Sean KilleenEd. Note: Posting this in honor of once-again breaking the blogging logjam myself. Seemed fitting that it was a post sitting in my backlog forever!
I had a conversation last year with a developer I respect and admire. They were talking about how they just couldn’t seem to blog, though they wanted to.
Some quotes from them:
For me it’s mostly about structuring the text and getting in some kind of flow. I know what to say, but every sentence is difficult to formulate in a way that I’m happy with it.
Not sure if it makes sense or not. I see some people write a blog post about something in an hour (or quicker), and it’s like magic to me. I have about 50 topics for things I’ve been thinking about really hard that I would want to share with others, but just getting started writing is a huge roadblock.
I thought I’d post some points of response to them on the off chance it helps someone else, because it’s certainly not the first time I’ve said these things.
Advice from “Bird by Bird”
There is a fantastic book that you might find interesting about this. I read it during college and I still keep a copy with me. It’s called “Bird by Bird” by Anne Lamott – it’s a quick read and the way it’s written is kind and funny.
Two aspects of that book really stuck with me, and I think are applicable to software as well as writing:
