When we write about what we think, we turn something abstract and chaotic into something tangible and understandable. I’m no great writer by any stretch of the imagination, but I try to bring some credibility and character to what I write. That is, of course, after I have decided what to write about. I believe that good text is, like any piece of art, as much about what to omit as it is about what to include. The great thing about being a minimalist, is the habit of wanting to take away the flurries to leave only the meaningful in constant recursion.⌘

As with all things of ability, it greatly interests me to discern and understand how or what makes it tick. Unfortunately, most people don’t bother going deeper into it beyond the fact that they can do something. Some times it is actually hard to put it down to a formula. But that doesn’t mean one shouldn’t try. I’ve always considered knowledge as a person’s supreme advantage over others. No knowledge goes to waste, as they say.⌘

Some of my personal heroes in terms of writing for the web are — in no particular order — Paul Graham, John Gruber and Jeff Atwood (even if sometimes he is a little off in his ideas). As my writing has developed over the years, I have sub-consciously tried to instil some parts of their style of writing in my own. It’s not a blatant rip-off, of course. My words, my thoughts and ideas are still my own, but I’ve taken some elements of what makes their writing appealing and applied them wherever I thought they would go well. Ultimately, no person can copy another’s ability in its entirety. Every person is unique, and hence, their ability is different.⌘

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If you’ve ever asked “Why should I write?”, I’d rather you ask “Why not?”. Writing is as much of an expression as talking, the only difference being that with writing, you’re not restricted to a known demographic. Writing allows us to bring our thoughts and ideas together in a coherent stream so that the reader might understand it. In doing so, we understand the same thoughts and ideas better, which leads to something bigger than they would have in their chaotic form in our heads. As Paul Graham once said about writing:⌘

Further Reading — Paul Graham talks about how he writes an essay in The Age of the Essay.⌘

Just as inviting people over forces you to clean up your apartment, writing something that other people will read forces you to think well.

While I don’t think anyone can control how they think, Paul is onto something. Consider what you think as raw material. Sharing that thought is akin to moulding it into something presentable. And since writing is a self-referential way of communicating, it helps to reinforce the idea and give it a form that is easier to understand for everyone — including you.⌘

I’ve seen many people take up writing online and give up. I can’t get myself to figure out how that works. If someone writes about things they find interesting, and what they think about them, maybe share something new they found about it as well — how do they lose the motivation or interest to keep sharing? Reader base might be one answer — but that is a mistake a lot of people make.⌘

Writing to people is hard. It’s like trying to be the best out of everyone in your field of interest. You can try to improve yourself bit by bit, but that’s all that you can control. Trying to be better than everyone else is not only not easy, it’s a destructive ambition simply because you cannot control how the others improve and better themselves over you. Being the best should be a by-product of improving yourself, and the same goes for writing. Writing things that people find interesting should be a by-product of improving your writing to the level that you like what you write. First priority is satisfying yourself. Once you achieve that, move on to understanding the demographic you want to cater to. As Matt Cutts said in a Wordcamp presentation about improving your website’s visibility in Google:⌘

So if you are a cat blogger, or you like to post poems or you just like to keep up with your family, congratulations. You are happy. You have won. You don’t need me. You don’t need advice from anybody. Whatever you want to do you are doing it.

But most people want something from their blog.

Most people want something irrational from what they write. Okay, not irrational, but they have unusually high expectations right off the bat. They want to be famous, constantly quoted, and (heaven forbid) rich. When the priorities for writing are out of whack, you can’t expect to get too far.⌘

As far as I am concerned, I believe that the only good reason to write is because you want to. That’s it. Nothing else matters. When you write for self enrichment, you research to learn more, you take care to use the right language and make sense. The text becomes a natural extension of what you’ve thought, like a log of your ideas that you can come back to later. I keep going back to my previous essays (which are many, since I’ve been writing for 4 years now) to see how my thinking has progressed, and to check if what I thought back then is still relevant and correct today. It might or might not be informative to you, the reader, but it’s a perpetual exercise is self-improvement for me.⌘

Jeffrey Zeldman said Write when inspired; rest when tired., which was shorthand for “write when you want to write, because that’s when you will give it your best”. I try to finish whatever I am writing in one sitting (some times writing more than one piece at one go), because if I leave it to be finished at a later time, it’s almost a given that some of the initial thoughts will be lost. That is the single best step of the process of writing that anyone can give you. If you want to learn how to write, first develop the “want” to write and understand the “what” of what you want to write. The rest, will automatically follow. Trust me.⌘