writing

the best measure of a blog post is how many good conversations it leads to email replies, coffees, new friends, etc. all are much more fun/valuable than likes and views

I talked to a friend who wants to start a blog and wanted some advice on that—how to find her voice and so on. A few random thoughts:

Realising my way of writing is akin to Penn and Teller's approach to magic; "Magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect."

My unique advantage / fatal flaw is sinking absurd hours into researching & writing things no one else would ever write about

Links on the In­ter­net last for­ever or a year, whichever in­con­ve­niences you more. This is a major prob­lem for any­one se­ri­ous about writ­ing with good ref­er­ences, as link rot will crip­ple sev­eral per­cent of all links each year, and com­pound­ing.

By making clear and sharp claims, I reveal my understanding so that I—or the person I’m writing to—can see the state of my knowledge and direct their feedback to the point where it will help my thinking improve.

This is valuable to do even in areas where you know way too little to “warrant” an opinion.

Seeing your ideas crumble can be a frustrating experience, but it is the point if you are writing to think. You want it to break. It is in the cracks the light shines in.

Posting can be fun, entertaining, and even enlightening. But when we want to share a creative act we went deep into the void to create, we owe our work more than a post. We owe it a RELEASE.

A RELEASE is a richer and deeper expression of an idea. A release is not just the work, it’s anticipating the work. There’s an invitation to become part of it i... See more