, gauging your feelings about this or that approach, and fleshing out a process that works for you, understanding your likes and dislikes. Then accept your process.
But don't start with writing a blogging engine, for God's sake :)
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