> When you don't create things, you become defined by your tastes rather than your ability. Your tastes only narrow & exclude people. So create.
I won't bore you with the blog post I wrote in response, but the gist is that writing (and equally importantly, publishing) is a way of getting outside of your own head to think of a audience. We do it all the time as children but somehow as adults we seem to think we need permission to create something for the public. This has never been true and is doubly not true on the internet.
So write something and don't worry if nobody reads it. That is not the point. That act of writing will have sharpened a little piece of your brain.
It's demotivating to have created a huge body of work that you know nobody will ever read/hear/experience. It saps the desire to create any more. I've been creating things for decades and approximately 0 people (other than myself) have benefitted from any of it. Everything is always just under the line of "good enough" to publish/publicize, and publishing/publicizing are completely different skills than creating in the first place, and just feel awful to do.
> That act of writing will have sharpened a little piece of your brain.
I'm tired of sharpening my own brain. Oh yay, after several decades of challenging myself and creating lots of cool things just for myself, I have a super-sharp brain (let's be charitable for sake of argument). So what? I'm doing literally nothing useful with all my sharp intellect.
Creation has begun to feel pointless without sharing those creations, and the amount of effort and skill it takes to go from Tier 2 (not quite worth sharing) to Tier 1 (worth sharing) is enormous. We belong to a race of 8.2 billion people, most of whom are directly connected all the time. Human attention is limited, and everyone can choose to pay attention to the best 0.001% of any form of content or media -- and why wouldn't they? -- which already gives them way more content to read/watch/listen to than they could possibly experience in a lifetime.
That means you have to be absolutely world-class to create anything of value that anyone else would ever even bother to look at. You get to pick one thing that you're world-class at, if you're very lucky. And to do that, you can't do anything else. You want to share your paintings with anyone? You better fucking only paint, and do nothing else with your life, to have even a chance of anyone ever giving a shit about anything you paint. Good luck paying for your mortgage and your kids' educations.
Besides, in many endeavors AI will soon be (if not already is) churning out content that makes even world-class human efforts look like garbage. Very expensive garbage. Why would anyone bother to look at your worthless human shit when they can look at pristine AI-generated content instead?
So you can't create anything worth anyone's time, so you can't share anything, so you're stuck only ever sequestering your creations inside a dark basement forever where nobody will ever experience them. Eventually you just run out of desire to do that.
It's a bit similar to the succesful artist syaing follow your dreams and then analyzing the odds. That it's not a meaningful strategy on its own.
That's it. Literally "I just think they're neat."
Sometimes I just get a quiet "That's nice dear" from friends and my partner, sometimes I get "Oh wait that's kind of cool actually".
It's all still fun.
I think it is a good example of what the parent link is advocating - a short(ish) post on a single topic. We all enjoy long and informative articles but there is a place for things longer than a tweet but shorter than a essay.
Let Writing be personal; reflective. Occasionally one might feel like sharing with another self. Then, publish with kindness to self. Publishing is an open set of choices, including writing a rambling email to a friend or two. If writing publicly is stressful, email someone.
After you get past initial fright of course. Because later you don’t fret about what-ifs.
I think I started posting comments on HN 5 years ago and I had account since 15 years ago.
Fight that urge. The thing to tackle is to figure out the habit of writing first. And you can only do that by writing consistently. If you have nothing insightful to write, write about something you took a couple hours to figure out in a TIL.
I wish I just used Wordpress or something that let me click and drag images into it and move on.
I've been writing online for a few years now and for me, it comes in bursts. I recently started a new blog and publish it every two weeks - something that helped me was to write a lot when I was in the write mood, which gave me material to edit during off-weeks.
I would perhaps perhaps articulate it as:
you find your tribe by hoisting a flag and seeing who rallies around.
choose action over perfection - you'll be happier in the long run.
so: write on the internet.
And of Jorge Luis Borges:
“What I’m really concerned about is reaching one person. And that person may be myself for all I know.”
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At the very least, take some time to compile your main thought or argument and hold yourself to a minimum standard; If you're shooting straight from your keyboard and into the public domain, it won't take long before you regret all of your publishing.
I feel like, rather push the extra mile for a nice blog entry and more people will appreciate it.
On top of that, I reject a substantial amount of the ideas that I get, because they are not good/deep enough.
Bad writing advice Hall of Fame contender right there.
No, really. Why write? He’s not saying anything, so what’s the point?
When I take a long break from working out, it's hard to get back into it. What I'll do for the first few days is just show up & walk on the treadmill for half an hour. Easy, low-effort. Gets me comfortable in the gym environment & routine again. Then after a few days and that initial "ughhhhh, I don't waaaaanna go to the gym" brain barrier is gone, I'll adopt a real workout plan and stick to it.
With that said, sort of ironic that the author of this blog post has only posted this. Didn't seem to have helped much. :)
Most people have been “just writing” on the web for over a decade. Look at where it’s gotten us.
This sentiment is also hard to take seriously. Who are “most people”? How would you know who is “writing on the web” and if it somehow represents a majority of humans, or even a majority of humans with home Internet access, which I highly doubt?
I would argue that a very loud, very small minority of people write on the web, which may be the cause of our dysfunction. Encouraging a more diverse crowd to think deeply and overcome presentation anxiety via public long-form writing seems like a good thing.
I'm a bit eccentric in this respect as I journal more than most people. I have subject matter journals that I use. When I'm working on graphics, I write in my graphics programming journal. When I'm working through abstract algebra, I write in my maths journal(s).
I do some times come across ideas for longer-form essays. But it's usually from the accumulation of small ideas, thoughts, feelings, and the like that I find them.
Eventually, blog posts.
However if it's the anxiety of performing for others that overwhelms you, try developing the habit of writing in private. You can conquer those anxieties later when you're more confident in your underlying skills.
It’s OK to blog about silly things. Rant about something that annoyed you. Talk about how you made something. It doesn’t have to be perfect. No one cares if you make mistakes. Going from zero to something is the important part, not going from something to perfection.
And the more you do all the, the sooner you’ll find your own voice, and the easier it all gets.
Writing on blogs creates some valuable content I benefit from reading, and a lot of content that costs me nothing because I'm never aware of it.
Social media is where people would benefit from writing less. Over and over, I discover someone who produces great high-effort, high-quality content in some medium (blog posts, books, conference presentations), follow them on Bluesky, and then unfollow them because I don't want to read their reactions to random events or their conversations with other people. Even if their daily chatter is much more insightful and informative than the average person's, it's the wrong place for me to invest the energy and attention it takes to process. I feel so much better, and perform so much better personally and professionally, if I save that part of my energy budget for personal interactions with friends, family, and coworkers.
On blogs, people should write to their heart's content. They should write as much for themselves as for other people.
