Status: Writing to think out loud, Cunningham's Law.

TL;DR

I've never published a blogpost. So I adapted writing advice into writing prompts to finish my first.

My prompts get me to:

1.) Clarify what I'm excited to write about,

2.) Recursively narrow the scope of what I'm trying to say, and

3.) Make cohesive style decisions upfront.

If I don't come up with an answer to one of my prompts: I assume I've got a pretty meh implicit answer to that prompt. And if I don't have enough clarity on what I'm trying to say, I expect I won't have enough drive to finish the post.

What are the prompts?

What’s the ONE point I want them to walk away thinking about?
Who is this for? Who do I care most about reading this?
How much of this should I actually cover?
1. What are the reductions I could make?
2. Am I sure that I can’t choose a simpler, narrower idea?
What capacity am I writing in?
1. Reporter? Provider of info? Average Jo?
What's the person I'm writing in?
1. 1st? 3rd?
2. (Reminder that when you write in the second person you're often just mad at yourself.)
What’s my attitude?
1. Involved, detached, judgmental, ironic?
What’s at the core of my enthusiasm? Is there a version I’d be more enthusiastic about?

I decided to adapt these prompts so I would actually finish writing a draft. I used them to finish this post (see here).

Why did I write this post?

I write all the time, But I've never posted anything publicly. I'm embarrassed that my drafts lazily hover around my friends' inboxes. But I write as easily as I speak - feels like I always have. Journalling to reflect on work projects has become a habit.

When I was the only MATS team member in the UK, that habit of writing to think left an invaluable paper trail for my US colleagues. But I still couldn't post. I learned to write comfortably and quickly for smaller audiences, but I couldn't post.

But I knew I could write. So I combed through writing advice (specifically for ML papers). I worked hard to internalise the advice: I wrote summary docs, I generated writing exercises, I studied anki cards. While interesting and fun, none of that involved doing any public writing.

While isolating with COVID, I revisited William Zinsser's "On Writing Well."^[1] I was immediately romanced by Zinsser's style and clarity. He reassured me that great writing doesn't require "inspiration:" that great writing can be achieved even very mechanically. I noticed that a mechanical approach doesn't require "inspiration" to make those mechanisms easier to use. So I adapted some of his advice as prompts to make writing easier.

The act of turning advice into prompts precipitated this post. I thought writing was something that happened to me when I'd talked about something enough that I just couldn't not write. Now it feels like I have a scaffold to keep my enthusiasm high enough, and keep my idea small enough, that posting feels like an inevitability.

So I wrote this post to share something that felt real, and that could help people like me. Also so that I could break my embarrassing post-silence.

How do these prompts help me?

I'm surprised at how "basic" my prompts are. But I get energised just reading them.

At a meta-level, writing up a process probably helps because I don't have to hold all the steps in my head while writing. But there are three ways these prompts improve my writing: in clarity, scope, and style.

1.) I clarify what I'm excited to write about.

Relevant questions:

1. What’s the ONE point I want them to walk away thinking about?

2. Who is this for? Who do I care most about reading this?

7. What’s the core of my enthusiasm about this? Is there a version I’d be more enthusiastic about?

When I start writing, I'm super excitable, but not focused enough. The first two prompts concretise what I'm excited about, and the last prompt gets me to reflect on why. It's helpful to have 7. at the very end for me to check if the core message got lost in the rest of the prompts.

2.) I recursively narrow the scope of what I'm trying to say, and

Relevant questions:

3. How much of this should I actually cover? (What are the reductions I could make? Am I sure that I can’t choose a simpler, narrower idea?)

I come back to these questions the most throughout writing and editing. I've repeatedly noticed how much I still have to say, even after I've aggressively scoped the post down. This post started as a shortform!

3.) I make cohesive style decisions upfront.

Relevant questions:

4. What capacity am I writing in?

5. What's the right person to write in?

6. What’s my attitude?

Some part of me wonders if I could skip these. I trust that coming up with an answer to these would focus my tone before I got too far in. Maybe it avoids big tonal re-edits later on.

4.) How I engaged with my prompts throughout writing.

Before I started writing, I rushed breathlessly through the prompts. I queried my gut and didn't worry about idea quality. My past self, embodied in the prompts, kept the whole exercise on the rails.

I'd start answering a prompt, get inspired, and blurt an idea in the draft post. Then I ran out of steam and returned to the prompts.

These prompts held me up when the first sprint of my idea ran out. They encouraged me to keep narrowing the thought I want to share until it's so small that writing is easy. I couldn't not jot it down.

Conclusion: What do I recommend?

Even if my prompts look basic, I've written them in a voice that feels alive to me. For my recommendation, Hamming's advice from "Learning to Learn" sounds good:

"You have to find a style that fits you. Which means you have to take what fragments you can from other people, use them and adapt them and become yours. You can’t copy me directly, you won’t get away with it."^[2]

My version of that advice is: Come up with your own version of my prompts! Adapt my process however you like! Adapt them like I did Zinsser's and Hamming's advice. Make them your own, and make them useful to you.

If this post helped you get a draft out, I'd enjoy it if you linked it in the comments, or DMed me!

Example: these prompts helped me write the post you're reading.

I used these prompts in writing this post: (answers in bold. I kept coming back to these prompts while writing & editing, bouncing between writing and prompting myself for new ideas.)

What’s the ONE point I want them to walk away thinking about?
1. Break the myth of the "creative" writer. Prompt yourself - for now you're at the frontier of text generation (in quality, not speed).
2. Writing can be a mechanical process with minimal mysticism.
  1. I circled around this a bunch, and practiced explaining the elevator pitch for the post, until I landed on the current title.
Who is this for? Who do I care most about reading this? (keen-eyed readers may notice I added this myself. How clever!)
1. Ultimately, Me. And I think enough people have the same bug I had/have re: writing as "art" and "not for me".
How much of the topic should I actually cover?
1. What are the reductions I could make?
  1. The LM metaphor might be too much to leave in the background, but distracting.
  2. Edit: it was. I've removed it. It's now shilling too hard for Zinsser - which isn't the point.
2. Am I sure that I can’t choose a simpler, narrower idea?
  1. No I'm not. I like the core metaphor.
  2. Edit: nvm, I'm simplifying to focus on the narrowest part I can: just the prompts, and the necessary context on Zinsser's book.
What capacity am I writing in?
1. Reporter? Provider or info? Average Jo?
  1. Person who's putting his thoughts on paper, writing mostly for me.
Are the right person and the right tense obvious?
1. First. I'm describing something true to me, a la Wentworth writing quickly to maintain rigour.
What’s my attitude?
1. Involved, detached, judgmental, ironic?
  1. Hm, my tone feels kind of detached / straightforward. Veering towards dry atm which seems fine.
  2. Had lunch and did a draft with pen and paper. Now I'm adding a much more autobiographical intro to motivate the rest of the post.
What’s the core of my enthusiasm about this topic? Is there a version I’d be more enthusiastic about?
1. A "fuck you" to the parts of me that think writing is for someone else, someone more creative or shiny lol.
2. Breaking the ice on actually posting something sounds great.

^{^}
Credit to Riley Harris for posting about it on a LinkedIn community Q&A of all places.
^{^}
Hamming, R., Learning to Learn. Full text at https://jamesclear.com/great-speeches/learning-to-learn-by-richard-hamming