Iterate
Rapid Prototyping
I want to try out one of PG’s ideas. He says that he writes essays like he writes programs - he hacks together a minimal complete version 1 as soon as possible and then goes over it again and again to refine it.
So, for me, it would be like this - I need to write out a complete essay, from start to finish, with minimal yet meaningful stubs of all the ideas I have, as soon as possible. I don’t need to worry about running out of ideas. There’s plenty more where that came from.
Then, come back and make several passes where I expand on each idea, adding in more ideas as they arrive.
The major theme is that at every moment, I have a “complete essay” at my disposal. It’s not a “perfect essay” at any step. It’s not even the sort of essay I would get if I sat down and wrote for 2-3 hours. That is my best-effort essay. But this iterative essay is getting closer to my best-effort essay at each step.
Then, why write this way? If we are gonna reach my best-effort essay eventually, why not write the best-effort essay in the first place? Why go through this rigmarole of iterations and versions and whatnot?
Complete Faith
Over the past one week, I have experienced quite a bit of a dip in motivation. It has been a bit of a rocky journey in the last 10 days. What happened?
I have come to realize that writing essays is an act of faith.
Faith in what?
Faith in the Magic Power of Essays!
Faith that if you write, the ideas will come. You could have diddly-squat at the beginning and still end up with glittering gold at the end of the essay. It will happen.
How do I know that? How do I convince you?
Hey! That is why it’s called Faith!
I was pretty convinced right from the beginning (hey, that’s why we started the whole 300-Word Experiment). But, the experience of the last 50+ essays have just driven it home.
Doesn’t always mean that I’m raring to go. Even a single day’s gap is enough to sow the seeds of doubt.
When I’m writing everyday, I can remember that I have generated ideas out of thin air the previous day. That keeps me going today. Then, this keeps me going tomorrow and so on.
But, take a day off (for whatever reason)… and it all falls down. WTF?! I can’t remember that I created ideas out of nowhere two days ago? How difficult is that?
Very difficult, as it turns out. It’s not about whether you “remember” it. It’s about whether it feels true to your mind. And it will feel true when your mind can recall such instances vividly. And the data suggests that, after a day, it seems to my mind that writing essays is a completely pointless task.
I’ve written nearly 50 essays back to back before this point, creating ideas on the fly on each successive day. And yet, my mind has trouble believing that I will succeed when I go forth and write on some half-clear idea after a day’s gap.
It is that fickle. It is like The Great 300-Word Experiment is a see-saw carefully balanced on top of a mountain peak. The slightest of pushes will send it over one edge and crash into the valley of crap below. The only way to keep it balanced seems to be keep writing, every single day. You have to keep running. You cannot let the momentum slide for even one moment. It is like a glass of water out in the hot sun. Unless we keep replenishing it, our mind will just evaporate the motivation and creative juices we have.
This is why we need to write a complete essay, no matter how small and trivial, everyday. It helps to keep the engine running. It keeps our faith alive - the faith that if we write, magical things will happen.
5 Reasons not to write an Essay tonight
I’m stuck on this idea!
I don’t know if I can do the topic full justice if I write about it now!
I don’t think I have enough time to write out all the stuff I have in my head! But I need to publish one essay tonight!
I want to surf the web!
I want to do anything in the world but write an essay about ideas that aren’t even in my head yet!
Why have a complete start-to-finish essay at each point?
Feeling stuck? Well, if at each point you have a reasonably complete essay, you can go forth and experiment with your half-formed idea with no worries. If it fails, no problem, just rollback your change, and publish the previous version. If it works out, yay!
Don’t know if you can do it full justice? Well, write about it anyway. The reason why you were hesitant was that you expected to write an essay that covered all the arguments and stuff in your head. No need. Write a start-to-finish essay with whatever ideas you can talk about right now. Call it Part 1 and just publish it. Nobody can say “hey, it is incomplete” because, (a) it is complete (though not exhaustive), and (b) it is Part 1.
No time? Again, just write about what you can. Make sure it is a start-to-finish essay. Done. The rest will come later. You only need 300 words, remember.
But, these aren’t the most important reasons. The major problem is that it is all too easy to give up on writing a vague, abstract, demanding, “create-ideas-from-thin-air” essay and instead go watch some video online.
A surefire way to feel enthusiastic about your chances of success is to actually see the results of your labour in front of your eyes.
Then, why doesn’t a half-written essay do the job?
First, it creates an open loop of anxiety in your head. You won’t feel at ease until you’ve completed and published the goddamn thing. It is like a process that is spinning in your mental processor. This is what brought the whole “write - wait a few days - rewrite” idea crashing to its knees. No closure. No feeling of awesomeness as you start and complete something within a matter of an hour.
Second, you don’t get the feeling that you have actually accomplished something. And the feeling is paramount! A half-written essay is like a half-constructed building - all you can see is all the stuff that is incomplete. It feels like you haven’t done anything. Everything is yet-to-be-done. (What does that remind us of? You betcha ass) Nothing is complete. It doesn’t feel like we’ve done stuff. It feels like we actually have more incomplete stuff than we had at the beginning. We suck!
When you write a full initial start-to-finish essay, it feels like you have accomplished something complete and clear and visible. Nice! Then, you go add some more stuff. You have now accomplished some more directly visible stuff (one more section or whatever). Nice! And then some more.
At each point, you can see a complete essay right there in front of you. When your inner critic gets up and says “WTF do you have to show for the last one hour of work?”, you show it the middle finger, and then show it the complete form of the essay. The inner critic sucks it up and goes back into its cave where it shalt not rise evermore.
Release Early and Often
Why is it important to launch a minimal essay about your idea as soon as humanly possible?
Cos you actually don’t know crap about the idea until you actually write an essay about it and publish it for others to read.
It’s not just about writing an essay. It’s about writing an essay that will be clear enough for others to understand. That is when the essay will be clear enough for you to actually understand the problem. Write for others so that you can truly write for yourself.
Plus, you will get feedback from others about whether your idea is clear or not, or convincing enough and stuff. More often than not, because you are writing with a few clear readers in your mind, you will anticipate their comments and write your essay so that it answers all of them.
The reader is you, minus the excitement and bias that you have towards the problem. Write to convince the above neutral intelligent reader, and you are basically writing to get to the Truth, free of your personal predispositions and misunderstandings.
Why write out every single idea in your head?
Why not keep some for later or something? Why not write it down in a To-Do List in a notes file somewhere so that I can “write about it later”.
Get all your ideas out of your head.
First of all, this makes them explicit.
Most importantly, it clears space in your head for more ideas to come! These ideas were like boxes taking up space in your house, making it hard to move around without tripping over them. They were making it difficult to do anything at all. Now that they are gone, you are free to run around and experiment further. Let some new ideas into your house.
And it removes complacency. Having a bunch of ideas in a list somewhere is like having prestige. It keeps reminding you of all the “great stuff” you’ve done, so much so that you have no motivation left to bust your ass off on yet another idea. The question doesn’t even arise. You don’t decide not to work hard anymore. It just seems absurd. You’ve done so much… surely you’ve done enough.
This is why we don’t talk about virtues. This is why we refuse to rate ourselves without basing it on a real-life test score. We refuse to be Paper Warriors. When you have ideas on paper somewhere, it feels like you’ve done all the work. Peace. All you need to do is just write about them, sometime. No hurry. I mean, you’ve already done the hard work. You just need to go and collect your prize. That’s all. Some day, just write a few paragraphs about your Idea and you will be awarded the Nobel Prize for Awesome Idea of the World.
No! Coming up with ideas in a list is not the hard part. Why do we write essays? To solidify ideas in our own head. And to generate lots lots more. The initial “ideas” you come with are guaranteed crap. It is in the other “side-ideas” that the whole game lies. Proof? Look at the initial ideas for all your essays and see what made it through in the final cut. Yup. Pretty much nothing. The Magic is in the essay-writing, not in the scribbling down of a random idea in a notes file.
Having a notes file of “ideas” seems pretty much useless. It will just build up like an anxiety-inducing, Will Power-depleting To-Do List. Write it out or get out.
Still have crap excuses? Read this and write it all out anyway.
The Great 300-Word Experiment - v0.6
Rapid Prototyping of Essays.
Write a Version 1 as soon as possible.
Iterate. Go over it and flesh out the ideas. Write deeply about each one of them. Let the idea solidify in your head. And thus, let other associated ideas turn up in your head.
At each point, have a minimal complete start-to-finish essay with you.
Of course, the (few) conditions from the previous versions hold:
300 words.
Every day.
Published.
New post everyday.
From v0.6: Rapid Prototyping
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