Writing Tips
- Condense. Much of good writing is simply signal/noise ratio! First write a draft that says all you want to say. Then go over it again and again, removing/rephrasing un-needed words and syllables. 20% compression is a decent result.
- "Rubber ducking". Imagine showing the text to someone likely to read it. I've developed an "inner stranger" I show text or code to. He doesn't have my specialized knowledge, but is reasonably smart. Implied above is to always write a draft that you edit. Do NOT try to form a perfect text in your mind before writing!
- Read the Elements of Style by E.B. White. It describes how to write in active voice for positive effect.
- Practice converting your thoughts to the written word so that they're clearly understood by anyone. That is the exercise at hand and it takes practice.
- Once you've mastered clearly communicating your ideas, add some cleverness to your writing. Use double-entendre and practice economy of words. Leave something for the reader to guess, allowing one's imagination to fill the gaps with what you didn't say.
- Finally, practice the art of showing versus telling, i.e., the art of story-telling versus an analytical accounting of facts.
- Three practices: 1) writing with a piecemeal approach, 2) accumulating notes as fuel for tomorrow’s writing, and 3) rewriting with keyword outlines.
- My most important shift was to start writing nonlinearly. Instead of writing a beginning, middle, and end, I instead gather together all the claims, facts, etc. and develop them individually without concern for the overall logical structure. Eventually, the pieces start fitting together and the linear structure emerges. It is so much easier to start with too much and whittle it down.
- Where do these claims, facts, etc. come from? This is what your note taking system should create. As I read a text, I highlight relevant sections and then go back through to paraphrase them. These notes are organized around topics and solve the daunting blank page problem.
- How should you paraphrase? Keyword outlining is the practice of picking a handful of keywords from a source text, setting aside the original text, and then paraphrasing using the keyword outline and your recollection of the original text. This is a subtle shift from the typical approach of changing a few words of the source text to paraphrase it. This is also great practice for honing your sentence and paragraph writing skills.
- What I did: (1) start a blog, (2) force yourself to write at a specific frequency at all costs, like once a month, (3) plan and schedule future writing topics and times, (4) be very intentional with each sentence and paragraph, and (5) start with an outline for each post and iterate on it before filling in with details.
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