Henrik Karlsson describes the merits of writing and publishing online so very eloquently: “A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox.”
I'm a teacher of English and Creative Writing( retired now). I like your post but may add that writing isn't possible without reading skills. The reading level of Americans is 7th grade. Very worrisome
Love this! Writing is an invaluable method of processing and clarifying thoughts - aka reflective and critical thinking - essential skills that should be the foundation of education.
Great article! I admire your point of view on why we should write ✍️. You're a skilled writer, and your write-up took me on a wonderful cognitive ride.
Even if I'm not much of a writer myself (unlike the author), I too would encourage everyone—write!
Write to yourself first. I write into a plain text file ("logBook"). Just text ASCII, paragraphs sans any special formatting, except for new item starts with "- " (able to vim search with "/^- [RETURN]" to navigate easier latter), and empty line marks the end of the item.
(being a researcher I was familiar with writing things down; at work I'd maintain a work notebook—two facing pages per week—and keep a log)
Latter after starting WFH and doing more work solo, per-project logBook-s acquired minimal structure: sections FIXME, TODO, DONE, DONTDO. And minimal housekeeping rules. Items are moved wholesale (vi commands make that easy) without change from one section to another. Items that spend too long in TODO are moved into DONTDO. New items are not added in TODO until FIXME is cleaned empty. These are rules of thumb: can be broken with a reason, I try not to break them without a reason.
The file is versioned in a $HOME git repository. Plain text format makes it easier to see what's changed. Distributing to various computers then becomes git push or fetch, and without fear that I lose something overwriting new with old. When I mess something—the previous good version exists in git to go back to.
This made it easy to dare register a free github account and create a minimal html personal home page. For user ABC, creating a repository ABC.github.io means: when someone on the Internet directs their browser to visit ABC.guthub.io, a file index.html in that ABC.github.io repository is fetched. So just create file "index.html" in the ABC.github.io repo, and you got yourself a personal home page, out on the Internet. :-) Easy!
Bonus is that git push/pull work for updating the page back and forth local to remote, and git versioning is there to save you from the consequences of your mistakes.
"Many professional authors state they enjoy sharing ideas online even more than writing physical books, and I understand why. Writing on the internet through a publishing platform like Substack is like writing an open, social book, bit by bit with real-time feedback on ideas."
As a social species, real-time feedback is very important for us. We want recognition from others for our work.
It's also a real affordable hobby, from both a time and financial perspective. A very gratifying leisure experience, that can still be enjoyed regularly when work and family are making time and money tight.
Henrik Karlsson describes the merits of writing and publishing online so very eloquently: “A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox.”
Glad I’m not the only one who was thinking about that while reading this
Yes! Mental obesity from over consumption and not enough mental exercise is an excellent way to sum this up.
I'm a teacher of English and Creative Writing( retired now). I like your post but may add that writing isn't possible without reading skills. The reading level of Americans is 7th grade. Very worrisome
I often feel I have to justify the effort I spend in writing, but audience or not, it's just good mental exercise. Thanks for this post. : )
Love this! Writing is an invaluable method of processing and clarifying thoughts - aka reflective and critical thinking - essential skills that should be the foundation of education.
Great article! I admire your point of view on why we should write ✍️. You're a skilled writer, and your write-up took me on a wonderful cognitive ride.
Even if I'm not much of a writer myself (unlike the author), I too would encourage everyone—write!
Write to yourself first. I write into a plain text file ("logBook"). Just text ASCII, paragraphs sans any special formatting, except for new item starts with "- " (able to vim search with "/^- [RETURN]" to navigate easier latter), and empty line marks the end of the item.
(being a researcher I was familiar with writing things down; at work I'd maintain a work notebook—two facing pages per week—and keep a log)
Latter after starting WFH and doing more work solo, per-project logBook-s acquired minimal structure: sections FIXME, TODO, DONE, DONTDO. And minimal housekeeping rules. Items are moved wholesale (vi commands make that easy) without change from one section to another. Items that spend too long in TODO are moved into DONTDO. New items are not added in TODO until FIXME is cleaned empty. These are rules of thumb: can be broken with a reason, I try not to break them without a reason.
The file is versioned in a $HOME git repository. Plain text format makes it easier to see what's changed. Distributing to various computers then becomes git push or fetch, and without fear that I lose something overwriting new with old. When I mess something—the previous good version exists in git to go back to.
This made it easy to dare register a free github account and create a minimal html personal home page. For user ABC, creating a repository ABC.github.io means: when someone on the Internet directs their browser to visit ABC.guthub.io, a file index.html in that ABC.github.io repository is fetched. So just create file "index.html" in the ABC.github.io repo, and you got yourself a personal home page, out on the Internet. :-) Easy!
Bonus is that git push/pull work for updating the page back and forth local to remote, and git versioning is there to save you from the consequences of your mistakes.
"Many professional authors state they enjoy sharing ideas online even more than writing physical books, and I understand why. Writing on the internet through a publishing platform like Substack is like writing an open, social book, bit by bit with real-time feedback on ideas."
As a social species, real-time feedback is very important for us. We want recognition from others for our work.
Love this!!!
It's also a real affordable hobby, from both a time and financial perspective. A very gratifying leisure experience, that can still be enjoyed regularly when work and family are making time and money tight.