|
thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
In the past, it has been difficult for me to publish blogs at a constant pace[1]. I would subconsciously try to write a masterpiece each time, and struggle to create something up to my personal standards. Writing great pieces is a perfectly reasonable and respectable goal, but if you think about it, it's a chicken and an egg problem. In order to become a great writer, there isn't much of an option other than writing a lot along the way. As amateur writers, we will inevitably write a lot of poorly written articles. For some, including myself, this can potentially be difficult to accept or tolerate. Then the next challenge becomes: "how do I accept the fact that some things I write will be so-so, but encourage myself to keep writing despite possible shortcomings?" I think Facebook's engineering mantra, "Move Fast, Break Stuff", is a perfect fit for this dilemma. Applied to blogging (and writing in general), it means that we should voluntarily overlook the shortcomings and potential problems in our writing, and keep shipping articles (with any virtues) at a high pace. If there are flaws in our writing (and there obviously will be), then we can take the feedback and improve those aspects of our writing going forward. The key is to publish a lot, push the boundaries of our comfort zone, and keep learning each time we publish. I recently published a blog titled, Money, where I tried to argue that (1) we trade our time for money, and thus we should not spend money on frivolous things, and (2) we should not lock ourselves into situations where we have no choice but to earn lots of money, since that will force us to sacrifice our freedom in order to keep paying the bills. I chose a rather unusual syntactical style in the blog, which spurred a friend to remark, "you became a poet?" But as a side effect of trying out this style, the effectiveness of my argument itself was compromised. In particular, I should have added a few sentences to introduce and make a case for argument (2) above. But I'm glad that I shipped the blog out and realized these shortcomings quickly. I could instead have brooded upon it for many days and eventually even given up on publishing it altogether. I shipped it out, it wasn't perfect, and hopefully my writing will improve a little bit in the future. If I keep at this for a few years, maybe I can become a decent writer.
[1]Interestingly, I have an easier time publishing my Japanese blogs quickly compared to my English blogs, despite my English being better than my Japanese. I think this may actually be because of my relatively better understanding of English, which causes me to endlessly brood over a better way to organize and express my thoughts.
Crossposted from my main blog
 
|
I loved the money blog. This is also an interesting blog 
More and more mods (well you are a former head admin) are blogging which I like 
If you didn't read mighty atom's blog I definitely recommend it (beware it is ridiculously long lol).
Edit:
Links here just in case you wanted to know which blogs I found interesting of MightyAtom (this & this).
There are some others but I don't have the links in my bookmarks anymore.
|
thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
|
Holy crap man I had to search the definition of consummate
So from that article you linked you're more of a analytical writer. Do you view yourself analytical ? 
Knowing yourself is a good attribute to have :p
Edit:
I'm a curious guy and I don't know under what category I would be from that article.
I'm guessing analytical like you since it says honest :p
|
I was initially going to say that you'll always be your harshest critic, but I'm not so convinced of that anymore. Sometimes it is so damned difficult to approach your work objectively, to distance yourself from any type of investment that you have in it. Inevitably, your own criticism will be directed through a looking-glass, and darkly. All the better to offer your writing to other people so that they may see what you cannot.
|
thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
On February 13 2012 13:05 shannn wrote:Holy crap man I had to search the definition of consummate So from that article you linked you're more of a analytical writer. Do you view yourself analytical ? Knowing yourself is a good attribute to have :p Edit: I'm a curious guy and I don't know under what category I would be from that article. I'm guessing analytical like you since it says honest :p
Yup, I'm definitely an analytical writer primarily.
|
thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
On February 13 2012 13:21 ohsea.toc wrote:
I was initially going to say that you'll always be your harshest critic, but I'm not so convinced of that anymore. Sometimes it is so damned difficult to approach your work objectively, to distance yourself from any type of investment that you have in it. Inevitably, your own criticism will be directed through a looking-glass, and darkly. All the better to offer your writing to other people so that they may see what you cannot.
I think that perhaps, with respect to the things that we already realize, we can be our harshest critic (or at least the one who will be wiling to be the harshest vocalizing such criticisms).
But the value of making things public is that you get all sorts of different perspectives that you would have never thought of on your own. If you look at some of my past blogs, each one of them has people filling in the holes in my argument, or offering their own completely valid perspective on things.
|
On February 13 2012 16:30 thedeadhaji wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2012 13:21 ohsea.toc wrote:
I was initially going to say that you'll always be your harshest critic, but I'm not so convinced of that anymore. Sometimes it is so damned difficult to approach your work objectively, to distance yourself from any type of investment that you have in it. Inevitably, your own criticism will be directed through a looking-glass, and darkly. All the better to offer your writing to other people so that they may see what you cannot. I think that perhaps, with respect to the things that we already realize, we can be our harshest critic (or at least the one who will be wiling to be the harshest vocalizing such criticisms). But the value of making things public is that you get all sorts of different perspectives that you would have never thought of on your own. If you look at some of my past blogs, each one of them has people filling in the holes in my argument, or offering their own completely valid perspective on things.
Yes.
And at least, in my experience, those faults of which you're self-aware will be addressed in the writing process, before anyone else has had the chance to look at your work. A sense of audience is key.
|
thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
On February 13 2012 16:46 ohsea.toc wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2012 16:30 thedeadhaji wrote:On February 13 2012 13:21 ohsea.toc wrote:
I was initially going to say that you'll always be your harshest critic, but I'm not so convinced of that anymore. Sometimes it is so damned difficult to approach your work objectively, to distance yourself from any type of investment that you have in it. Inevitably, your own criticism will be directed through a looking-glass, and darkly. All the better to offer your writing to other people so that they may see what you cannot. I think that perhaps, with respect to the things that we already realize, we can be our harshest critic (or at least the one who will be wiling to be the harshest vocalizing such criticisms). But the value of making things public is that you get all sorts of different perspectives that you would have never thought of on your own. If you look at some of my past blogs, each one of them has people filling in the holes in my argument, or offering their own completely valid perspective on things. Yes. And at least, in my experience, those faults of which you're self-aware will be addressed in the writing process, before anyone else has had the chance to look at your work. A sense of audience is key.
I have mixed feelings about this. Yes, I do address a lot of the obvious issues/flaws that come up during my writing, but I don't think that I dig really deep and figure out all the flaws that I can potentially notice, if that makes sense. All things being equal it'd be nice to be able to / be willing to catch all the flaws you yourself can detect, but I think it may be a situation where we have a tradeoff with the amount of "stuff" we can output.
With respect to blogging, the first obstacle really is "shipping often". If it means that we start off not catching all our potential flaws, then so be it. I think that as we write for a few months in a row, we'll naturally start catching more errors at no extra cost (we'll be more efficient )
|
Couldn't agree more. For me, it's very much a question of quantity verses quality. There are times when i can simply sit down and write fluidly, but this is when I am 'inconsiderate' of my audience, and thus the quality or readability suffers. Other times I agonise over each and every word, every syntactical structure, and every element of punctuation: I am hyper-conscious of how it will be read/received. It's important to find a happy and productive medium. And, as you say, writing will always bring you something constructive, even if it's only criticism.
|
|
|
all your problems come from a lack of drinking
|
Am no Hemingway, nor was meant to be.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
