Why Bother Writing#
First, is to ask why bother writing a blog. The time I spend here is time I could've spent making money. However, my current largest time sink is learning and this blog is meant as a public rubber duck to augment the time I do spend studying.
A blog should be a proxy for practice. Practice in either argumentation or teaching and nearly anything can be turned into one of the two. As practice, a blog post can serve as an external test of consistency for the author.
The Process#
First, have a "vomit" session. This means to simply write according to a general subject matter. My current best practice is to type without looking at the screen. This gives time to think but removes the ability for perfectionist tendencies.
This vomit should yield a sufficient purpose to the article from which all following sessions should aim towards. The value of an article is not about the subject of an article but what the article can bring to the reader, so that's what should be written for.
Finally, it's time to edit in place. First break down what I've written into proof, reasoning, and conclusions and ensure that each step follows through logically. Also, make sure that the limitations of each conclusion is addressed and add examples whenever possible. These two traits are generic to any kind of reasoned conclusions. Moreover, forming an example requires checking the example, so it can become a personal practice question.
There's optionally adding counter argumentation if I need to convince myself. Counter argumentation is an indirect line of reasoning and therefore by default is ignored. In my personal mental model for deciding tasks, non-direct paths must justify their own existence since in general direct paths get more stuff done per unit of time.
Next is the cutting phase. In this phase, use questions over a set standard. Standards by themselves can have ranges of values but questions have a set comparison point that leads to clearer decisions. A few effective questions are:
- "Why can't another article replace my blog post?"
- "Are there any sections I would skip?"
- "What cadence is there reading the article?"
Finally, one grammer and spelling check and I'm now forced to publish.
Software#
Use emacs (with olivetti-mode plugin). It can do everything.
Use markdown files. I've personally found that writing so every sentence is in its own line within the original file is easier to quickly parse for editing.
Use a static site generator, like mkdocs, to create and publish. Github pages can host the file along with Cloudflare custom domain to help create a custom url.
From Here#
This is most definitely not the end. Take in every source of advice, but not all advice is worth implementing.