
Ask HN: How Do You Blog? - rpastuszak
Questions (pick 1...n):<p>1. What&#x27;s your process?<p>2. How did you start? What was hard? What was easy?<p>3. How do you stay motivated? Do you?<p>Bonus:<p>4. What were the struggles you had to overcome to develop a regular writing habit (e.g. shyness, self-consciousness, poor time management skills, etc...)? How did you do it?
======
h0p3
I don't know if my situation fits yours. I'm a crazy person.

My wiki ([https://philosopher.life](https://philosopher.life)) started out as
a non-linear letter. That seed grew into a vine and then a garden. I write
every day, even when I don't want to. I talk to myself and those who matter to
me (even those I've not yet met or never will). I write because the stories we
tell and retell ourselves and others are objectively valuable. I consider it
my moral obligation and vocation to read, think, and write.

~~~
satvikpendem
I couldn't really navigate your blog easily. Any posts you'd like to point me
to that you think are good?

~~~
h0p3
Blog is perhaps too weak a term; it is far more than that. I'm sorry that it's
not intuitive or polished. It really isn't everyone's cup of tea. In a way, it
is difficult to navigate because it's huge (much larger than most people would
predict). There are currently +12,000 different pages inside the html file.
Even the questions of what I think is Good, what is good in the wiki, and what
it is good for, are core problems I wrestle with quite a bit inside it. I
suggest that if it were to be useful to you, it would be in virtue of your
patience and curiosity. I'm not trying to be obscure here, and it's not a mere
game. I just don't know how to say it any better. I recommend wandering the
entrance.

------
okaleniuk
I write [https://wordsandbuttons.online/](https://wordsandbuttons.online/) \-
a blog with interactive elements about maths and programming.

1\. Fishing an idea, investigating the details, programming a sketch of
interactive elements. Then writing, and fitting the explorables to the
narrative. Then editing. Then editing. And then editing. Then publishing, and
apologizing for all the typos, errors, and mistakes that slipped through the
editing process.

2\. I started writing for the university newspaper back in college and the
habit stuck. The hardest part for me is writing in English. I don't have the
fully developed sense of language so it's like cooking without the sense of
smell. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it smells fish. I just can't tell.
Programming and maintaining my own "platform" appeared to be much easier than
it looks.

3\. There are two great motivational powers: making people you like happy; and
proving people that don't believe in you wrong.

4\. In my case it was simple. When I was young, I couldn't stay doing anything
regularly. Not only writing but exercising, learning, going to work, all that
things. But people around me who were older didn't seem to have any trouble
with that. So I just decided to get older. And I did. Eventually. Now writing
and programming for the blog is just something that I do daily after work and
on Saturdays.

------
palebt
1\. Most of the times I have (at least) 1 active coding project. While working
on it, I note down whatever I consider "interesting" (i.e. something I figured
out that might be of interest for other devs).

2\. I had "Oh, this might be interesting for others!" moments too many times.

3\. At the beginning it's easy (excitement). Then you need determination and
consistency to keep doing it. I guess my list keeps growing, so I keep
blogging.

4\. Shyness. Imposter syndrome. Then I realised that it's fine to be wrong
sometimes. Worst-case scenario is that someone will tell you it's wrong and
you will learn something new.

My blog: [https://www.rockandnull.com](https://www.rockandnull.com)

------
hikhvar
I just started
[https://journal.petrausch.info/](https://journal.petrausch.info/)

As the name indicates I try to run it as a public journal. I write down stuff
I learned without setting me any targets. The target audience is myself. In
the last years I solved a lot of problems and just forgot the details. Local
Journaling tooling had a bad search. So I started the public journal to
leverage the Google search.

------
TeMPOraL
Yes.

1\. I get fascinated by some idea, start dumping notes about it, and over time
turn them into a text - often in burst sessions where I output a lot of text,
and then it either goes immediately up, or (if I care more) I let it lie for a
few days, and then review and edit it.

2\. Back when I was a kid and was learning programming to make games, everyone
in the local gamedev scene had a "dev blog", so I wanted to have one too.

3\. I don't. Every now and then I feel I finally have something to write about
(see point 4.), and when that feeling becomes overwhelming, I sit down and
craft a post.

4\. I didn't. The main struggle I have now: I feel I have nothing to write
about that isn't already written much better by people much smarter than me. I
don't feel the need to write for myself only - I have a folder named "mind-
dumps" full of .org files, into which I stream my thoughts regularly. So if I
want to publish something on my blog, I have to feel it's a contribution to
the greater web of information. Curiously, I didn't have this problem as a kid
- I'd just write down the things I've learned, mostly to show off to my
friends who also had dev blogs and also wrote about things they've learned.

------
bitxbitxbitcoin
4\. What were the struggles you had to overcome to develop a regular writing
habit (e.g. shyness, self-consciousness, poor time management skills, etc...)?
How did you do it?

One thing that I've found helps is to set aside a specific time of day or week
for and to create associated habits with your writing habit.

Maybe that's writing after you take a shower in the morning or after you brush
your teeth - or maybe even after brushing your teeth but before showering.
Maybe it's to always eat a specific breakfast before or while you write. If
you write better or more willingly while under the influence of something
(i.e. caffeine, THC, CBD, alcohol) remember to do that to start a writing
sesh. YMMV but any sort of Pavlovian push in the right direction can't hurt,
right?

PS: A lot of my examples are morning-centric because many writers report that
early morning writing is best for them.[1]

[1] [https://jamesclear.com/daily-routines-
writers](https://jamesclear.com/daily-routines-writers)

------
tdom
I've been blogging about programming on Medium for 6 months now. I'm a part of
the partner program, and I'm able to make about $100 a month, and tey to
publish an article a month. This is probably where my motivation comes from,
since I know I'm going to make at least a little money from the time it took
me to write the blog. However I also publish some more articles on my personal
site ([https://tdom.dev](https://tdom.dev)), since I'm not really a fan of
medium. It's only good for reaching an audience. I would rather make 0 from my
personal blog and get thes same amount of views as on medium, but oh well.

~~~
shrutipathak
As long as you are reaching an audience right!

I like [https://dev.to](https://dev.to) for the same reason. There is no pay
but still motivating for sure

------
mrjivraj
I had been meaning to blog for a long time. But I always found setting up my
own blog to be cumbersome. Last summer I heard about Substack and just started
writing. They make it quite easy. I used to write whenever I felt like it and
then I started to do it once a week. It's certainly become more of a habit now
and I am always thinking about what to write next.

I have always been obsessed about the stock market so that's what I started
writing about:
[https://playingfordoubles.substack.com/](https://playingfordoubles.substack.com/)

It's been a fun journey. It's fun to go back in time and have a diary of what
I was thinking re: investment ideas and investment philosophy, and how things
played out.

To answer your questions more directly 1) Process -- i try to have a list of
topics and a date I want to publish by. I try to do my writing in 2 or 3
sittings. I dont write everyday.

2) I think I answered above.

3) At first it was a personal commitment to myself, then i started telling a
few people about it, and now i guess its a combination of seeing more people
reading the articles and also not wanting to lose my habit of writing every
week.

4) Struggles - it's been a big time commitment. Also, yes, it's a bit odd to
put yourself out there but now I actually use it to my advantage - since I
write about stocks, if I dont feel comfortable writing about something, I
probably shouldn't be investing that way!

------
squeakynick
I write the blog: [http://DataGenetics.com](http://DataGenetics.com)

1\. Process: I keep a task list (using google tools) with a list of topic
ideas. When I think of something I want to write about, or find interesting
links, I place them there. There's typically about two dozen ideas at any time
incubating.

2\. Start: I started the blog about a dozen years ago as a way to add depth to
my website that was the front-end for my consulting business. I stopped
consulting shortly after starting, and am now retired, but I keep the blog up
on that site; I've built a following. It was easy to start. Ideas are easy;
the hard part is finding the free time to write!

3\. Motivation. I love doing it. I get pleasure from writing. When I was a
kid, I loved reading the works of Martin Gardner. I hope my blog could be seen
some way as an homage to his works.

4\. No real struggles, but I made a conscious choice to not enable comments on
my site. Comments will get you down. Everyone is a critic. Jerks will say
"that's not special, I could have don that" (hmmm, but you didn't). My email
address is not hard to find on the site if you want to get in contact with me.
Don't fret too much about publishing; do what is right for you. There is a
whole spectrum of 'advice' from people saying regular rapid cadence (even if
you have nothing to say), through to only publish gems. I typically average
about one post a week. Some of my posts are lightweight, others are
heavyweights.

~~~
stadeschuldt
This is one of my favorite blogs. It's very well written. Thank you for
sharing these interesting problems.

------
k__
1\. For years I would simply start writing about stuff I was interested in.
Now, I research more and write outlines, so I get more information density.

2\. I signed up on dev.to and wrote stuff about React/Webpack, because that
was what I was working with at that time.

3\. Success motivated me. I started in 2017 and since then I got a book deal
and starting in 2020 my main income is from blogging.

4\. Regularly finding new topics was my main problem.

[https://kay.is](https://kay.is)

------
Insanity
I used to blog quite regularly about a decade ago - but somewhere during my
final year of uni I became insanely busy plus lost motivation. and it watered
down with just a few occasional blogpost inbetween either for myself of guest
blogposts for companies.

Since about half a year ago I blog semi-regularly on Medium. I know a lot of
people on here don't like Medium links - although I had a few on the frontpage
which was motivating.

To answer your questions:

1) I don't have a concrete one - I stumble something that peeks my interest, I
try to understand the topic and then write down my thoughts on medium. Most of
it is about Go.

2) I started in high school thinking my blogposts might help someone. I
followed a lot of blogs myself and just liked the idea. It wasn't hard to
start - as a teenager you always think you know everything so you're pretty
careless. That didn't stay. :P

3) Honestly - I have no good answer to this because I regularly lose
motivation. What I will say though - for all the dislike towards medium -
seeing my stats does make me want to write more. A few of my blogposts are
spontaniously shared on reddit / twitter, and are the first search result in
google. So it generates daily traffic. I enjoy the idea that I'm actually
helping people find an answer.

------
staysaasy
1\. I write on nights and weekends in short scheduled blocks of time. Our blog
is about scaling product and engineering at a hypergrowth startup, and I've
kept a running list of things that I've learned for about 5 years (over 50
pages of notes). When I want more content, I pull inspiration from that list.

2\. It wasn't hard to start, you just need to stay motivated. I also highly
recommend picking a stupidly simple stack for your blog. Do not let technology
choices or rabbit holes get in the way of writing! We use Jekyll + Gitlab for
CD, you can see it here at [https://staysaasy.com/](https://staysaasy.com/)
and it's stupidly simple and free to maintain.

3\. My engineering counterpart and I write our blog together. We're
partners/counterparts at work and on our blog, and it's a huge motivator to
have a partner in crime. I highly recommend this step!

4\. In order to write more candidly about potentially sensitive
management/leadership topics, we write anonymously as our company is
reasonably well known in tech circles. Discipline is the key. Block time and
take notes on what you want to write about so that you're never lacking in
inspiration.

------
j-kent
I'm just getting started, but here's my process so far. I've found that an
idea for a post will just strike suddenly, usually at inopportune times for
writing. So I try to capture as much as I can in that moment using voice-to-
text on my phone using google keep or google docs. I also have keep a list of
ideas and topics in google docs that I can capture if I'm on my work computer
or on my phone.

Once I have my ideas a bit organized and some time to write I'll look through
the list and pick one that still speaks to me. I'll start with an outline of
the main points that I want to hit and from there it just feels natural to
fill it out.

I think the most important thing to do when blogging is to actually decide to
write, and not futz around with all the other technical things involved. Do
what you need to do to get your blog up and running and compartmentalize the
writing from that other stuff (hosting, plugins, analytics, etc.). You can
spend weeks just messing with that stuff and not have a single article posted.

P.S. I'm using a Jekyll template hosted on Github pages to power my blog. it
was the fastest, easiest and cheapest way to get up and running IMHO. I'm
never going back to wordpress.

------
sixhobbits
I started by reading blogs. I wanted to contribute back to the same ecosystem
that taught me so much (and I liked writing), so I started blogging about side
projects on Blogger.

I soon found Digital Ocean's writing program. They were paying $200 for blog
posts, which was a lot as a student in South Africa.

Money was fairly motivating, but soon the long and slow editing process got
tiring, so I started freelance blogging for a few other sites instead.

Then I created GitHub page[0] with links to places that pay for writing and
links to some resources I enjoyed for learning how to write better.

Now I'm convinced that the fact that more and more companies are paying
amateur bloggers for content means that there's a nieche for more
professionally written content, so (shameless plug) I launched Ritza[1] (I'm
focussing on it full time from today only, so it's still very rough!)

[0] [https://github.com/sixhobbits/technical-
writing/blob/master/...](https://github.com/sixhobbits/technical-
writing/blob/master/write-for-us.md)

[1] [https://ritza.co](https://ritza.co)

~~~
erikpl
Do you have tips for making money through technical writing other than writing
for Digital Ocean or starting your own shop?

Student and writing enthusiast here ️

~~~
sixhobbits
the github links to a bunch of other places that also pay. There is also
whopaystechnicalwriters.com which has a link to a book that Philip recently
published with more thorough advice.

otherwise write, write, write. There exists no method that will make you a
better writer than writing a million words. (loosely paraphrasing patio11).
Once you have published something it is much easier to find follow on clients.
Publishers like PacktPub, Apress etc will usually happily take on
inexperienced writers. They don't pay that well but they'll push you hard to
get words out the door.

------
mortivore
1\. Pick a topic -> look into topic -> write about topic -> post topic ->
revise as I feel like it

Internet is an interesting medium because once it's out there, it's not really
out there forever. You can change it as much as you want.

I started after reading that having a blog was beneficial. This was from a
perspective of building a personal brand. At the beginning I was trying to do
1 per week, but I became burnt out on that, and noticed I wasn't really
pursuing things I cared about.

I'm trying to get back into it this year, and only writing about stuff that
actually catches my interest. This leads to having an irregular writing
schedule. This is considered bad practice for building a brand, but I'm no
longer worried about building a brand. I want to have a place to put my
thoughts together, and put out there when I happen to have them.

Even with this change in perspective I've noticed my ability to write posts
has gotten much better from when I started.

Simple: Gatsby.js, github, netlify stack at
[https://carlchesterlloyd.com/](https://carlchesterlloyd.com/)

~~~
tlarkworthy
I agree that once I stopped being ego driven, quality went up. Weirdly this
also happened when I stopped worrying about my career, I got better at doing
my job (less stress)

------
karanke
Here's my process wrt
[https://reframing.substack.com/](https://reframing.substack.com/):

1\. Get an idea, write it down in Notes, mull over it for 2-3 weeks, do
research and create an outline, write the article

2\. I had something to get out there, so I wrote something on Friday.
Committed to myself that I'd do the same next week and I'm now 4 weeks in.

3\. I think of it as sharpening my writing muscle, especially with regard to
what topics I choose and how I tell that story. I'm willing to consider a lot
of my current work as a "throwaway" until I get better at my craft.
Eventually, I'll develop a proper audience and hopefully, something will go
viral.

4\. Perfectionism was a big one, previously I would always put things off
until they're perfect. Now I have to ship every Friday so I'm less focused on
getting it perfect. Another was that the story I want to tell shifts while
writing it, hopefully, I get better at this over time.

------
jjjbokma
I mostly do link dumping at [https://plurrrr.com/](https://plurrrr.com/). I
wrote the static blog generator that it uses myself, it's available at
[https://github.com/john-bokma/tumblelog](https://github.com/john-
bokma/tumblelog)

------
genjipress
1\. I keep a percolating list of subjects -- writing fiction (SF&F),
movies/books, philosophy (Zen in particular) -- and whenever I get a seed for
a post, I just write down a blurb of it as a draft and then expand on it
later. I may have more ideas than I can do justice to at any one time, but
that's part of how the gears keep turning: there's never a shortage of
material.

2\. I started blogging a long time ago -- more than 20 years, really -- but I
was highly scattershot for a long time, and I'm not proud of a lot of the
material I put out until about a decade or so ago. Focusing on a few topics of
deep personal interest helped.

3\. See last sentence of #2.

4\. My biggest struggle was not feeling like I had nothing to offer anyone in
terms of insight or whatnot. Eventually, I decided whatever it was that was
_mine_ would be more than enough.

[https://www.genjipress.com](https://www.genjipress.com)

------
geerlingguy
1\. Almost any non-trivial task I perform, I open a file in my code editor
(Sublime) and start documenting what I'm doing (order and notes about the
process) in Markdown.

If I think it's interesting and/or would be helpful to share so others don't
have to spend the time I did trying to figure out how to do the same thing
(half the time yes, half no), I'll copy and paste the markdown into a new blog
post on my Drupal-powered blog, jeffgeerling.com.

If I have the time, I'll spend 10 min to 1 hour cleaning up the text and
getting it to 'publish'able form, and publish the post. Every so often, if I
think it's a post worth sharing more widely, I'll hold off on publishing until
mid-morning US Eastern time on a weekday as around that time seems to give my
writing more traction if posted on HN/Reddit/Twitter/etc. Otherwise many
articles just go into the void, but get picked up by random obscure Google
searches.

2\. I started writing in high school, just posting journal-style updates. In
college I started posting some of these on a Xanga blog. Then I switched to a
generated HTML blog, and for the past 8 years I've been using Drupal so I can
easily edit on my phone as needed and have comments built in. The hardest part
is writing, it's always hard to put down words that I'm okay with publishing.
And choosing whether to actually publish what I write or not. It's also hard
to keep comments from being horrible spam mess, which is why most people don't
allow them. I think they provide a ton of benefit (especially for old content
that would otherwise get stale and worthless) if you moderate them like I do,
though, so I keep them.

3\. I stay motivated by finding my own blog posts in Google Search after
Google Search—so many times I have to solve the same problem over and over
again. The blog is kind of my brain dump, over time, so I devote less of my
memory trying to remember random complex processes and more time doing new
things.

------
_bxg1
Re: #3 and #4, I just write when I have something I feel is worth sharing.
Sometimes that happens twice in one week; sometimes I go a month or two
without writing anything. I don't guilt myself about it. It's easy to be
motivated when your own desire to share ideas is the only motivating force.

------
ijustwanttovote
My personal site is [https://www.michael1e.com/](https://www.michael1e.com/).
I have my Bear app open on the side for quick notes. Sometimes, those notes
will turn into a blog post.

1\. I usually write up about things I learned while trying to figure out
problems. 2\. I started when I realized I googled things more than 3 times.
I'd rather not google and have a knowledge base where I can do a quick search.
3\. I went from a few post a year, to maybe once every week. It's not easy at
all. 4\. It's hard to write because I don't want to sound stupid or I worry
that my writing doesn't make sense.

------
ilyavi
I run a few blogs. When I don't have an inspiration, I switch to another. One
I don't feel like blogging, I simply do some technical stuff.
[https://unusualplaces.org](https://unusualplaces.org)
[https://weirdrussia.com](https://weirdrussia.com)
[https://tbilisi.blog](https://tbilisi.blog)

------
geek_at
When I started playing around with Raspberry Pi I had the problem that I had
to re-solve problems I had solved before but couldn't remember quite how and
had to re-google everything.

So I started my blog to document how I did it. This and work stories made it
semi popular.

I added an email list last year and got a few thousand people signed up. Now
I'm really concious about what to blog about or when I blog about something I
am very hesitant to send the new post out to my subscribers. So that impacted
me in a slightly negative way

[https://blog.haschek.at](https://blog.haschek.at)

------
donnanorton
I've always had a passion for writing and started in school. During my studies
at the university, I kept improving my writing skills and sought opportunities
to get published. Now I blog at [https://custom-
writing.org/blog](https://custom-writing.org/blog) helping students in their
studying.

I always feel motivated and there are not many difficulties for me in the
process.

------
veb
1\. I write something when I'm in the mood and have done something tech-
related I think others would stumble upon.

2\. I just made a github page for my domain. Easy.

3\. Going back to 1, it's all about my mood. If I've done something that I
think others would benefit from, I'll probably do a quick write-up.

4\. I've always been writing on the internets, probably because I'm deaf and
have always turned to the internet for communication.

My blog albeit small is [https://veb.co.nz](https://veb.co.nz)

------
pknerd
I run the blog, [http://blog.adnansiddiqi.me](http://blog.adnansiddiqi.me)

The main purpose of the blog to record what I learn. This blog also helped me
to earn money directly and indirectly.

The process is simple: say I want to learn about Kafka and it's python
library, I will study and make a toy app and will write all about it. After
that I promote it on social media, medium etc.

------
pizza234
> 1\. What's your process?

Whenever I come across something that I find especially interesting (for me!)
at work, I just write an article. I actually have a backlog of interesting
stuff I'd like to blog about, so the subjects are not in short supply :-)

2\. How did you start? What was hard? What was easy?

Started 3/4 years ago. It's been always easy, although, I'm quite obsessive
about the precision and depth of the subjects I write. In edge cases, I can
pour dozens of hours into an article.

Also, sometimes it happens that research for an article leads to nowhere, for
example because the article would end up being nothing interesting. Or because
I'm not knowledgeable enough, and it's not practically possible to gather the
knowledge required to write a consitently good article.

Some stats: almost 50 articles, around 74k words, currently 6k
pageviews/month.

3\. How do you stay motivated? Do you?

Generally speaking, I do enjoy writing, although I definitely need to handle:
1. the stress of writing subjects that take dozens of hours to research and
write 2. the loss of attractiveness that happens to subjects over time.

My best strategy for 2., has been to write _immediately_ about a subject, if I
decide to write about it.

Definitely, rather than thinking "how to motivate myself to write an article",
I think in terms of "how to remove the demotivating factors".

Regarding the external motivations, seeing the traffic growing is very
satisfying, and it also brought me as a speaker to a famous conference, but it
wouldn't motivate me if I wouldn't like to write.

4\. What were the struggles you had to overcome to develop a regular writing
habit (e.g. shyness, self-consciousness, poor time management skills, etc...)?
How did you do it?

Wrote in this in point 3. Something that may be worth adding, is that I write
an article more or less once a month. It's quite comfortable as a rhythm,
although of course, spending 8+ hours on something, even once a month, may be
too stressful in the long term for some.

A consideration worth pointing out, after a quick glance at other posts, is
that there are different article styles. I can't write an article in an hour
even when I fully know the subject, because when I write 1. I extend the
breadth and depth of the subject, 2. I may experiment for the fun of it 3. but
also because there's lots of "padding" due to creating a path for the reader
to make them easy to fully understand the subject.

------
softwaredoug
There's two kinds of blogs I write. Quick thought or deep dives.

For 'quick thoughts' the process I put myself into is 'write an email to a
colleague' on the topic. If I can't write a draft in 30-60 mins, it's
something I abandon it and don't stress about abandoning it. Maybe it'll
change my thinking and still be a useful exercise.

For 'deep dives' this is closer to short book chapter. I start a Google Doc
and chip away at it a bit at a time, get editor input, and end up chopping it
in half 2-3 times! :)

I journal every night. And sometimes this is the stuff of proto blog posts.
Mostly it's personal. But I do often get ideas from what I write.

On motivation,

Honestly my motivation comes from the love of coding & technology. If
something lights me on fire, and really makes me excited, I feel like I really
need to share. You can't hold me back!

Writing feels fairly natural to me. Like writing code. I can just jump into a
project and start editing it and picking it up. Much like writing code, I
often either get into 'refactoring' mode where I'm editing what I wrote
previously. Or I start continuing on what I'm writing. It doesn't take much to
start seeing what's wrong and start contributing...

Sorry, I don't have a lot of insight here. I have been writing a lot for a
long time, and having a liberal arts background, they grill you to write,
write, write!

On planning,

I find writers fall in a spectrum of gestalt, 'start writing' and let the
structure fall out of the writing. Or on the other hand, people that outline
down to the sentence level. I tend to be in the former, more gestalt category.

On editing,

For personal blogs, I have a group of friends that review each other's posts
and offer suggestions. Usually not at the copy-editing level, but more at the
conceptual level...

For company blogs, we have a PR firm that can help edit and offer suggestions
for different 'personas' in our corporatists blog audience. I also have
colleagues edit.

I regularly dark-launch my blog articles, share with close friends, and they
point out my glaring typos, etc that evaded all editing.

On a 'regular habit',

I got a liberal arts degree (history!). Imagine instead of coding projects,
you had writing projects. You had to write persuasively with lots of
deadlines. My interest in history since high school really drove a lot of
writing.

The best course I had was a senior touchpoint where we had to write our
opinions on a single page. Very challenging experience to persuasively make
your point in one page! We would workshop these and share them in a close
group, and give good feedback.

I also found a supportive environment of peers at work that encourage writing

------
madrafi
1.I usually try to write about things that both interest me and wish I have
found when I started learning about subject X, the process is mostly doing a
lot of reading and working out the ideas for example the most recent thing I
published was a primer series about zkProofs.I did about 7 months of studying
(largely sparse about ~1400 hours). I then start by writing multiple drafts,
updating as I go, I have terrible writing skills but I try to accomodate as I
go. I also tend to use pen and paper to develop any math that I need to
explain.

2\. I started following the advice of Andrew Trask, blogged about HE when I
was studying the topic first, then a few posts about Deep Learning.I wouldn't
stick a difficulty level to it,to be fair writing largely depends on the
person, _I think_ , for me it was hard because I was in a hurry to post and
get feedback and trying to take my time so as not to do stupid things.

3\. Motivation isn't something I feel like I can control but when doing the
writing, _not the research_ , I try to do it every morning.

4\. The thing I struggle most with is mental illness (Inattentive ADHD,
Depression, Anxiety) hardest part is time management and overcoming the fear
of humiliation, my fix for the first was to make the _writing week_ a routine,
first thing after breakfast I spend a few hours writing and editing the latter
I just faced it and published (great insofar).

Although I am not proud of my writing it gives me a tangible evaluation of
what I learned in the past X weeks/months, like an exam. I also write things I
don't publish such as sort essays, diaries or ramblings these I just put in
notebooks.

A few more thoughts, I would say that getting your blogging process setup
ready before you even start thinking about subjects helps along the way.This
saves time later, I jumped between a few platforms but now I publish on
write.as because it has markdown + latex without all the hassle.

I'd also recommend not to think of it as a duty but a creative adventure,
something you do when you feel like. I tend to only write about niche topics
or things I've been learning and related to tech (for example I've never
blogged about physics or mathematics even though I keep studying both
subjects).

Best of luck in your endeavors !

\- Edit (some posts I've written) :

\- [https://radicalrafi.github.io/posts/more-homomorphic-
encrypt...](https://radicalrafi.github.io/posts/more-homomorphic-encryption/)

\- [https://radicalrafi.github.io/posts/homomorphic-
encryption/](https://radicalrafi.github.io/posts/homomorphic-encryption/)

\- [https://radicalrafi.github.io/posts/secret-
sharing/](https://radicalrafi.github.io/posts/secret-sharing/)

\- [https://write.as/knowledgeprover/zero-knowledge-proof-
system...](https://write.as/knowledgeprover/zero-knowledge-proof-systems-a-
primer)

------
geddy
I am big into video games, and a couple of years ago I found a blog that
really resonated with me. Same type of games that I want to play, and they
were all fairly old. A couple of years ago I stopped playing modern video
games and just kind of stuck in the past, and didn’t have anyone to talk about
them with, so I’d comment on this blog I used to read about older games and
made some good friends that way.

Eventually I want to talk about my own gaming experiences, but mostly I wanted
a place to log my thoughts about games I was playing, games that were coming
out, and basically have a place that I could go to to trigger my own happy
nostalgic thoughts experiences, but mostly I wanted a place to log my thoughts
about games I was playing, games that were coming out, and basically have a
place that I could go to to trigger my own happy nostalgic thoughts.

I’ll be honest, I really wish I had chosen a different name, but I bought the
WordPress plan already so I settled on
[https://www.nostalgiatrigger.com](https://www.nostalgiatrigger.com). It
doesn’t roll off the tongue nor would it be the average person’s cup of tea,
but for the 5-6 people who comment and leave feedback, it’s a cool little
community.

Anyway, this is just my experience and it doesn’t really answer the OPs
original questions. If I go back and read my old material, it really comes off
as pretentious and just overall atrocious, so to probably echo what everybody
else is saying here, the trick is to just write as much as possible and don’t
try to focus on things like length or flow on the first time through. In fact
don’t even worry about editing anything, the editor will highlight any
misspellings or grammatical errors, so let your mind go into stream of
consciousness mode, just to get ideas down on paper.

Oh! And a recent tip for something that I’ve started doing a few months ago
(typically while writing down initial thoughts while I’m playing a game for
the first time), I leave Notes open on my phone so I can easily tap the
microphone and speak sentences straight into a first draft. I realized that I
spent the most time trying to figure out how to phrase certain things on the
first draft, so by getting out actual well formed sentences as they came to me
while I was playing a game, I was essentially removing the hardest part of
writing from the equation.

I’ve been running this blog for about five or six years now, and also did some
longform game review writing I’ve been running this blog for about five or six
years now, and also did some longform game review writing on
[https://www.thewellredmage.com](https://www.thewellredmage.com) a few years
back, and getting started on a blank canvas is always the hardest part. So
whatever works for you, try taking YOUR “hardest part” out of the equation.

------
frompdx
1\. Process:

I usually write about things that interest me or things that I think will be
useful to someone else. For example I have a series of articles that
supplement an existing learning tool for a popular programming language. I
wrote the articles as I worked my way through the tutorials as a way to
solidify my own comprehension.

2\. How I got started:

I used to write a pseudonym blog on a subject that was controversial at the
time but no longer is. That was with Blogger. I haven't touched in a decade
but it's still out there.

For my blog under my own name I set up a WordPress site with Bluehost
initially because it was easy and inexpensive. The low cost hosting on
Bluehost leaves a lot to be desired and I eventually migrated to my own self-
hosted solution. My self-hosted solution works well, but every now and then
there is an issue to troubleshoot. Most people will consider my self-hosted
solution to be overkill and I can't really disagree. I used a small Kubernetes
cluster on Digital Ocean. The setup was easy enough. But I already had a lot
of Kubernetes ops experience so there wasn't much of a learning curve. I would
not recommend this to others. My reason for doing this is that my blog is just
one of the apps hosted in the cluster. I kind of use it as a show piece for my
work.

The hard part is when things go wrong. It can be kind of stressful to know
that you traffic is suffering because of an issue that you are trying to
resolve. Luckily, I've never had a traffic interruption to my blog, but I've
borked things up with other apps a time or two.

3\. Staying Motivated:

I'll be honest this part is difficult. I really don't have that much content.
I posted my 49th article yesterday and I've been at it since 2016. Some years
I only published a couple of articles. So far I'm at 44,936 words total. I try
to focus on quality over quantity. I write some short posts but usually my
posts are 1500 words or more.

One thing I do is write down ideas for blog articles in a journal. Every now
and then I actually write one of those. I have far more unwritten articles.

4\. Struggles:

Since my blog is under my real name I find that I am much more self-conscious
compared to writing under a pseudonym. I generally tend to be selective about
what articles I share because I don't really care for getting lit up by rude
comments on social media sites. I'll usually try to seek out feedback in niche
areas and small groups before I share with a larger audience. I'm always
surprised by when an article becomes popular and I've had it happen a couple
of times. It's always nice.

I'm also generally selective about what topics I'll write about. I rarely
write opinion pieces or about controversial subjects because I don't want a
potential employer to get the wrong idea. When I do I am careful about the
language and tone that I use.

