Why Train Up Your Writing?

A well-crafted piece of writing can attract a lot of attention and create lucky opportunities. Many people have interesting knowledge but weak writing skills, and seriously training up writing pays off more than most people expect.

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Beyond math/coding, another skill that jumps out to me as being insanely useful and relatively straightforward to train is writing.

Not just grammar syntax, but also creating a hook, keeping it punchy but not corny, making a smooth transition into elaborating on the hook, building narrative momentum, keeping it relatable, etc.

It’s amazing how much attention a well-crafted piece of writing can attract, how many lucky opportunities can arise as a result, and how many people with interesting experiences miss out on all that due to weak writing skills.

Now I’m not saying anyone can be the next Hemingway, but I do think lots of people have weak writing chops relative to the amount of interesting knowledge/experiences they’ve accumulated, and that they stand to benefit from seriously training up their writing.

I also don’t claim to be an expert writer myself, but I have leaned into writing the past couple years, I’ve experienced serious improvement, and it’s been paying off in spades.

I need to do a more detailed writeup at some point, but in quick broad strokes, here is how I framed the process of training up my writing.

Update: Here’s the progression I followed to level up my writing and build an audience. It’s reproducible if you’re willing to put in the work.

Follow-Up Questions

Q: Isn’t reading the best way to get good at writing?

A: IMO, reading is #3 on the list of activities that make you a better writer. Not #1.

#1 activity that makes you a better writer:

Writing.

And getting feedback on what you’ve written, and making improvements, and carrying those improvements into future writing.

#2 activity that makes you a better writer:

Doing interesting things. Accumulating experiences that few other people have.

Without those experiences, you are effectively functioning as a LLM.

#3 activity that makes you a better writer:

Reading.

But not “sit back and relax” reading.

Reading with the intent of identifying more advanced techniques that you can practice in your own writing.

Reading like a book like a pro athlete would watch a sport or a musician would listen to music.

Active study to expand one’s skill repertoire. Not casual consumption.

Q: Disagree. Math and coding feature objective targets and ground-truth labels. Writing remains far more subjective. Gaming the system can boost engagement temporarily, but audiences evolve in response.

I know, I know, wouldn’t it be nice if you could just build a solution and instantly everyone would just recognize and adopt it as such.

But that’s not really how things work, especially when you’re building a solution that people aren’t already familiar with.

You can mistake lack of traction for lack of merit when it’s really just a failure to articulate value.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s also a failure mode of mistaking lack of traction for lack of communication when really it’s just that your product sucks, you think you made a solution but it doesn’t really solve people’s problems.

I’m just saying that there’s a lot to benefit from not just being able to create a solution, but also being able to articulate its value.

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