How I Write

Well, for one thing, if I have something good, I'll use it more than once. For example, I came up with something good in an e-mail to my sister, and I'm gonna use it again right now:

Oh! ...Don't bother with the old posts. The old ones are too long and difficult even for me to read. As a sort of 2010 New Year's resolution I decided to make them shorter. Then after a few months of trying, they actually GOT shorter.

Some time last May I figured out how Blogger's post scheduling thing works. (You can't just click the bright orange PUBLISH POST button. You have to click the easily-missed "Post Options" link, click "Scheduled at," and enter a time and date. It's only hard because if you click the bright orange button, you can't then "schedule" the post for later!) After I got the scheduling, I started doing a post a day.

When I write, I usually go off on a tangent or three. What happens now is, I split off the tangents into separate, short posts. That simplifies the main post I'm working on. And it gives me some nice short posts to schedule in before the main one appears.

Idunno what anybody else thinks, but I think this works really well.

Most visitors only read the newest post. So if I have some relevant older post, I link to it from the new one. It lets me point the reader to selected older posts... Plus, because I write short ones now, linking to them works well. Each short one is just one topic or just one thought, pretty much. Perfect for a link.

Oh, also, even if I re-use something, I always tweak it and try to improve it.

23. Generalizations are always wrong

If this rule is true, then this rule must be false

"More like guidelines, really."