How to be a Writer
What is the difference between a writer and someone who writes? I know this question sounds kind of crazy - even silly. Isn’t someone who writes - a writer? I would love to call myself a writer, but I do not believe that I am quite there yet. I enjoy to write, I love to play this game with words. I love to watch my thoughts dance around on a blank sheet of paper until they find meaning, a purpose, direction, and make sense in a place other than my mind.
I crave writing, I love writing, I breathe writing. I want more than anything to be a writer. I want to write things that people will read, remember, and talk about. So in my endless journey for answers in life I have come to the conclusion that the only way to become a writer is to write.
Write constantly. Write silly things, write stupid things, write thing that make no sense at all, and write things that make all of the sense in the world. Write in a blog, write in a journal, write in a computer, and on a napkin during lunch, and on paper. On the back of your math test, in the memo section of your cell phone. Just keep doing it.
I know this is redundant - but if you want to become a writer. WRITE!
It’s the simplest concept in the world, and yet so difficult to commit to. Consistently writing, not necessarily good, but just writing is more difficult at times than sticking to a strict diet. It follows the same patterns; initially you are motivate, you make a plan, and you stick to it. Then a few days or weeks go by and you forget to go to the gym (you forget to write) or you sneak a donut (You don’t accomplish your writing goals for the day) and then you have officially “failed” for the day. You can either give up and stop or keep going.
And with any plan, the keep going part is the most difficult thing to do. Well, I vow right here on this blog - to myself that I will keep going.
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Recent Favorite Blog Posts
This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.
- A eulogy for Vim from Drew DeVault's blog
- Pluralistic: AI "journalists" prove that media bosses don't give a shit (11 Mar 2026) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- Avi Alkalay: Uniqlo T-Shirt Bash Script Easter Egg from Fedora People
- Offline 23 hours a day from Derek Sivers blog
- Pluralistic: California can stop Larry Ellison from buying Warners (28 Feb 2026) from Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
- On Alliances from Smashing Frames
- Acting ethically in an imperfect world from Smashing Frames
- Diffusion of Responsibility from Smashing Frames
Articles from blogs I follow around the net
Highlights from my conversation about agentic engineering on Lenny's Podcast
I was a guest on Lenny Rachitsky's podcast, in a new episode titled An AI state of the union: We've passed the inflection point, dark factories are coming, and automation timelines. It's available on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts. Here …
via Simon Willison's Weblog: Entries April 2, 2026Flood Fill vs the Magic Circle
Musings from Robin Sloan: Most olive oil production at medium-or-greater scale depends on machines of this kind [over-the-row olive harvester]; they trundle over trees planted in long rows, almost like continuous hedges, and collect the fruit with vibratin…
via Information Overload April 2, 2026The Blandness of Systematic Rules vs. The Delight of Localized Sensitivity
Marcin Wichary brings attention to this lovely dialog in ClarisWorks from 1997: He quips: this breaks the rule of button copy being fully comprehensible without having to read the surrounding strings first, perhaps most well-known as the “avoid «click here»…
via Jim Nielsen’s Blog April 2, 2026Generated by openring