write time

https://write.psimyn.com

Write without stopping. If you stop typing for 5 seconds, your text is deleted.

lot of “Note | maybe related” linking articles, but this seems like something I would be interested in

But that is all any of us have: just this small space and no matter what the filing system or how often you clear it out—life, documents, letters, requests, invitations, invoices just keep going back in

great piece, on words from the head vs words from the body. “You really get a sense what RLHF does to a motherfucker”

this looks quite great. Simple and fast

key is to know what you want to say, before anything else

improves thinking, and increases compatibility of people who contact you

Don’t use them for blind generation. Have them ask you questions; edit and refine the responses you get.

iA writer looks quite good.

Ordinary people writing about ordinary things

Some of the most significant journals, speaking in the scholarly sense, have indeed been those of private individuals who were not famous and didn’t write anything they expected to be of interest later on.

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.

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.

subscribed. This is an interesting problem

I’m not either, and still don’t get much. Made me glad I gave up before it got difficult.

he is stopping twitter posts due to high effort required

Cal Newport responding to Henrik Karlsson - publishing less often can be less viral, but writing essays is not especially viral anyway

quality Visa rant about twitter, expectations of different media or communication

I like how flat it is. Few folders, personal notes in root.

very helpful post, on the importance of revisiting writing. Going back over things and having conversations with yourself over time.

From a bunch of different people. Lot of good ones.

At some point the backyard became [Australia’s] largest unit of measurement

good line

Decoding scrolls from Pompeii

when more familar with a topic, we use more jargon and write less directly

…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

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.

I love this

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.

the act of letting go of ideas (putting them into notes) lets them become effective to us

Theories on plant intelligence

really really good explanation

good concept. what are mine?

on writing comics - panels and pages affect how dialogue is written.

• 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

• 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

You don’t need a single device for everything, a single notetaking app, a single sync tool for all sorts of files, a single backup process, a single workflow.

You don’t need to do things a single way, or even a single time. You can write and rewrite without needing realtime multiplayer editing between your phone and your laptop, so you don’t miss ideas while walking. You can move or copy text from one editor to another one.

You don’t need a single copy of files, with symlinks and some elaborate normalization system for where the true copy of each file is stored. You don’t need a complete version control system for every file. Have copies, have out of date copies, have v2_final_backup_real.md copies.

Just use what works.

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Related links

• Good tools choose to be bad rather than being mediocre at everything.
• If found unbundling tools for thought very relaxing. That hyperlinking and cross-referencing every single idea you’ve had read or had is perhaps not especially necessary. Storing different things in different places works just fine.

I just finished a year of uploading sounds every day. A lot were lazy, or noisy, or just terrible. But making it daily was a good way to avoid excuses. It started only semi-intentionally; initially just having fun playing with a new synth. Didn’t have any kind of audacious goal from the start, but once the streak started it seemed like a good idea to continue.

I have struggled to stick with more spaced out habits. Monthly reviews, gym a few times a week, and other infrequent or irregular ones. You get fewer reps, and needing to do things on different days of the week. For monthly things I tried “closest Sunday” but still was just too easy to miss - less of a streak to break.

Don’t know if I’ll continue with sound uploads daily, had definitely started to feel like a chore by the end (and it showed). But have wanted to try writing more (for years, apparently), so will give that a go.

For what to actually write or what will count, who knows. Will keep them pretty short, some either random thoughts or TILs. Some will just be slightly more expanded additions to links. Will run it for a few days and see what happens.

Have seen a bunch of posts this month suggesting writing more. Some particularly inspirational ones were (Almost) no one cares, and Why to write things. Also Bring back blogging and some responses to it.

Writing feels much easier to get stuck on, either on topic, or just on word selection. I spent too long deciding between “daily” and “dailies” for this (apparently dailies are a filmmaking thing). And there is the fear of being wrong, of people reading it, of it being used to train LLMs.

Still not sure how this one will go. Maybe life gets in the way, or maybe I just get bored of it and it doesn’t take. Even if I continue, I think I will need to miss some days. Just never miss two.

I like Small Kindnesses

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).

Background on their short story, written by Wordcraft AI

Another AI writing tool to try

interesting little daily note/photo prompts.

The utility derived from planning, having, and remembering a vacation. Wonderful stuff.

From hn

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.

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.

One rare instance where it’s better to knock it down and rebuild than try to repair/remodel.

the things people write when you tell them they can write about anything

don’t get famous, this sounds horrendous

Has changed my writing; been doing this and writing much shorter sentences.

Other tips on hn

bunch of recs for books about music

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.”

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.

Some interesting discussion in hn comments on sabbaticals and breaks from work.

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.

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

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.

. 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)

Read almosts back to back with Writing Matters, which highlighted the importance of editing.

Still very much agree with this. Keep thinking to try out some kind of database but text is pretty great

Article is crazy. 96 books! Text file is still working ok for me

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.

Writing to allow yourself to forget shit. Much of what is on this page.

Not letting tools get in the way. And splitting up writing and editing.

1. Capture the idea.
2. Skeleton.
3. Draft.
4. Revise and ship.
5. Plus: avoiding a false sense of productivity.

Stick to simple processes and tools, don’t waste time overthinking.

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

cool idea. I’d like a fork of this with todos as well, so you can have daily dos and dont’s.

why am I reading about notetaking tools again

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?

Added to watchlist

Most of the content is right there in the title, but I found this one pretty motivating.

History of his website redesigns. There was a more recent one since, but this post is more detailed.

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.

Very useful set of tips for things to avoid in technical explanations. Pick your audience!

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.

Can’t exactly remember where I found this, but some interesting looking publications on sound and music

The review alone was very well written, quite excited for the book

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.

Short story, inspired by a GitHub thread about semicolons.

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.

Excellent take. The imagined overly critical audience is a jerk.

Some interesting thoughts on writing and communication, and a brief technical dive into emoji encoding and display.

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.

Some gems in replies

Some good tips for better writing. HN thread on it also had some interesting points on tone and editorialising of writing.

Fantastic interview on her background and reasons she had wanted to tell the story

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.

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.

Really great and approachable tips for communicating with cartoons.

HN Thread also has some good links to books and sites

Super interview. Talks about books, birds, poetry, and spies, Lots of interesting and random tidbits in there

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.

All gold

Examples of proper and appropriate use of adjectives

I love this, and have experienced it first hand too many times. But a single text file has worked well for me, and saved.

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.

HN thread has some other interesting ideas/templates for daily docs

Nicely written piece, and great website

From the author of “Love letter to my website”, using writing to organise the mess inside your brain

how to make better use of commute or dead time

I love this excellent Eleganthack post about writing daily. Aiming to form a more regular writing habit by short daily attempts, rather than annual marathons.

Daily (or most-day) habits are a good way to stick to things. You quickly identify when you stop doing something if you miss a few days. Then you can either correct it and resume, or decide it’s not worth it and move on. Dropping habits that you don’t miss is as important as adding new ones - you cannot add activities ad-finitum to a finite day.

The idea of 15 minutes writing then five minutes editing is a nice starting point. I’m interested to see how it develops; in particular if I can start using the 15 minutes for Hemingway-mode style writing with no deletions, rather than wasting valuable seconds rewording the previous sentence. As for editing in five minutes, beyond proofreading and minor fixes there is not much that can be done in five minutes. Maybe some basic structure changes, and spellchecking my broken keyboard typos.

I am often stuck on the “what to write” front. I take a lot of notes, but spread between dozens of different files and formats. Committing them somewhere more central is a good way to try to flesh out the thoughts more than simple two-line scrawls.

The distinction between private and public writing is also interesting. I’ve never tried to journal or otherwise transcribe my inner monologue. I’m quite curious what that would look like. I think (without having tried) that it’s important to differentiate between private and public writing. When writing something not intended for anyone else to read, you can be more direct, more honest, and take more shortcuts. I know what my stupid 12 character acronyms stand for, and like not having to expand them.

Whether the 15 minutes alternates between public/private, or changes to 10 minutes, or something else, remains to be seen.

Some solid rules for writing better. A lot of structure, a bit on content, and some process suggestions

How to write about things you are working on without giving away secrets or spoilers

I hate pull quotes. I especially hate them for online articles. And especially when they are on phones. But given the single-column-default of most online content currently, they are bad on any screen size.

Jeremy Keith already wrote about this, and his post includes examples showing why they are bad. You can probably read it instead of the following few paragraphs since the sentiment is the same and his writing style is better. It still didn’t tell me why they exist though…

In magazines or print media I can understand why they might make sense - someone flipping through pages and skimming the content sees an interesting quote in big colorful text. That draws you in to read the article, and you have an easier time skipping past that bit of text. Even so, I usually get at least halfway through a sentence before I realise it’s the same damn one as 3cm away, and someone thought it was a good idea to write it twice…

But for online articles it makes no sense to me. In an online article, I am not casually flipping. I don’t need an attention-grabber 3/4 of the way down the page to grab my interest. I am trying to read the piece!

You usually can’t skip over them - they are eye-catching and large enough that you always see them. So you start reading the sentence and realise that it is the same as the one 3 lines above!

I don’t know if there is a good reason for them being there, or it’s still people trying to imitate print. Maybe this is for people who don’t like to read the text, but still like to say they scrolled to the bottom of the page. Skim a few key quotes and call it read.

Maybe they’ll make more sense with display: grid or other clever layouts - I’d be fine with pull quotes that were off to the side of the page (maybe). But full-width giant text taking up my whole phone screen? I do not want this.