• Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Active Recall!

Podcasts, videos, and iPad art

  • About
  • All Posts
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Book Notes

How to post more (by writing less!)

September 12, 2017

What’s the single idea of this post? I’ll improve by writing shorter posts

I’m reading Josh Bernoff’s Writing Without Bullshit. I liked this idea of getting a grasp of different word counts:

Aim for a word count. Your emails should be under 250 words. Your blog posts should be under 750. Learn the feel of a 100-, 300-, 500-, or 1,000-word hunk of prose. Imagine that words cost $ 10 each. How much can you afford to spend, and where can you economize? A word count makes brevity a concrete goal.

I don’t have a feel for those hunks of prose. Someday I want to be on the Hunks of Prose calendar, so I’ll practice with shorter pieces.

I don’t have trouble sitting down and writing. Not through talent but through practicing and setting up systems. I have trouble sitting down and writing things worth reading. I need to practice improving different elements of writing.

My hunch is that aiming for shorter posts will help me shore up my many weaknesses. While the frequency helps with a strength: I can change topics day to day and stay interested. What am I hoping this will lead to?

  • I’ll actually finish posts. I have plenty of post outlines and drafts. Some even have a lot of words in them. They’re nowhere close to finished. A giant giant wall of text is further from finished than a short, clear outline is.
  • I’ll actually revise my work. I can sit down and free-write for hours on end. It’s overwriting. It’s not meant for reading in the first place. When I intend to write for something I’ll publish, I still end up with raw material that’s way longer than I want to revise. I add placeholders to keep writing a wall of text and then I don’t finish because all the placeholders become overwhelming.
  • I’ll actually stick to one idea. A connection comes to mind, I add a placeholder. Then I try to connect ideas. Some aren’t fully formed. Shorter posts will help me focus on single ideas at a time. If some disconnected idea comes to mind, I’ll pat myself on the back because now I have a new idea. For a different post. For a different day. Back to today’s idea.
  • I’ll (hopefully) actually get feedback. “Hey read this 2000-word thing I didn’t revise.” That’s a hard sell. I need feedback to improve. Shawn Coyne says it’ll be hard to sell a book if you can’t get 10,000 people willing to read a free book. I can’t get feedback on long posts if I can’t get you to read my short posts.

Why all the “actually”s? I’ve read enough how-to-write books to know how important each phase is in writing. Now I need to actually go through those steps.

  • Weblog
Follow @activerecall

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe to the channel

Focusing on making videos in 2023.

✍️ Recent Posts

“Tiny Experiments”: The 1-1-1-1-1 pact

“The 5 Types of Wealth” by Sahil Bloom: Book Notes

“Tiny Experiments” book note: My PACT (10000 steps, 1000 words, 100 reps, 10 pages, and 1 habit)

“Tiny Experiments” book note: How to stop procrastinating

Info Diet: 10/6/2024

🎧 Recent Episodes

Takeaways: “Someday is Today” by Matthew Dicks | #126

125: Creativity x Fitness – Consistency, Classics, and Crane Kicks (3 links)

118: The Psychology of Fitness: 1, 2, 3

Popular Posts

  • Book Notes – “Awareness: The Perils and Opportunities of Reality” by Anthony de Mello
  • Lightning Round Questions
  • Kobe Bryant: Every day math
  • Journal: The first 8 weeks of Active Recall
  • How to succeed as a writer (What I’ve learned by reading Bill Simmons)

By Francis Cortez

  • About
  • YouTube Channel
  • Instagram (@activerecall)
  • Twitter (@activerecall)

Categories

  • iPad Pro
  • Podcast
  • Book Notes
  • Podcast Notes
  • Weblog
  • Videos
  • Fitness
  • Creative Pages
  • iPad
Back to homepage • By Francis Cortez (@activerecall)