Ask HN: How do you come up with ideas/topics for your essays/blog posts?
I've noticed that people here are great at writing.
I am very inspired by pg's essays, and I want to learn to think like that, but I don't really know where to start looking for such interesting/surprising ideas and topics.
Maybe you could share some insight on how do you come up with ideas for your posts and essays?
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You can't find the interesting ideas and topics outside. They are in you. It has to come from your knowledge and experience. For some reason, while reading books, lots of thoughts surface. Sometimes I have to re-read pages because I will just continue reading while thinking about something else. You can write the thoughts down and if they are good, turn them into posts.
My guess is that since the reading is too slow compare to your thinking, it allows you to think deeply about things and gives those thoughts an opportunity to surface.
I think this only applies to non-fiction books though.
1- Always having to answer a question is important and here is why: The fact you answer a question, means that there are more unknown things relying behind this question that your audience don't know.
2- Try being exposing yourself to as much information as you can about! This might sound less intuitive, but it helps alot with building perspectives and being less biased.
3- Have an opinion and don't be afraid to actually back it up. I love it how PG goes badass by stating things that others can't really say outloud, but because he have all those awesomely explained examples he backs his arguments.
4- When you write, be open to critic, but don't change your style, because after you get to have this very different style that is nourished from different inspirations.
5- On that note, don't be afraid to write, I have no issue giving a speech in front of 500 people, but I was scared to post something I thought of. There i a self confidence that you build after a while when you practice writing.
Like I mentioned before, picking inspiration is very important.
My very first inspiration of writing about anything was Joseph Campbell's book: "The Hero with thousand faces"
I still have horrible grammar mistakes, run on and verb tense issues, but it's okay you improve over time.
A good filter for whether any particular insight is worthy of a blog post: If someone were trying to do a similar project, and their googling led them to this post, would they be more likely to complete their project? If the answer is yes, you've probably got a decent blog post.
Honestly, I have a lot of difficult to do it. Most of the time,I suffer of impostor syndrome. I don't want to write because I'm not an expert about the topic. You have to ignore it and go ahead.