Hello! I made a web application for my friend and I to use as part of a New Year’s resolution and decided to open it up to the public. It’s pretty simple but I’ve really enjoyed building it and using it so far. I’ve written ~10,000 words, which is a lot more than I used to write. Enjoy and be nice!
In my daily task list template in Obsidian I create a task formatted like this:
- [ ] [[slop/2023-01-04]]
and I go into that and close my eyes and just type stream of consciousness, sometimes about a certain subject, and without editing, until I get to 500 words. It helps to get the flow going with little pressure on doing it right. I call it slop to emphasize that none of it is going to be good.
Does anyone else have the problem where they write a lot, but it all seems to go into the void and never produce any tangible benefit? How do I produce writing that people want to read?
In my experience, having spent some years as a professional writer with a bunch of colleagues, every writer comes with their own distinctive flaws. In terms of output, for some people getting words out is like juicing a stone. For others, the words flow freely but the juice is bad.
In fact, the single most productive writer I worked with was also the absolute worst to read on a word-by-word basis. He was also one of the most successful in his career. The trick was combing through his masses of thought-assault to identify out the good bits and fix the mediocre bits (obviously, throwing away the bad bits). I always got a chuckle out of how the end readers had no idea how much of the original writing was schlock, but his success was fully deserved on many other levels.
So in short: recognize that what you're experiencing is totally normal and acceptable, and work to your strengths. Write your crappy stuff that nobody wants to read and then fix it. If you can't fix it -- then editing is what you need to work hard on improving (and editing ≠ writing).
This. For many years I though I had to write like I read, that the words had to be perfect the first time -- like you are used to read. But the finished work is nothing like the first draft. Just write, don't stop even to fix typos. Never stop the flow. Then, once you have dumped your brain into words, leave it for a while and come back to do the editing later.
Like Stephen King also mentioned in his book (on Writing): write the first draft with the door closed, and the second with the door open. The first draft is for you, the second is for an audience (of selected people).
Writing for its own sake has its benefits. It forces you to flesh out your ideas, to consider how you actually feel, and to flex your writing skills.
I like having a record of my thinking. I read a travel journal I wrote some time ago, and it painted a much more faithful picture of my trip than dozens of photos. I had a good chuckle at some passages, and at my doodles in the margins.
I also write in public, mostly to share solutions, but occasionally to share my thoughts. I've shared a few posts here and loved the ensuing discussion. Some people have reached out because they somehow came across a post I wrote. It's cool to help a guy from Tennessee change his break pads, or to meet a guy from Berlin because he thinks we'd get along (we do).
In the end, I write for the sake of writing. It's like practicing guitar. I have no dream of being a rockstar; I just enjoy the process. However, doing things in public occasionally bears fruit in the most unexpected ways.
My belief is that everyone has 6 or 7 substantial things to say when they meet someone new or have a deeper discussion with an acquaintance. These may be stories, anecdotes, or knowledge that people find interesting. It's likely you've honed them over years.
Write these down and sharpen them. Share them with friends and get their feedback.
This removes the problem of what to write, which can be daunting as a new writer. And you may end up discovering something new in these old conversation pieces!
(1) It's a function of audience. I am writing on Medium with moderate success (~1.4K followers, prior top 5% of business writers worldwide), and I noticed that content discovery on the platform is just broken. The same applies to Twitter.
(2) In 2022, we are competing with content farms that drown out smaller "creators" ...start to hate that word.
It used to be true, that I would write an article about Apple's product launch and gathered 40K views. Not anymore.
But then, I am now mostly on Youtube for content consumption. So I guess, that makes me part of the problem.
There are two biggest tragedies of all time. The thoughts that were never written, and the scribbles that no one would read. For some reason, only people who don't frequently write think that the latter is real.
Having just self-published a book that capped out at 10 sales, yes.
For me, the hardest problem is even getting the word out. I’ve used a few different platforms to get my book in front of people. And by and large, the ones who start it also finish it. But even giving away content, it is surprisingly hard to connect to an audience of any size.
Pick any kind of writing, and you’ll find the marketplace is incredibly crowded. There is so much content vying for a finite set of eyeballs. And it’s not just other writers; you’re competing with all other uses of leisure time: Netflix, Fortnite, Twitter, TikTok, hell, even Tinder
I think you have to enjoy writing because it scratches your own itch. If you’re lucky, maybe you’ll attract a few like-minded followers. If you’re hoping for a more sizable audience, you’d better enjoy marketing.
I'll probably write a blog post at some point covering the things I've tried, which is admittedly not a lot. There are vanishingly few free marketing channels, and paid marketing typically only makes financial sense once you've got at least a few books to increase your revenue per reader. Otherwise your customer acquisition costs exceed your margins.
If you're writing fiction, the best freebie I've found is sending advance review copies through Voracious Readers Only. They limit you to twenty without paying, but that at least got me a pair of reviews on Goodreads (sadly nothing on Amazon).
If you have specific questions, I'll answer them to the best of my ability. Whether you want to take advice from the guy who only sold ten copies is up to you.
First: writing has other tangible benefits! Journaling can get difficult thoughts / stressors out of your head and on paper, helping you process and move past them. Taking notes improves comprehension, and is also (often) of higher value in a professional context than most people realise.
Things I've heard writers / bloggers / etc. in my life say about writing:
- There is no magic bullet; you just have to practice, practice, practice and be willing to throw away large sections or even entire drafts. Most people, including famous authors, write large volumes of crap.
- If you're explicitly looking for an audience, you have to test with that audience! Get feedback early and often, and use that feedback to improve what (and how) you write. (If you have any product / design / UX training, you'll notice how similar this advice is to best practices in those fields!)
(On the second point: using Notion, Google Docs, or any other tool that gives you an easily shared link and allows inline commenting is a great way to get useful feedback!)
I’ve been quite tempted to delete my account and start again so getting to 10,000 doesn’t become a goal. It’s fake internet points but I feel the temptation nevertheless.
About two years ago I did. It was mostly a fear of being a failure & the potential to be successful. After I got over that, I wrote two books in two years and sold over 100 copies each as a first time author. Much of my validation came from posting comments including my writing in places like HN, Reddit, Twitter, etc. The internet voting machine would do its work of what people want to read while I would direct my energy towards something I wanted to read.
That is 99.5-99.9% of writers. only a handful are ever successful at it. Obviously it ain't easy. Creative writing is among the hardest things in the world to be successful at, because there is no obvious market or audience for it.
Your question kinda took me by surprise. I write a ton (I take notes on literally everything that happens) and none of it is supposed to be read by anyone. I'm not even sure how much of it I'll read myself later, the point is I'll be able to, if I need. Otherwise, I just cannot remember anything of what I read, saw or heard a year later.
Learn SEO and figure out how to find long tail, low competition keywords. Then write about those and you'll get organic traffic. I make around $20k/mo doing this. Surprised literally nobody mentioned this
I know there are thousands of guides on how to find long tail, low competition keywords but I don’t think those are written by someone making $20k/mo. If you could be kind enough, could you talk more about how do you find a niche and long tail, low competition keywords assuming I have access to necessary SEO tools.
Do you have a newsletter about long tail, low competition keywords? I could really use $20k/month simply by writing about my niche subject. Any favorite SEO tools for reaching these long tail, niche, low-competition keywords?
Putting aside the need for an audience, I think the whole personal wiki or Zettelkasten thing helps with writing for yourself as the process becomes about building up your network of thoughts, then browsing it, writing back into it, … etc.
Yes. Just as important as the habit of writing Zettel notes is reviewing and condensing Zettel notes into “literature” notes. That’s the part I have to consciously focus on but I have found opening a rich text editor separate from my typical Zettel flow works better for long form literature note writing than my typical Zettel editor does.
Mostly observations, rambling thoughts about topics, and ideas. I originally started writing because I wanted to get into comedy/entertainment, so I have a lot of half baked jokes and humor in there. Since then, I have branched out to thoughts, career goals, notes, daily records and logs. I find it hugely beneficial to myself, so maybe that’s enough. But one day I would like to connect my writing to others. Maybe I am chasing fame, or searching for validation that my thoughts are accurate and I’m not deluding myself into some false reality.
I think I've been getting daily^W weekly email reminders to write my 750 words for 20 years now... I really ought to stop fooling myself that "I'll make this a part of my routine, soon!".
For writing about technology one tip I got from someone: set your goal to 10 topics a week, you won't write 10 but it becomes easy evaluation tool for how productive your week was. If you have bigger topics, chunk them up.
I like this idea. I have a friend who writes news and journalistic pieces, and I recently asked if he ever writes for fun. He said that creative writing is like pulling teeth. So he could easily write 1000+ words, but writing 500 creative words would be a good exercise. I’ll send him the Minisagas idea.
Storytime! I used 750 word a lot about 10 years ago and then they lost all of my data somehow, it was my journal and I had used it to process some deep trauma. Losing it made me lose all faith in SaaS as a concept and since that moment I haven't kept anything important anywhere where I don't have access to the bits directly. It's probably kinda like self driving, maybe in reality data loss is really rare, but losing data when it wasn't your fault just feels so much worse. I imagine just like dying when your self driving car malfunctions, even if on average it kept you safer.
That sucks, I’m sorry you lost your writings. That sentiment is part of the reason I built the site myself. But that does make me think that when I build an exporting feature there needs to be a “download a backup” option.
To be transparent, there is database backups on this site, but letting people download their own backups feels like a nice to have. So everyone can have their bytes.
Something that people should be aware of with regards to 750words:
You can use it to track and graph numeric data, too. If you have something in the following format in your entries, it will get added as post metadata:
MY_METRIC: 12345
WEIGHT: 226 pounds
The first word after the number is used as a label for the resulting graph.
I read Casino Royale (the first Bond installment) for the first time last week; it's quite good and fast-paced. The chapters follow the 2000 words rule quite closely, and it's working.
One of my favorite videos is when George RR Martin asks Stephen King on stage, "How the fuck do you write so many books so fast?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR7XMkjDGw0
Stephen King answers basically with the same advice he's always given, as you said, he tries to write 6 pages a day.
In the video, he says he tries to get 3-4 hours of work a day, and get to that 6 pages. He breaks it down, "if the manuscript is x length, it will take y months to finish." George RR Martin goes on to ask essentially, "but what if writer's block? What if internet distraction? What if something comes up?"
He goes on to tell a story about Rowling that basically resolves with "nobody really understands what writers do," but based on King's own "On Writing," I think he does claim to understand, and his tips are not really any different from how you generate content in any other medium, methods that those of us terminally online HN types are at this point experts via headlines alone, we see so many posts on the subject.
The method is demonstrated in the "6 pages" quote that gets thrown around: define the objective (write a book), break the objective into estimable and achievable goals (write 6 pages a day: this allows for book length x to be finished in y months), and set dedicated, distraction-free time to achieve the day's goal (as I recall from "On Writing," King has a dedicated writing office and doesn't bring his phone into it, and doesn't have internet access in there. I may be remembering incorrectly or mixing up my absurd breadth of reading I've done on the general topic of staying focused).
Meanwhile GRRM, for all his undeniable success, talent, and skill, talks about the act of writing in kinda the same way an amateur might, or maybe just the way an artist might, a sort of mystical "waiting for the muse" type style. "What if I just don't wanna write?"
King's answer, and the answer of many prolific artists, programmers, etc, that I've read, would be "why are you whether you want to write or not? You have today's goal already, so, achieve it." The wanting is irrelevant, the muse is unneeded, you've broken down the task, go do today's TODO list. Are you going to re-justify for yourself every single day the overall objective? Well, tbh, I do like that as a mindfulness self-affirmation exercise sometimes, but the point is you can't just sit around waiting to want to do the small part of the larger objective, you gotta just put the hours in day after day.
I think a lot of us across all disciplines are missing that key skill in production: project management, I think I'd call it. The most prolific artists are the ones who grabbed that skill and added it to the toolset as a discipline-agnostic ability. Hence why when King talks about his method it sounds the same to me as what I've read here from programmers, what I've seen on youtube from animators, and what I've heard on podcasts from musicians.
Steven Pressfield summed this up for me in his book The War Of Art.
It’s basically that distinction between a Pro and an Amateur that you are making. The Pro sits down and does the work, the Amateur waits till they feel like it.
Thank you for this post, which captures what I think is a key issue for many.
I wonder though if there is a reluctance to adopt an approach similar to King's because people are wary (possibly subconsciously) of killing their enjoyment of the process: 'Don't turn your hobby into a job' is advice that you hear a lot.
Perhaps those who are prolific have their eyes more on the end result (a good book in 3 months) rather than the act of writing and that helps them deal with this as well as being more generally motivating to produce good work.
> I have always been very methodical, and when my quota of work is done I break off, even in the middle of a scene.
Slightly OT (but not by much): I have read somewhere that one secret to write more is to stop in the middle of something -- if fiction, in the middle of a scene, if non-fiction, in the middle of a demonstration or exposition for example.
The rationale is that the brain 1/ hates starting new things and 2/ loves finishing. So if you stop in the middle, you will absolutely want to finish the next day, whereas if you finish, you will not want to start a new scene and you may postpone going back to work indefinitely.
Now for the disclaimer, I have tried this but never actually succeeded, and in effect I'm stuck in the finish/hard to start again mode. I'm also afraid I won't remember what I was trying to say, but the main problem is the desire to finish proves too hard to resist. YMMV.
Related, I've found stopping episodes of television in the middle makes it much easier to stop bingeing. If I finish an episode there's always* a revelation that I want to go on to the next episode to resolve. But in the nadir of the middle I'm usually more satisfied and I can just turn it off.
Nice! I've been writing for a long time as well. I've found writing consistently and in a stream of consciousness manner is very helpful. This being HN, you can bet that I also wrote an app for my practice ;) https://www.indelibleapp.com/
I've been looking for something just like Indelible!
I just tried it out but got the error when I tried to save a draft: "Argument schedule for data.prompt.create.schedule must not be null. Please use undefined instead." — this is from starting off of the tutorial, and trying to hit save.
I’m curious why you gave up on the artists way after one week? The entire program is quite helpful whether or not you do the morning pages or artist dates.
I love that you took action to make your idea a reality. That's a trait that not everyone shares, from my experience. Writing is a wonderful way to express yourself creatively.
I can relate. Essentially, it's a journal. I find journalling to be very healthy for my mind and have journaled online and offline for most of my adult life. Though, I must admit, I don't do it everyday. Personally, I find doing something artistic daily to be the most fulfilling. Whether drawing, writing, playing music, or whatever, it allows me to reap the benefits of exercising those creative muscles.
The part about writing a few pages when you wake up is a good idea, IMO. Not that it needs to be a daily structured routine, but what you experience sleeping is a unique experience that is worth writing down, occasionally. I've reflected on earlier journals I wrote when I woke up and have been surprised to read something I almost didn't recognize as my own.
Not saying this tool is bad or won’t help people, but:
1. I spend a large majority of my day reading or writing text. Emails, documentation, white papers, comments in code, Slack messages, texts, PowerPoint. The absolute last thing I want to do when I get home is write more.
2. I type fast and can churn out like a thousand words no problem. It is significantly harder to a) pick an interesting topic and b) form a thought that is coherent, accessible, interesting, and overall worth reading.
I imagine people who do this spend years writing stuff that nobody (not even themselves) cares to read
Just the thought of an interesting twist on the topic: a daily writing tool with a “spaced repetition” twist. You seed the tool with a list of writing prompts, e.g. “Write a list of ten things you think would improve your life.” Then, a few days later, the tool randomly selects one of the prompts and asks you to write 500 words on it. A month later the same prompt is re-introduced without showing you the previous writing. Prompts can be interleaved with one another so you are writing about a different thing every day. It happens again and again until at some point you are presented with all the snippets you have written about the topic and are asked to choose whether you would like to keep the writing in the pool or not. If you do then you are only given that text every day to edit until you decide to finish. If you choose to not keep it then all texts associated with that topic are archived and you keep getting differs prompts.
I did this for most of this year. I didn't work toward a word count, I just set up a time between eating breakfast and signing in to work where I'd write instead of browsing the internet. Ended up writing 75,000 words, and it was surprising to me how easy it was. Once I got into the habit, I did it every day, not just during the week.
This is interesting to me because I have a lot of ideas that get cut short as soon as my bias toward action kicks in. “Write then do” sounds like a good practice, though I’d be more interested in using a foam daily note. The calendar visualization is nice, and the availability of a website is nice.
Could be very useful for people learning a new language! (consider marketing to language learning subreddits / communities).
I would find it useful for that exact purpose, however, I think 500 words might be too much. 150-200 is good enough. Would be cool to be able to change the amount of words required.
It would be interesting to combine the daily routine concept, with an AI chat engine, so the goal is to have daily conversations of a certain length/depth, about random topics, between you and an AI, in your target language.
I wonder what you usually write in these notes? I can understand writers/bloggers who can just use it as their motivation tool to do their job/hobby. But for the rest of us, what would you write there every day?
It depends! If I have energy and time I try to write fantasy stuff. If I don't have time or energy I just stream of consciousness journal, which sometimes turns into something cool, sometimes it's nonsense.
I write it usually in the afternoon or evening, so it's fun for me to think of things throughout the day or jot them down as a prompt and crank out the 500 words later in the day.
I had a new years resolution to do a similar practice for writing code. At least 30 minutes per day every night. It's been by far my most prolific year of all time
I wrote 500 words yesterday but the calendar date is still blue... any chance you can take a look @nickagliano? The text appears when I click on the date.
This is a nice idea! One slightly-ridiculous thought I had though is, how can I handwrite 500 words a day? Is there an app that might help me with this?
I've measured this recently... sort of. I do fiction writing sprints. Writing down as many words as I can in 15 minutes. Word counts range between 400-ish and 600-ish. This is just brain dump writing basically, which will need to be edited after (though more often than not it turns out to be more usable than I expected).
- [ ] [[slop/2023-01-04]]
and I go into that and close my eyes and just type stream of consciousness, sometimes about a certain subject, and without editing, until I get to 500 words. It helps to get the flow going with little pressure on doing it right. I call it slop to emphasize that none of it is going to be good.