Thanks, Henrik, for this wonderful list of ideas. Recently I thought a lot about what I should write about and this post was an invitation to discard thoughts about which ideas have an inherent audience and to just focus on writing about the things I actually think about all day. If there is no audience for that - fine. But it's pointless to talk with a censored voice.
Great post! Love this: “Just try to amuse yourself.” Sometimes the draft just doesn’t work and the telltale sign is when I’m not having any fun and just pushing myself to finish it.
From my experience, abandoning the draft and starting over sometimes works as a solution, but more often than not, I need to abandon the whole theme and write about something entirely different to get back into the fun zone.
Editing should be done once you have a GOOD draft. Not ANY draft.
I'm guilty myself - I've internalized too many lessons about the power of editing and took it as a call to edit and persevere with whatever I just wrote.
Whereas much sensible is just to start from the scratch.
Saw another version of this on Substack Notes from 2 weeks ago and saved it because it was so great. Looks like you updated it - looking forward to rereading!
[I guess item #20 would be "Don't leave your best race on the Substack Notes practice field"] :
Exactly, sometimes I write good stuff off the cuff when typing in notes and then I can improve on that. I added some thoughts and restructured. There is something lovely about having a space where I can write really fast and not think about spelling, and then have the blog be the place where I save the better things, properly edited.
I've certainly appreciated your other "shit blog." Not only as a bridge making the official stuff possible, but because it's often quite good and worth seeing in its own right. Maybe Substack Notes is like little bite-size snapshots of shit blog in process.
I feel like I've shifted ~half of what I did on the shit blog onto notes now that I've gotten comfortable writing that sloppily. So, stuff that is more "most ppl will understand and like this" go on notes and the more high context stuff on waste book
Seems like you always make a delightful addition after the edits. Last time it was the blinking dot in ChatGPT metaphor, this time: “When you write from your head, your style sinks back under the waves.” Love how it contrasts with the lovely surge.
yeah, don't remember what I had there first, but i didn't like that it was a mixed metaphor (withered, i think) and when i fixed it it ended up sound a bit odd which i liked
Correct me if I’m wrong, but my impression is that at the core of your philosophy lies that you don’t optimize for an audience, but if you follow your quirks, your audience will find you.
Thoughtful piece—thank you for writing it. How do you recommend new bloggers spread the word? Are there any particular websites or strategies you’d suggest? Also, curious—what do you think contributed the most to your blog's reach when you were starting out?
When I started out I wrote on LessWrong and the slatestarcodex subreddit, and I think I found like 50 subscribers from there. Quite early I got a small number of readers who really resonated with what I did and they began telling their friends, and it snowballed from there. I had some help from other bloggers early on two: José Rincon and Erik Hoel both shared my blog when I had ~100 subcribers, after I talked with them (but didn't ask them to share) and that made a difference. But yeah, just talking to ppl who are into similar things (like LessWrong isn't really all that similar to what I am doing now, but it was close enough that I could move along the spokes of the social graph from there to the people I resonatade with) and then word of mouth. Early on I was also very lonely and shameless in contacting every interesting-seeming person who read my blog and I made some great friends like that, some real internet nerds, who showed me around.
2 hit me hard, I have multiple Substack publications rn all with relatively few posts because I get too hung up on categorization… idk though I still feel like some of it is a little warranted, but I think there’s a lot of middle ground writing between the two and that’s probably what I should commit to (and then the pieces on the fringes actually still work?)
might’ve just discovered my new strategy, now I’ll think about this new publication’s title indefinitely 😆
it makes sense to have some coherence to the main thing. I sometimes sell pieces to magazines when I feel like they are not spot on for this blog + I have second blog for rougher more stream-of-consciounsess stuff
Thanks, Henrik, for this wonderful list of ideas. Recently I thought a lot about what I should write about and this post was an invitation to discard thoughts about which ideas have an inherent audience and to just focus on writing about the things I actually think about all day. If there is no audience for that - fine. But it's pointless to talk with a censored voice.
Great post! Love this: “Just try to amuse yourself.” Sometimes the draft just doesn’t work and the telltale sign is when I’m not having any fun and just pushing myself to finish it.
From my experience, abandoning the draft and starting over sometimes works as a solution, but more often than not, I need to abandon the whole theme and write about something entirely different to get back into the fun zone.
Insight for me: too much editing sucks soul.
Editing should be done once you have a GOOD draft. Not ANY draft.
I'm guilty myself - I've internalized too many lessons about the power of editing and took it as a call to edit and persevere with whatever I just wrote.
Whereas much sensible is just to start from the scratch.
Love this. There’s a Balkan saying about this: “You can’t make a pie out of shit”.
Saw another version of this on Substack Notes from 2 weeks ago and saved it because it was so great. Looks like you updated it - looking forward to rereading!
[I guess item #20 would be "Don't leave your best race on the Substack Notes practice field"] :
Exactly, sometimes I write good stuff off the cuff when typing in notes and then I can improve on that. I added some thoughts and restructured. There is something lovely about having a space where I can write really fast and not think about spelling, and then have the blog be the place where I save the better things, properly edited.
I've certainly appreciated your other "shit blog." Not only as a bridge making the official stuff possible, but because it's often quite good and worth seeing in its own right. Maybe Substack Notes is like little bite-size snapshots of shit blog in process.
I feel like I've shifted ~half of what I did on the shit blog onto notes now that I've gotten comfortable writing that sloppily. So, stuff that is more "most ppl will understand and like this" go on notes and the more high context stuff on waste book
Seems like you always make a delightful addition after the edits. Last time it was the blinking dot in ChatGPT metaphor, this time: “When you write from your head, your style sinks back under the waves.” Love how it contrasts with the lovely surge.
yeah, don't remember what I had there first, but i didn't like that it was a mixed metaphor (withered, i think) and when i fixed it it ended up sound a bit odd which i liked
This is gold. Bookmarked.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but my impression is that at the core of your philosophy lies that you don’t optimize for an audience, but if you follow your quirks, your audience will find you.
that sounds like a good way to live
Absolutely!
Great read. There are some banger ideas in this.
Ps. The “how I write essays” link at the bottom on the post is broken.
thanks for spotting that :) and also just thanks
I love this! So much truth.
You're a good friend :)
Thoughtful piece—thank you for writing it. How do you recommend new bloggers spread the word? Are there any particular websites or strategies you’d suggest? Also, curious—what do you think contributed the most to your blog's reach when you were starting out?
When I started out I wrote on LessWrong and the slatestarcodex subreddit, and I think I found like 50 subscribers from there. Quite early I got a small number of readers who really resonated with what I did and they began telling their friends, and it snowballed from there. I had some help from other bloggers early on two: José Rincon and Erik Hoel both shared my blog when I had ~100 subcribers, after I talked with them (but didn't ask them to share) and that made a difference. But yeah, just talking to ppl who are into similar things (like LessWrong isn't really all that similar to what I am doing now, but it was close enough that I could move along the spokes of the social graph from there to the people I resonatade with) and then word of mouth. Early on I was also very lonely and shameless in contacting every interesting-seeming person who read my blog and I made some great friends like that, some real internet nerds, who showed me around.
Thank you so much for the reply. Grateful.
2 hit me hard, I have multiple Substack publications rn all with relatively few posts because I get too hung up on categorization… idk though I still feel like some of it is a little warranted, but I think there’s a lot of middle ground writing between the two and that’s probably what I should commit to (and then the pieces on the fringes actually still work?)
might’ve just discovered my new strategy, now I’ll think about this new publication’s title indefinitely 😆
it makes sense to have some coherence to the main thing. I sometimes sell pieces to magazines when I feel like they are not spot on for this blog + I have second blog for rougher more stream-of-consciounsess stuff
where can I find that second blog?
it is gated, but if you reply to one of my emails so I get your address I can add you
just sent!
Somehow, your timing for this piece and the last one was perfectly aligned with what I needed to read. Thank you!
good! make this a great year
very thoughtful
thank you:)