Tagged “writing”
What I think about when I edit - Eva Parish
Rain - Francis Ponge
From the gutter it flows with the restraint of a shallow creek until it tumbles out into a perfectly vertical net, rather imperfectly braided, all the way to the ground where it breaks and sparkles into brilliant needles.
Academish Voice
The Third Chair
Fiction | The Singing Tribe by Benjamin George Coles
I sometimes imagine the moment when they first encountered other people – people who didn’t sing all the time; in fact, hardly sang at all. The profundity of the pity they must have felt.
Patchwork: Version control for everything
subscribed. This is an interesting problem
Do you want to be known for your writing or your swift email responses?
I Am No Longer Good At Email
I'm not either, and still don't get much. Made me glad I gave up before it got difficult.
Hickman's substack
he is stopping twitter posts due to high effort required
A million words from Tim
On Slow Writing
Cal Newport responding to Henrik Karlsson - publishing less often can be less viral, but writing essays is not especially viral anyway
A Theory of the Modern Exclamation Point!
0838, 0839, 0840 – twitter and other cursed artifacts
quality Visa rant about twitter, expectations of different media or communication
Writing to Think
Steph Ango's Obsidian Vault Template
I like how flat it is. Few folders, personal notes in root.
Writing in a way that gets your thoughts to flow
very helpful post, on the importance of revisiting writing. Going back over things and having conversations with yourself over time.
Ten rules for writing fiction
From a bunch of different people. Lot of good ones.
mnml's vault - Obsidian Publish
Editorial The shrunken backyard
At some point the backyard became [Australia's] largest unit of measurement
good line
First word discovered in unopened Herculaneum scroll by 21yo computer science student
Decoding scrolls from Pompeii
What happened to blogging for the hell of it?
Finetune Mistral7B on own data · brevdev/notebooks · Git
the more you know, the worse you write
when more familar with a topic, we use more jargon and write less directly
How to Use AI to Do Stuff: An Opinionated Guide
if you're trying to do some work
...and you experience resistance against doing the work, it's worth identifying and articulating that resistance, and then integrating it into the work. once the resistance is inside the work, it doesn't need to act against the work
How to use a personal website to enhance your ability to think and create?
Rough and incomplete working notes, to help me think through how to use this site. Intended primarily for my own use. But I will also share this with friends, as grist for conversations about how to best design a website to support creative work.
DJ Lloydi - Mixes for your listening pleasure
I love this
Some blogging myths
excellent advice. write whatever you want. or don't.
Blogging isn’t for everyone. Tons of amazing developers don’t have blogs or personal websites at all. I write because it’s fun for me and it helps me organize my thoughts.
Setting time on fire and the temptation of The Button
Notes apps are where ideas go to die (2022)
the act of letting go of ideas (putting them into notes) lets them become effective to us
What’s in the RedPajama-Data-1T LLM training set
Thinking companion, companion for thinking
The darker side of making music
A wiser sympathy
Theories on plant intelligence
sparkly people and how to find them
Zvi on AI: Sydney and Bing
What Is ChatGPT Doing … and Why Does It Work?
really really good explanation
A manifesto on shower temperature control
The Strangely Beautiful Experience of Google Reviews
7 Reasons why I don't write
good concept. what are mine?
Notes on Craft
on writing comics - panels and pages affect how dialogue is written.
How to use ChatGPT to boost your writing
- Be more specific in prompts, for role of the writer, and style and tone. It is not having a conversation
- Don't ask it for facts or references or math.
- Play with memory and length, write smaller sections at a time to refine style
Here's How Author James Patterson Writes 31 Books at the Same Time
8 ChatGPT mistakes to avoid
- Not being specific about your goals
- Not asking it to reduce its output (ask to reduce, remove, compile, or rewrite)
- Mixing topics in a single chat
- Asking only 1 thing at a time
- Prompting in the negative (instead of "without X", add "delete X" to the end of prompt)
- Not giving examples
- Asking it to do math
- Not iterating
Use what works
Unbundling Tools for Thought
Daily
Danusha Lameris' poems
I like Small Kindnesses
Jim Nielsen Blog
Writing by hand is still the best way to retain information
Stronger reading comprehension, and a sense of tactile information recall. The study was for scheduling, so makes sense that the spatial sense comes into it for day/month planning.
Paired with Socrates on the forgetfulness that comes with writing (on HN at the same time).
Author’s note
Background on their short story, written by Wordcraft AI
What to blog about
Lex
Another AI writing tool to try
Time Thief app
interesting little daily note/photo prompts.
How To Be Influenced
Dreams of a European vacation
The utility derived from planning, having, and remembering a vacation. Wonderful stuff.
Probability (1963)
From hn
Theory of Knowledge
The Art of Fiction No. 158
I enjoyed this opening for some reason
Although best known for his monumental trilogy The Civil War: A Narrative (1958, 1963, 1974), Shelby Foote’s preferred genre is the novel. Much as his hero, friend, and fellow Mississippian William Faulkner created Yoknapatawpha, Foote imagined Jordan County.
The sum of all knowledge
On the wonderful thing that is the www, and his introduction to it (I didn't notice who the author was until the end!).
I sometimes forget how shielded I am for the ad-covered dumpster fire that is many pages; either from blocking them or not visiting them. Enjoyed the upsides he mentioned: easy to contact the author of something, cross-referencing without stacks of books, and the ability to pulish things yourself.
Try to verify things you read (lies are rampant online, fact-checking is easier than ever!), write and contribute things, stay out the political trench fights.
Playing Carnegie Hall
One rare instance where it's better to knock it down and rebuild than try to repair/remodel.
The Discovery of the World
the things people write when you tell them they can write about anything
Don’t think to write, write to think
Smile.
don't get famous, this sounds horrendous
Writing one sentence per line
Has changed my writing; been doing this and writing much shorter sentences.
Other tips on hn
Words And Music
bunch of recs for books about music
Half-Truths Are Lies Too
In her own entry from 1965, Wolf wondered whether the diary would become “the only art form in which a person can still remain honest, in which one can avoid the compromises that are otherwise necessary or becoming unavoidable everywhere.” Reimann never put such trust in the form. “In essence, everything that’s written in a diary is a lie—or it’s all just a half-truth,” she wrote in 1956. “And half-truths are lies too.”
She Used to Sing Opera
Now that years have passed since I stopped, I don’t mind telling people that I trained to be an opera singer. I used to be ashamed of it, though I’m not sure what exactly felt shameful – the admission that I’d once wanted to be part of that world or the fact that I’d failed.
I’m going to miss you, but I am taking a sabbatical
Some interesting discussion in hn comments on sabbaticals and breaks from work.
The Memex Method
When your commonplace book is a public database. The strategy of doing all your writing in public and as you learn about things, building up a knowledge database over time.
BLUF (communication)
Bottom line up front - begin message with the key information.
found via hn comment in reply to a longer and less interesting thing on writing
Embrace mediocre tastes, true happiness
When your bot is better than you
Interesting prediction, on possibly impacts of bot-bot communication.
In this new world, skill at writing will count for much less, and personal charisma for much more. This is not necessarily a positive development. It will be harder to use writing as a measure of broader skill or intelligence.
Seriously, stop using RSA
The comfort of a pencil
What Makes a Great Opening Line?
Writing Matters
. Writing experts judged the edited papers as 0.6 standard deviations (SD) better written overall (1.22 points on an 11–point scale). They further judged the language–edited papers as allowing the reader to find the key message more easily (0.58 SD), having fewer mistakes (0.67 SD), being easier to read (0.53 SD), and being more concise (0.50 SD)
New Capabilities for GPT-3: Edit & Insert
Read almosts back to back with Writing Matters, which highlighted the importance of editing.
Write plain text files
Still very much agree with this. Keep thinking to try out some kind of database but text is pretty great
My Notebook System | Hacker News
Article is crazy. 96 books! Text file is still working ok for me
Disney Filmmaking Process
I particularly liked seeing a bunch of familiar cartoon/2d animation techniques in some of the clips.
Some discussion on HN about the iterative story writing process.
Notes apps are where ideas go to die. And that’s good.
Writing to allow yourself to forget shit. Much of what is on this page.
Those writing extensively on note-writing rarely have a serious context of use
Ian Rankin on Patricia Highsmith’s hunger for love and thought
Long-time nuclear waste warning messages
How I approach writing
Not letting tools get in the way. And splitting up writing and editing.
- Capture the idea.
- Skeleton.
- Draft.
- Revise and ship.
- Plus: avoiding a false sense of productivity.
Stick to simple processes and tools, don't waste time overthinking.
The Problem With Contemporary Writing
So the typical writer today ends up with a pen and paper and a very narrow range of expressions: nothing beyond what can be stated with short sentences and short words and short, crisp thoughts. This is the ethos of the contemporary writing seminar, or most communication classes, even though any template that promises to induce good prose will also shove away any potential for expansive or artful prose—it is the realm of instructions, manuals, blueprints, and checklists. Where all sentences are trapped between guardrails. Where the purpose of writing instruction is to prevent errors. Where the writer begins every sentence with nothing more than thoughts of what to avoid.
Good writing isn’t static. Nor is it planned with precision. A sentence that vibrates just right is, instead, taking you along for a journey: these are the moments when you have temporary access to a writer’s mind. Good writing reveals all the muck, contradictions, and back-steps of actual thought
Understanding Conversations with Tyler
Wrapping up 2021
Elizabeth Minkel On Fanfiction, Culture, And Platforms
To Don't
cool idea. I'd like a fork of this with todos as well, so you can have daily dos and dont's.
What Even Counts as Science Writing Anymore?
How to Take Better Notes With Roam Research
why am I reading about notetaking tools again
Five Minute Journal - Daily Journal Techniques and Tips
Great idea
Morning prompts:
What am I grateful for?
What would make today great?
What am I worried about?
Evening prompts:
How am I feeling?
What's something good that happened today?
What did I do well?
What could I have done better?
The radical power of the book index - Prospect Magazine
Write more, but shorter
My dead dad’s journal: How I finally met a man I knew for my entire life
Vulnerability in Bumble dating app reveals any user's exact location
The Big Sleep: The most baffling film ever made
Added to watchlist
Starting - Even if imperfectly
Most of the content is right there in the title, but I found this one pretty motivating.
Blog Redesign: Out with the Old, in with the Old
History of his website redesigns. There was a more recent one since, but this post is more detailed.
Thank You For Reading
Fantastic post, and website generally. Read a few more of his posts, had a bit of an explore around. A lot of good "this is my website, I can do what I want" bits in there.
Patterns in confusing explanations
Very useful set of tips for things to avoid in technical explanations. Pick your audience!
The web browser as a tool of thought
Inspiring example of someone apparently just building all their own tools. The notes on browser as the place thinking happens is good - I mostly keep text notes on things and lists of links. Might look into those tools a bit, or try Memex again.
Books by R. Murray Schafer
Can't exactly remember where I found this, but some interesting looking publications on sound and music
'Klara And The Sun' Is A Masterpiece About Life, Love And Mortality
The review alone was very well written, quite excited for the book
Why Doors Are The Enemy - Diary Of An Unreal Engine Noob
Great writeup on the many challenges posed by adding doors to a game. Also quite amazing seeing how much people can do with Unreal without having to type code.
Dangerous Punctuation – Matthew Dean
Short story, inspired by a GitHub thread about semicolons.
Todo apps are meant for robots
So many good points. Tasks vs notes; not everything needs a checklist, some things are just notes. Thinking "I'll do that later" is a lot easier than "I will select a date/time in a calendar popup to schedule a reminder for this task". Todo apps are ineffective if having them is more work than the task you are trying to do!
A quote on HN about procrastination has also made be add Red Dwraf to booklist.
Niall Ferguson on Why We Study History (Ep. 128)
The Tyranny of the Faceless Other
Excellent take. The imagined overly critical audience is a jerk.
What happened when I stopped using Emojis
Some interesting thoughts on writing and communication, and a brief technical dive into emoji encoding and display.
A status update on all my projects [Riccardo Mori]
Stumbled across this after reading some posts on his excellent main site, which I've seen on HN a bunch of times.
I’m starting to grow tired of the term Project
Today online everything seems to be a project. It’s become an umbrella term for anything, from artworks to app development, from business endeavours to, well, writing fiction.
I’m not languishing, I’m dormant
Indexing, filing systems, and the art of finding what you have
What’s the most beautiful piece of writing you’ve ever come across?
Some gems in replies
Writing tools I learned from The Economist
Some good tips for better writing. HN thread on it also had some interesting points on tone and editorialising of writing.
Madeline Miller, interviewed by Omar El Akkad
Fantastic interview on her background and reasons she had wanted to tell the story
It’s Not Enough to Be Right — You Also Have to Be Kind
Very relevant to recent events. Stupid political divides give people too many reasons to not listen to each other. Finding relatable and shared ways to get the point across is more effective than just being clever.
Feedback for written pieces
Good notes on levels of feedback. Read something similar to this (tldr don't tell people they need to rewrite if they are showing you a final draft!). Partly saved because I like the site design.
Thank you? The place I pontificate the most, where I understand my audience, is ... : Hacker News
How to teach technical concepts with cartoons
Really great and approachable tips for communicating with cartoons.
HN Thread also has some good links to books and sites
Literary Arts Podcast - Helen Macdonald
Super interview. Talks about books, birds, poetry, and spies, Lots of interesting and random tidbits in there
Foam - Roam for VSCode
Might try this out for some project organisation. Reluctant to use this for all notetaking due to editor lock-in - I can't use VSCode on this low-RAM laptop.
Lydia Davis: Ten of My Recommendations for Good Writing Habits
All gold
Michael Maar, By Their Epithets Shall Ye Know Them
Examples of proper and appropriate use of adjectives
Absurdly, comically simple is the way to go
I love this, and have experienced it first hand too many times. But a single text file has worked well for me, and saved.
How a Decision Journal Changed the Way I make Decisions (with example)
Good strategy to minimize hindsight bias and try to improve quality of decisions. Interesting point from some interview: good decisions that have bad outcomes (due to chance) are better than bad decisions with good outcomes, as the latter reinforces bad decisions.
I find journaling indispensable
HN thread has some other interesting ideas/templates for daily docs
Journaling :: Up and to the Right
Nicely written piece, and great website
Why I Write - DESK Magazine
From the author of "Love letter to my website", using writing to organise the mess inside your brain
Consume less, create more
how to make better use of commute or dead time
Writing Habit
Celebrated Writers on the Creative Benefits of Keeping a Diary
A blogging style guide | Robert Heaton
Some solid rules for writing better. A lot of structure, a bit on content, and some process suggestions
The art of working in public
How to write about things you are working on without giving away secrets or spoilers
Online Pull Quotes
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