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rhollerith_dot_com comments on Just Try It: Quantity Trumps Quality - Less Wrong
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Long ago, I forget where, I saw a blog post that applied this to writing. It pointed out that if we model the quality of your writing as having a mean X and variance Y, then the only way to hit those unlikely exceptionally good texts is to write a lot. Yes, while doing so you might also come up with the same number of exceptionally bad texts, but nobody forces you to show those to anyone. Plus writing a lot will give you practice, gradually pushing up the mean.
From personal experience, I'd also err on the side of publishing even texts you're not personally all that impressed by. I've noticed that I'm relatively bad at estimating what's going to be popular. Some of my biggest hits have been blog posts I'd never have thought would be popular.
Maybe so, but I'm not going to keep watching someone's blog or eir user page here unless eir average quality is quite high.
There's a difference between average quality produced and average quality published. Ideally you sit on the stuff that isn't any good.
We are talking about writing. Do you really think that most writers who need to improve know which of their writings isn't any good?
I have been an aspiring writer of sorts, and wrote articles at least once a week for several years without getting much if any feedback on the quality of my writing as opposed to its content. It is fairly easy for me to look back and see a steady improvement in writing quality. I also usually (not always) have no trouble knowing which of my writing isn't any good, and don't remember it having been otherwise.
I could be deluding myself but I certainly think some of my writing is better and some of it is worse.
I see. Thanks.
Well, I'm not an aspiring writer but as an amateur musician and visual artist I can say that I can generally tell when my works are not as good as I would like them to be, and I can generally guess ahead of time which pieces will have a better reception among my more critical friends.
In addition; I know a couple of aspiring writers and if anything I would say that they are often very self critical and judging by what they have openly shown me against what they have reluctantly shown me I would say that they did indeed have a good sense of what was good and what wasn't.
Based on my experiences, I would say that it is fairly common for artists to have a fairly accurate awareness of their own shortcomings; whether or not they can successfully ascertain a workable procedure for overcoming them is a different issue.
If one's average quality is low enough that people don't find it worth becoming regular readers, then one is probably better off practicing a lot anyway.
Yes but they assess your blog mostly on its most recent posts. So you should just be out with it and improve anyway. This way you'll always have the best audience your skills can currently get you.
Hmm. Almost all the blogs I continue to follow update infrequently. I always assumed that that was because the bloggers had some way of telling which of their posts or posts-in-planning are really good and had a policy of only posting those, rather than posting every writing exercise they undertake.