I’ve landed three jobs thanks to my writing, which is a bit strange to say because I still feel like I have substantial room for improvement. But that’s still a pretty good track record, so I’ll tell you what has worked for me:
Ask people to read your stuff and tell you at what point they get bored or want to stop. Tell them to be brutally honest. The most important part of writing is keeping your audience’s attention, and many writers make no effort to do this.
Write about something that’s actually important, and that interests you. I’ve done a large amount of high-quality writing about interest rates, banking and crypto. So far as I can tell it was a complete waste because no one cared. 80% of the battle is just picking the right topic.
Put the most imortant ideas at the start of whatever you’re writing. The drop-off among readers (even on a site like LessWrong) is shockingly high. I received almost 400 upvotes on my post about adult intelligence enhancement, and only four people sent me a DM in response to my request they do so that I placed at the end of the appendix.
Write the narrative of a story in the evening and then correct language and facts in the morning. My best, most productive narrative writing often occurs late at night, but when I re-read it in the morning it sounds sloppy and full of mistakes. However, I nearly always need to start with the sloppy, emotional version because good narrative writing is the one thing I can’t do well when my brain is functioning at full capacity.
Don’t be afraid to start a new draft of a post if you feel like you haven’t gotten the narrative right.
I have a extremely difficult time finding friends to earnestly read my material. The amount of times I’ve sent a PDF and heard… nothing. I guess it is at least partly because of your second suggestion—I write about topics that interest me but probably aren’t that important to anyone that isn’t me. I don’t know anyone who has any interest in the use of Pantomime in Cinema.
That means finding people to read and critique my writing is already an uphill battle, because unless I’m a “good writer” already how can I possibly convince them that this topic is interesting or important?
That’s a difficult question. I always tell readers that the number one thing I’m interested in is where they got bored and stopped reading. I ask them to be brutally honest and not feel like they need to keep reading to flatter my ego or because they are afraid of being harsh on me.
If they aren’t interested in the topic in the first place it’s harder. You need to be able to at least find an audience that is interested in sitting down to read it. Can you like join a hobbyist club for this stuff, or find a subreddit for it?
Here’s a kind of galaxy-brained idea that might just work for finding your crowd:
Go onto reddit and find the subreddit community closest to the thing you’re interested in/writing about
Go to https://subredditstats.com and enter the name of that subreddit to see which communities it has the most overlap with.
Go to meetup.com and see if you can find a local group dedicated to one of those related topics (or better yet, the topic itself)
Go to the meetup, pitch your thing, and see if people are into it. Maybe just TALK about what you’ve written first and if people seem interested offer to send them what you’ve written.
If you decide to actually give the above a shot, tell me how it goes. I’d be very interested to hear whether my idea works.
I’ve landed three jobs thanks to my writing, which is a bit strange to say because I still feel like I have substantial room for improvement. But that’s still a pretty good track record, so I’ll tell you what has worked for me:
Ask people to read your stuff and tell you at what point they get bored or want to stop. Tell them to be brutally honest. The most important part of writing is keeping your audience’s attention, and many writers make no effort to do this.
Write about something that’s actually important, and that interests you. I’ve done a large amount of high-quality writing about interest rates, banking and crypto. So far as I can tell it was a complete waste because no one cared. 80% of the battle is just picking the right topic.
Put the most imortant ideas at the start of whatever you’re writing. The drop-off among readers (even on a site like LessWrong) is shockingly high. I received almost 400 upvotes on my post about adult intelligence enhancement, and only four people sent me a DM in response to my request they do so that I placed at the end of the appendix.
Write the narrative of a story in the evening and then correct language and facts in the morning. My best, most productive narrative writing often occurs late at night, but when I re-read it in the morning it sounds sloppy and full of mistakes. However, I nearly always need to start with the sloppy, emotional version because good narrative writing is the one thing I can’t do well when my brain is functioning at full capacity.
Don’t be afraid to start a new draft of a post if you feel like you haven’t gotten the narrative right.
Who do you recommend asking to be a reader?
I have a extremely difficult time finding friends to earnestly read my material. The amount of times I’ve sent a PDF and heard… nothing. I guess it is at least partly because of your second suggestion—I write about topics that interest me but probably aren’t that important to anyone that isn’t me. I don’t know anyone who has any interest in the use of Pantomime in Cinema.
That means finding people to read and critique my writing is already an uphill battle, because unless I’m a “good writer” already how can I possibly convince them that this topic is interesting or important?
That’s a difficult question. I always tell readers that the number one thing I’m interested in is where they got bored and stopped reading. I ask them to be brutally honest and not feel like they need to keep reading to flatter my ego or because they are afraid of being harsh on me.
If they aren’t interested in the topic in the first place it’s harder. You need to be able to at least find an audience that is interested in sitting down to read it. Can you like join a hobbyist club for this stuff, or find a subreddit for it?
Here’s a kind of galaxy-brained idea that might just work for finding your crowd:
Go onto reddit and find the subreddit community closest to the thing you’re interested in/writing about
Go to https://subredditstats.com and enter the name of that subreddit to see which communities it has the most overlap with.
Go to meetup.com and see if you can find a local group dedicated to one of those related topics (or better yet, the topic itself)
Go to the meetup, pitch your thing, and see if people are into it. Maybe just TALK about what you’ve written first and if people seem interested offer to send them what you’ve written.
If you decide to actually give the above a shot, tell me how it goes. I’d be very interested to hear whether my idea works.