
How to Write Without Writing - DanielRibeiro
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2011/02/how-to-write-without-writing.html
======
_delirium
HN is useful for this too. My particular niche is that I'm an academic
researcher, but I think there's a bunch of stuff that's poorly presented in
academic papers, or at least only presented in a way that's intended to be
read by other people in the same field (or sub-field, or sub-sub-field). So
one of my medium-term plans is to re-present some of the stuff I like in a
less jargony and formal way, in tutorials / blog posts / whatever. But often
that gets pushed off behind other obligations, and it feels like Work, even if
it's work that I enjoy. But posting an explanation of something I know about
that comes up in a discussion on HN just feels like conversation, much more
natural. It's not always as polished as a result, but sometimes I've actually
used my HN comments as a first-draft of a longer tutorial.

For example (for a bit of self-promotion), this recent comment possibly
could've been a better-written and better-edited blog post, with some images
and examples, and a title like "implicit and explicit models in interactive
fiction", or I dunno, something like that but catchier:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2177226>. But writing something like that
would probably sit on the TODO list for a long time; meanwhile I just banged
out that comment in 20 minutes or so because it came up in discussion. The
fact that it was "replying to a comment" rather than "writing a thing" somehow
tricked it into not feeling like writing. Now if I ever want to write a blog
post, I have a draft of the idea written out.

~~~
jonpaul
I completely agree. I made a comment yesterday about my observations on hiring
at Google. I realized that there was some kind of bias on my side regarding my
observations, I kept thinking about "survivor bias" but I knew that wasn't
quite correct. Finally someone chimed in with calling me out on a classic case
of "observation bias." Just what I was looking for. I won't forget that next
time.

I think the fundamental point of the article is correct. Just write. Do it
anywhere, and you'll get better. No finer than here at HN :p

------
zdw
Improving my writing skill by writing persuasively on blogs, HN, etc. is why I
spend time here.

I've always hated writing, from my first english courses. I felt the way it
was done, with an overemphasis on creative writing (which is of limited use in
many real-world situations, beyond developing technique), and the focus on
word count (write me a 3 pager, if it's less your grade goes down) was a
detriment to clear, concise, well written and direct communication.

Writing in school should quickly progress past the creative stage after middle
school, and focus on technical, nonfiction, and other explanatory methods
through high school. It should be split off from literature courses, which
would better be combined with philosophy and history.

Similarly, I hated typing classes. I learned to type by telnetting into MUDs
and learning it on my own. This was much more fun and less of a grind than
typing "cat cat cat dog cat cat" over and over. The downside? I can never use
an ergonomic keyboard, as I hit the "b" key with my left index finger.

~~~
NickPollard
The focus on word count in education is absurd, and I cannot help but feel it
contributes to the use of 'business speak' and vague waffling e-mails that
workers and customers are subject to every day.

It seems to me that people get it drummed into them that length is
proportional to importance. This is not true; the best writing conveys its
point simply and elegantly.

"[Writing] is finished not when there's nothing left to add, but when there's
nothing left to take away." (paraphrased)

~~~
nhebb
I agree. My daughter, a sophomore in high school, sent me a paper for review
before printing. I made her re-write it from scratch. The problem was that the
assignment was simple but vague: write a 1-2 page paper on the civil rights
movement, At first glance, that assignment description doesn't sound, bad, but
1-2 pages to a high school student can be interpreted as "fill 1-2 pages with
words".

I had her pick 3 points she wanted to make, do a little bit of online research
on each point to develop a paragraph on two on each, and then add real
introduction and conclusion paragraphs.

It's a simple formula that they teach in schools, but they don't reinforce
when they give writing assignments. The assignment would have been clearer if
the teacher had asked for 3-5 major influences on the civil rights movement.
Sometimes you get what you ask for.

The nice thing was that, afterward, my daughter said that this way was a lot
easier. BS'ing is hard work! One of the things I've noticed in both school and
the workplace is that a lot of people expend more energy trying to avoid work
then it would take just to do the work in the first place.

~~~
muhfuhkuh
"One of the things I've noticed in both school and the workplace is that a lot
of people expend more energy trying to avoid work then it would take just to
do the work in the first place."

Criminals are a perfect example of this. I see a movie like "The Town" by Ben
Affleck and I think to myself, "man, all that stress and hard work and almost
certainty of death and/or federal prison goes into this, and most of the time
they'll walk out with less than 6 figures when it's all divided up".

I think the problem is alot of people never learned how to think in small bits
at a time. Our mind is cluttered like one of those hoarder/packrat types they
exploit on reality TV. We're thinking about how complex the overall problem
has to (or is going to) be, instead of just chunking it out into separate
problem domains and tackling them one at at time. The myriad things we have in
our head induces paralysis. Distractions like HN and reddit don't exactly help
alleviate that, btw :D

For example: Programming a game that has a main character jumping around
throwing ninja stars while avoiding spike pits, sword-wielding baddies, and
evil wizards shooting fireballs sounds like a daunting task, but starting with
"let's move the character thingy around the screen" might be less mind-
meltingly hard. But, people just think about the end-goal and just shrug off
how others can accomplish it as "magic".

Maybe that's why people choose to be employees rather than entrepreneurs:
Complexity kills motivation. Entrepreneurs are just better equipped to tackle
complexity one problem at a time.

------
DanielBMarkham
Oddly enough, I read this and came away without capturing anything of value
from it.

Write more. Thanks. Already knew that.

I hate to sound snarky, but it's very ironic -- this entire post had the
feeling of somebody sitting down to make themselves write something, anything
-- without developing much original thought. In fact he quotes his cofounder
quite a bit instead of coming up with insights of his own. He mixed together
two very subjective ideas, "what makes good programmers" and "what makes good
writers" in a way that didn't manage to shed light on either one. At least to
me.

Communication is important, yes. Am I missing something? Was there something
else?

Like I said, not trying to attack the writer, and I apologize if my tone is
harsh. I know many times I have to write things over and over again, coming at
the same topic from multiple angles, before I really nail it. Perhaps this is
what's going on. (In which case I begin to wonder why it got so many votes)

~~~
tygorius
I think you're missing the importance of feedback, in particular the points of
speed and quality. Writing more doesn't help if you're just repeating the same
mistakes over and over.

In the traditional writer's workshop, you write something, it's passed around,
and people make comments. Depending on the workshop, a good portion of the
feedback can be useless. And it's quite possible that few or even none of the
others are trying to write the same sort of thing as you, so you don't have a
good source of contrastive examples.

Read the SO response he got again. Near instant feedback, from a peer group,
with counter examples to show what worked with the readers and what didn't.
Faster, better quality feedback that leads to accelerated improvement.

------
stevie_wilks
I think one of the points that was glossed over in the conclusion of the
article is that writing with feedback is much more valuable than without it.

The author of the letter to Jeff made this very clear that the up and down
votes and whether or not the answer was accepted was feedback on his/her
writing and it made them better.

Authors of books have editors to make the author (and the book) better, blogs
have commenters which make the blogger better, SO answers have commenters and
votes to make the participants better.

So DO just go out there and write yes; but also try to get feedback for your
writing because it will multiply the amount you learn by writing.

------
hcho
Am I the only one who feels this is blatant and tasteless self promotion?

~~~
NickPollard
It's certainly self promotion, and fairly blatant I suppose, but what about it
strikes you as tasteless?

I think his central point - writing more helps you write better; StackOverflow
is an easy and welcoming place to write more - is largely true, and I don't
think he should be unable to say it just because it happens to promote his own
interests.

~~~
hcho
His writing about truisms and plugging StackOverflow started to become too
frequent for me. I can't help feeling that such posts are only written for
their advertisement value. I expect some sincerity from blog posts.

~~~
tygorius
Yeah, I agree that the overall utility and technical meat of his posts has
dropped off in the last couple of years. (Critics will likely jump in with
"What technical meat?") I don't think that's an issue with this particular
post, however.

I'm not sure why you doubt his sincerity. Stack Overflow is where he's
spending most of his time these days, isn't it? Why wouldn't he be mentioning
it in most of his posts? It seemed appropriate for this post. What would
constitute a sincere blog post?

------
lysium
That side effect of posting on SO that you improve your writing is
interesting. Never thought about that but it's so true: it's good if you an
answer but it's better if you can tell anybody about it such that they
understand.

Nice layout of <http://writers.stackexchange.com/> !

------
rimantas
And someone in the thread about tech interviews was claiming that it's ok if
candidate cannot express his thoughts as long as he is a good programmer…

------
iwwr
tl;dr SO is about keeping yourself entertained while you're learning how to
write (among other things). But so is HN :)

------
ajg1977
It's ironic that Jeff espouses the benefits of writing, yet nearly all of his
blog posts are simply brief snippets of text that link together larger
paragraphs written by others.

Almost every time I visit his blog I come away wondering what exactly he added
to the conversation.

------
steveklabnik
One portion of my application to grad school (in English Composition)
explained how my participation in /., Digg, Reddit, and Hacker News (among
others) got me into the habit of daily writing. It's probably the largest
factor in my ability to write.

------
tygorius
Call me crazy, but I strongly suspect that the feedback system virtues that
helped Stack Overflow contributors develop their writing skills will not
manifest on writers.stackexchange.com.

Many writing queries fall into the taste or reference citation categories,
which aren't amenable to the correctness criteria of SO. Not to mention that
there are already plenty of writing resources on the Web, so I'm skeptical of
the new launch being able to distinguish itself.

