Tweet threads cured my writer's block: Twitter as a medium for sketching

Re:Tweet threads cured my writer's block: Twitter as a mediu... by tomhoward on Tuesday September 22, 2020 @01:48PM (#24557640)

I often feel down on myself for not having time to focus on blogging. I've written things in the past that have been well received, attracted lots of traffic and opened up opportunities, but doing it regularly seems like too big an undertaking.

Then I remind myself that I routinely bash out HN comments of 200-300 or more words, and it takes only a few minutes. And you get instant feedback through votes and replies, which makes crafting the ideas and editing the copy so much easier and faster.

The combination of having something specific to respond to, the rapid feedback, and not having the pressure of posting a standalone piece that needs to justify its own existence, makes HN place I can write very freely.

Now I sometimes think of my longer HN comments as blog post drafts just waiting for me to dig them up and publish them.

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Re:Tweet threads cured my writer's block: Twitter as a mediu... by Waterfall on Wednesday September 23, 2020 @01:08AM (#24563191)

The issue with blog posting is that you need to have a capture for the audience or a funnel. On HN you can be read immediately in the sea of comments but in a blog post it would have to be published and I would need to have someone find it for me or find it. It would be cool if there was a better way than reading comments on the blog post about their similar article.

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Re:Tweet threads cured my writer's block: Twitter as a mediu... by cercatrova on Wednesday September 23, 2020 @01:54AM (#24563435)

That's only if you're writing to be read. Often I find the best way to write well is to write for yourself and assume that if you just so happen to be read by others, then that's a good thing but not to be expected necessarily.

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Re:Tweet threads cured my writer's block: Twitter as a mediu... by aliceryhl on Wednesday September 23, 2020 @06:01AM (#24565101)

I have exactly the same experience with things I write on some other forum, while having published one article since 2017.

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