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”
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
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 🐦
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
Cross-posting
DEV.to:
- Editor Guide • DEV Community 📖
- Liquid Tags • Forem docs 📚
HackerNews:
- How to do a successful Hacker News launch • Lucas F. Costa 📖