Alicorn comments on Just Try It: Quantity Trumps Quality - Less Wrong

62 Post author: atucker 04 April 2011 01:13AM

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Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 04 April 2011 09:30:48AM 19 points [-]

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.

Comment author: Alicorn 04 April 2011 02:59:12PM 16 points [-]

Writing massive amounts of text also helps with self-estimation as a person who can write arbitrary amounts of text. My evolution as a writer started with me going "meh, I can't finish anything, I have all these ideas that I sometimes start but then I lose interest after a few pages". Then I started writing collaboratively with a friend, which was so much fun that I could say, "I like writing, at least of this kind, so much that I was on Utah time in Scotland to stay up and write more, for as much as seventeen hours straight." Then I wrote a finished novel... it was fanfiction, but I already considered worldbuilding my strength and character creation also on said list. Then I did it again. At some point I started being "a writer", who can decide to do things like "write a book" and have books exist as a result of this decision.