Writing

Why write

Learning in public has unexpected benefits.

• Telling people what you’re working on • Julia Evans 📖
• Some tactics for writing in public • Julia Evans 📖
• Tiny Subversions - XOXO Festival (2014) • Darius Kazemi 📺
  • publishing lots of things on the internet is the best way to “win the lottery”
• Writing Is Thinking • Writing is a linear process that forces a tangle of loose connections in your brain through a narrow aperture, exposing them to much greater scrutiny • Andrew Bosworth 📖

What to write about

• Blogging principles I use • Julia Evans 📖
• Blog about what you’ve struggled with • Julia Evans 📖
• Some blogging myths • Julia Evans 📖
• Teaching by filling in knowledge gaps • Julia Evans 📖
• Blogging like Chris Coyier • David East 📖
  • write whatever you want on your personal site: any topic, any length
• How I Built a Learning Machine • Josh Branchaud 📖

Writing well

• The Craft of Writing Effectively • Larry McEnerney 📺
  • explaining what’s wrong with how we were taught to write in school and how to write content that’s truly valuable to your specific community of readers. He gives the same lecture here with lots of useful variations.
  • Valuable writing doesn’t explain what the author thinks and cares about. It changes what readers think by identifying a problem they care about and solving it.
  • There are no universal rules for how to write well. Your writing style should depend on who is reading and what they care about.
  • The subject of each sentence sets the focus of your writing. If those subjects focus on the wrong thing, rewrite them.
• My Creative Workflow with Notion • Ali Abdaal 📺
  • includes the outlining prompts he uses to make sure his videos tell a story users will care about
• Workshopping • Shawn Wang 📖
  • why and how to share new content with small audiences before publishing it widely
• “How I write: highlight the main ideas…” • Julia Evans 🐦
  • Put the main ideas in headings
• “How I write: always write for 1 person…” • Julia Evans 🐦
  • Write for one reader persona, not many
• “advice” for aspiring tech bloggers • Julia Evans 📖
• Write good examples by starting with real code • Julia Evans 📖
• Patterns in confusing explanations • Julia Evans 📖
• Tweet thread recommending 9 books about writing • Dickie Bush 🐦
• Write in the style you’d like to read • “People don’t remember books, blogs, or articles. They remember sentences.” • Mike Crittenden 📖
• No introductions, no conclusions – Mike Crittenden • Write the meat and be done with it • Mike Crittenden 📖

Illustrations

• Excalidraw • Free, open source, collaborative whiteboard tool
• You Should Use: Excalidraw

Creativity

• What do you do when the lyrics just aren’t coming? • Nick Cave 📖
  • How to be patient when writing feels difficult

Engagement

• Measuring a blog’s success: focus on conversations, not page views • Julia Evans 📖
• How To Actually Grow On Social Media (Even If You Have 0 Followers) - Dan Koe • Everyone has tried and failed at growing an account on social media. Here’s literally everything you need to know. Don’t overcomplicate this.

Cross-posting

DEV.to:

• Editor Guide • DEV Community 📖
• Liquid Tags • Forem docs 📚

HackerNews:

• How to do a successful Hacker News launch • Lucas F. Costa 📖

Grammar

• Who vs. whom • Mike Crittenden 📖

Inbox

• til inspiration (start a list?): Rob Allen – Pragmatism in the real world - Rob Allen

• inspiration: Things I’ve Learned / Lee Byron

• svgbob • Convert ASCII diagrams into SVGs • Jovansonlee Cesar 🧰

• The Art of Note Making • Writing should be a process of thinking on paper in my words rather than an act of collecting and hoarding other people’s thoughts • Mischa van den Burg 📺