What I am hearing from Paul Graham about Writing

Paul Graham is the founder of Y Combination. His personal website, paulgraham.com, is where he posts essays on programming, writing, start-ups, and numerous other topics.

In this short note, I will attempt to compress my takeaways from his essays on writing, in order to understand them better and apply them thereafter.

Writing is a way to teach others. It is an indicator of what we know, and are in a position that we can offer to the world.

The way to make the information we put out useful, is to make as strong claims as possible.

• "Useful writing makes claims that are as strong as they can be made without becoming false."
• "Useful writing tells people something true and important that they didn't already know"

A common defense against being wrong is stating vague generalities. They have a higher probability of being true, but not necessarily useful and applicable. This reminds me of the mathematician's answer trope.

• "It's easy to make a statement correct by making it vague."

There is a social responsibility in writing about things we have thought about a lot, and attained as correct an answer as possible.

• "Good writing should be convincing, certainly, but it should be convincing because you got the right answers, not because you did a good job of arguing."
• "You should only write about things you've thought about a lot."

Writing as a method of learning

We write about a certain topic. More often, we write learning about something than write having already learnt it.

One part of it is through discovery of ideas, as we uncover gaps in our knowledge and how we express them. They may not be correct, but writing them forces analysis of them.

Another part is through the forced ordering of existing ideas, as the printed pages forces a linear progression.

• "Writing doesn't just communicate ideas; it generates them."
• "...expect 80% of the ideas in an essay to happen after you start writing it, and 50% of those you start with to be wrong"
• "...there's nothing like writing a book about something to help you learn it."

Even through the process of writing this compilation, I am generating new ideas and ways to rearrange this content. Clarity from these ideas come with typing and arranging these words.

• "An essay is something you write to try to figure something out."
• "If you don't learn anything from writing an essay, don't publish it."

It's hard work, but there are ways to make it the task easier.

Writing is hard to do. Writing about something we are interested in, and deeply care about can be easier from the motivation we have.

Even so, the time needed to think through a problem and then express ourselves as clear a manner as possible means writers put in a significant amount of energy.

There are some tactics that can make this meaningful act easier.

• "...make something you yourself want. You can use yourself as a proxy for the reader."
• "...publish stuff online, because an audience makes you write more."
• "Write a bad version 1 as fast as you can; rewrite it over and over; cut outeverything unnecessary."