Thoughts on writing (I’ve been spending the 4 hours every morning the last week working on Hazardous Guide to Words):
Feedback
Feedback is about figuring out stuff you didn’t already know. I wrote the first draft of HGTW a month ago, and I wrote it in “Short sentences that convince me personally that I have a coherent idea here”. When I went to get feedback from some friends last week, I’d forgotten that I’d hadn’t actually worked to make it understandable, and so most of the feedback was “this isn’t understandable”.
Writing with purpose
Almost always if I get bogged down when writing it’s because I’m trying to “do something justice” instead of “do what I want”. “Where is the meaning?” started as “oh, I’ll just paraphrase Hofstadter’s view of meaning”. The first example I thought was to talk about how you can draw too much meaning from things, and look at claims of the pyramids predicting the future. I got bogged down righting those examples, because “what can lead you to think meaning is there when it’s not?” was not really what I was talking about, nor was it what I needed to talk about language. It is interesting though.
I’m getting better at noticing the feeling of being part way through an explanation and going “oh shit, this is wrong/not the right frame/isn’t congruent with the last chapter/doesn’t build to where I want”. There have been times in the past when I thought that feeling was just pesky perfectionism.
Having an explicit purpose for each post is crazy helpful for deciding what does and doesn’t go in.
Process
I’m hap-hazardously growing more of a process with writing. I’ve currently got an outline of the refactored version of HGTW with thought given to building concepts in the right order. Now I’m going down the outline and making the required posts.
I’ve started heading each post with a one-two sentences for me describing what the purpose of this post is. I then try to outline the post, and when I’m done or if I get stuck, I just start trying to write it out. This is “get it all out” don’t even worry about connecting sentences, bail mid paragraph and start again. Rn I’m going on gut for switching in between outlining and orging and writing in between content. I’m getting much better on ditching stuff that I liked if I don’t think it serves the purpose.
Oh, I’m also writing on work cycles (pomodoros with sprinkles). Breaks are stretching and staring out he window, great for not destroying my eyes and keeping my body from shriveling up and dying.
Musing on Ways I might better operationalize my writing
Stricter sense of audience
Or in the reverse framing, stricter sense of “this is my style and I’m sticking to it”
More intentionally entrain “purpose driven” writing?
Triggers: I’m getting bored. It feels hard to write. I have written anything in a minute. All my phrasings sound fake.
Action: “Aha! Friction, I noticed, thank you brain. Why was I trying to write that? Why does it feel weird? If this doesn’t really matter, what does? I’ve I gotten to what matters yet?”
Can I productively work on writing in shorter chunks f time, or do can I really only do stuff in 3 1⁄2 hour chunks?
Yeah, this seems pretty important given that I want to continue writing all through the next semester/year/life.
I think it might be more useful to have more concrete mental buckets for stages of writing.
When I’m doing 6 cycles in a day, I start each cycle like “Cool, time to [clarify the middle section]” as opposed to “write more”. It might be the case that “working on that blog post” might be to fuzzy to come to every day.
End each cycle by writing down the next step
Maybe a different mentality. In a given cycle, don’t try to connect all the dots. Just explain a few dots. After a few days of having made some dots, then i might be able to connect them in one day.
Thoughts on writing (I’ve been spending the 4 hours every morning the last week working on Hazardous Guide to Words):
Feedback
Feedback is about figuring out stuff you didn’t already know. I wrote the first draft of HGTW a month ago, and I wrote it in “Short sentences that convince me personally that I have a coherent idea here”. When I went to get feedback from some friends last week, I’d forgotten that I’d hadn’t actually worked to make it understandable, and so most of the feedback was “this isn’t understandable”.
Writing with purpose
Almost always if I get bogged down when writing it’s because I’m trying to “do something justice” instead of “do what I want”. “Where is the meaning?” started as “oh, I’ll just paraphrase Hofstadter’s view of meaning”. The first example I thought was to talk about how you can draw too much meaning from things, and look at claims of the pyramids predicting the future. I got bogged down righting those examples, because “what can lead you to think meaning is there when it’s not?” was not really what I was talking about, nor was it what I needed to talk about language. It is interesting though.
I’m getting better at noticing the feeling of being part way through an explanation and going “oh shit, this is wrong/not the right frame/isn’t congruent with the last chapter/doesn’t build to where I want”. There have been times in the past when I thought that feeling was just pesky perfectionism.
Having an explicit purpose for each post is crazy helpful for deciding what does and doesn’t go in.
Process
I’m hap-hazardously growing more of a process with writing. I’ve currently got an outline of the refactored version of HGTW with thought given to building concepts in the right order. Now I’m going down the outline and making the required posts.
I’ve started heading each post with a one-two sentences for me describing what the purpose of this post is. I then try to outline the post, and when I’m done or if I get stuck, I just start trying to write it out. This is “get it all out” don’t even worry about connecting sentences, bail mid paragraph and start again. Rn I’m going on gut for switching in between outlining and orging and writing in between content. I’m getting much better on ditching stuff that I liked if I don’t think it serves the purpose.
Oh, I’m also writing on work cycles (pomodoros with sprinkles). Breaks are stretching and staring out he window, great for not destroying my eyes and keeping my body from shriveling up and dying.
Musing on Ways I might better operationalize my writing
Stricter sense of audience
Or in the reverse framing, stricter sense of “this is my style and I’m sticking to it”
More intentionally entrain “purpose driven” writing?
Triggers: I’m getting bored. It feels hard to write. I have written anything in a minute. All my phrasings sound fake.
Action: “Aha! Friction, I noticed, thank you brain. Why was I trying to write that? Why does it feel weird? If this doesn’t really matter, what does? I’ve I gotten to what matters yet?”
Can I productively work on writing in shorter chunks f time, or do can I really only do stuff in 3 1⁄2 hour chunks?
Yeah, this seems pretty important given that I want to continue writing all through the next semester/year/life.
I think it might be more useful to have more concrete mental buckets for stages of writing.
When I’m doing 6 cycles in a day, I start each cycle like “Cool, time to [clarify the middle section]” as opposed to “write more”. It might be the case that “working on that blog post” might be to fuzzy to come to every day.
End each cycle by writing down the next step
Maybe a different mentality. In a given cycle, don’t try to connect all the dots. Just explain a few dots. After a few days of having made some dots, then i might be able to connect them in one day.