10 lessons from 10 years of web writing

@visakanv

first let me show off a bit

ok properly now

1- you don't know what works

1- writing for the web has minimal downside and massive upside. you don’t know what will do well, and what won’t.

2- writing is essentially free

2- writing is probably the cheapest thing you can do at massive scale. (programming might be better)(compare standup comedy to live music) (tools required for writing)

3- writing is an amazing thinking tool. Dostoyevsky / Jeff Bezos / Paul Graham. - New ideas you didn’t know you had. - Bertrand Russell: everything is vague to a

degree you do not realise until you make it precise.

- Identify things that other people miss. And that’s where people go “wow”, and they retweet you, upvote you, give you legitimate authority to get things done.

4- you have no idea what you’re doing when you’re first starting out. you will be confused. you will get things wrong. you will be mocked, insulted, scolded.

(List of examples of people who scolded me.)

5- aim to be prolific. - don’t get caught up in style concerns. - everything is a remix. - michaelangelo couldn’t help but paint like

michelangelo. - people say “express yourself” “have fun” “be

great”. - Don’t worry about any of that stuff. u dunno.- Just be prolific. Just ship a ton of stuff.

6- DONT BE PROPER. Don't start proper, at least.seek out the especially silly, mundane, things that you hide from yourself. when you try to write things that people tell you, you’ll follow a certain pattern or rhythm. write horribly.

but write with gusto. slam the page. what is exciting? what is important? what is painful?

7- Edit. I don’t think it’s possible to write 1,000 crappy songs without accidentally getting good along the way.

8- read intensely. there are tonnes of self-help books in the world, why isn’t everybody really smart and successful? why doesn’t everybody have the abs, have the X, Y, Z? Because they don’t read deeply, and they don’t let it translate into action.

9- writing should inform the way you act.

My founder told me that he used to think about things when he was in college, and he was thinking about writing a book… but he then realised that he ought to start a startup instead. (And employed me.)

10- write to be read. pick a person to talk to and talk to them. one very specific person. talk to people on facebook in PMs

every piece of writing has a job, to take person X from point A to point B

happy successing! - @visakanv