What stops people from writing?
Hi!
I’m trying a slightly new format for this newsletter, let me know what you think.
Recent GC work
I have two recent blog posts out in the GC Deep Dive Series:
What stops people from writing?
When I was growing up, I hated writing. I always struggled in English class. By the time I went to college, I had grown accustomed to receiving essays back from teachers with red pen all over them. This didn’t bother me much because I knew I wanted to be a software developer and didn’t see the relevance.
As I started in industry, I heard “communication” touted over and over again as a valuable skill to grow. Verbal communication came more naturally to me, and I figured written communication as a software developer meant mainly being able to write effective Slack messages, PR comments or documentation. I worked hard on those skills, but still shied away from longer, deeper technical writing.
It was only within the past few months that I began technical writing on a blog and book, and realized how valuable of a skill it is, too. I so enjoy both teaching and learning. Technical writing gives us the opportunity to do both.
I’ve been reflecting recently on who writes technically (blogs, articles, books, etc) and who doesn’t. I know why I was hesitant to get started. I never thought of it as something I would enjoy (false!), or relevant to me (false! - even if I wasn’t writing, I still consume so much technical writing).
But I wanted to know why others are hesitant and, particularly, how to begin to remove barriers to longer form technical writing. There is so much deep technical knowledge that software developers can share with each other - what’s stopping us?
A few people have approached me, asking to hear my writing journey, and saying they’ve thought about writing but haven’t yet. I’ve asked them about blockers in one-on-one conversations, and also asked more broadly on Twitter about why people don’t write.
Here are the blockers I’ve heard, and my thoughts in response. The main point this all boils down to: when you’re starting to write, write for yourself, write for your own learning.
Also, when reading my thoughts, take what’s relevant to you and leave the rest. My thoughts on each item will not work for everyone, but they’re certainly what’s worked for me. I am also definitely still learning, and always interested in your thoughts about these items too!
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Starting a blog: We’re developers. We can get way too bogged down in the details around actually spinning up a blog, designing it perfectly, etc etc. There are many out of the box solutions. If this has been stopping you, one of the simpler ways to get started might be by picking a blogging platform (like dev.to), so you don’t have to spin one up yourself. I use a very simple Jekyll/Github Pages site with minimal theme changes. If it’ll help you, I can gladly share my setup with you.
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Topic ideas: I struggled with this at first too. I learned that with something like the GC deep dive series, I have built-in topic ideas. So my first suggestion here, if you’re worried about coming up with topics consistently: pick a big topic and write a series of posts about that topic. Much less decision making in this approach! I also keep a running list of blog post ideas. When I learn new and interesting things, or struggle to find an answer to a question, I’ll add it to the list.
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Fear of quality: This mostly comes in the form of “What if I write something wrong?” When this has also been a fear of mine, I fight it by asking people who know the subject matter to proofread. If you need someone to proofread something: let me know, I’d be happy to do it!
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Fear of no one reading: This seems to be a big one. We see so many blogs that are well-read, and somehow forget to think about the fact that most of them were, at some point, not well read. I guess there are some widely known software developers who start blogging and have big readership from their first article. But most of us don’t. For context, my first post had ~15 readers when I put it out. And I think most of those were my family and friends anyway. But this didn’t stop me because I was still learning from writing and found it fulfilling for that reason. If you’re writing for yourself, fear of no one reading shouldn’t get in the way. And if you’re still scared no one will read posts, maybe disable analytics?
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Unoriginal work: I studied education alongside computer science. One of my biggest lessons from that degree was the sheer range of different learning styles. The way you teach something will likely be different than how someone else teaches it, and therefore likely be meaningful to someone to read. Even if you write on a topic that’s been written about - you’ll still learn, and it’s likely others still will too.
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Pressure to blog regularly: Different tactics seem to work for different people on this. One point here though - starting a blog isn’t necessarily a commitment to anyone else about regularity of posting. No one is going to expect you to write weekly or monthly, especially if you never set that expectation for yourself.
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Not an expert: Don’t write for experts then! Junior developers also need and value technical content. Share what you know. There are definitely people out there who can learn from it. Important also to remember here - everyone was once a beginner at programming.
In case it wasn’t clear above, I really, really enjoy helping people start blogging. If there is any way I can help you with your blogging, or to get started, please just reach out. I’ve been editing others’ posts, working with them to ideate on topics, and so on. Reply to this email and we’ll figure out how I can help!
Anyways, that’s it for this newsletter. If you have a minute, let me know your thoughts. I’ll write again soon.
Sent with love from somewhere in the woods,
Jemma