I imagine the advice would often be "just write", which I do agree is fair advice, but wondering if you had any takes.
The main idea for me was to just reduce the barrier to entry so that writing more was too easy to avoid. I already use Notion for taking notes throughout the day, so transitioning to also jotting down blog thoughts has been very easy and has increased the amount of writing that I do.
Current steps:
- make newpost NAME='even a temporary title is ok, but a permanent one is better'
That creates a file with the headers and a couple of skeletal bits in the right place, then opens it in my editor.
- make rsync
That publishes it.
But really just work on writing or ideas for writing for half an hour every day. Even if you just write "I have nothing to write about today". Don't be afraid to just keep showing up.
(Maybe the trick is: if you must tinker, also turn that tinkering into writing?)
Most of my site update posts are just my notes from tinkering with things turned into prose.
I have only written one article at the moment, but I am glad I got started with it. I hope to keep adding to it over time and have a few articles in the works.
Please keep at it with writing! It's a super valuable skill that so few people actually use. It really sets you apart in the job market and is so underrated from a professional standpoint.
Start by writing to yourself. I started with writing down ideas in a private markdown system. (I’d recommend https://obsidian.md today.)
I became less self-conscious about my target audience was myself. It also became easier to make assumptions about what they (I) know, which is still a game of “will I understand this in a year or two?” For me, writing about tech to a near-future version of myself was the beginning.
Another tip: You may be in control of your documents (you maintain them, not some online system you don’t own), but if you use someone else’s blog platform, you won’t have a chance to rabbit-hole the site making. There’s something liberating about only caring about the content, not the layout.
For some subjects, it helps to write under a pseudonym, because you can experiment with what’s on your mind and not how people will treat you based on what you say. I’ve wanted to write about things like pornography and past jobs (those are unrelated, hehe), but I don’t want to upset past colleagues or seem obsessed about pornography.
For example after trying multiple SSGs, I eventually settled on the simplest combination for me: Caddy with markdown files
Wrote about it here: https://notes.alinpanaitiu.com/How%20I%20write%20this%20blog...
I already had Caddy running for lunar.fyi and lowtechguys.com so it felt simple to just add some lines in the Caddy file and start writing words in .md files.
No judgement, just curious.
"This code is free as in mattress. If you decide to use it, it's your problem."
p, .conversation-chat, blockquote, em, strong {
font-size: 1rem;
font-style: normal;
font-family: Menlo, monospace;
}
I'll figure out something, I'm sure.
It’s one of my favorite fonts for code, but I also used Input Sans as a font for writing in Obsidian and Ulysses for a while. It was very good!
Thanks for all the knowledge sharing and education efforts you put into all sorts of areas I am interested in (Linux internals, NixOS, Rust, etc.)
Can you please elaborate more on this? Do you just go "I made a post about it, go read?"
Learning how to write well also makes it so much easier to explain things succinctly, especially when working remote like I prefer to.
I've also been told that more junior people look up to me as a role model because of my blog, which is something that I am still getting used to, but I can accept.