Category: blogging
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On writing to think
James Caig pointed to this wonderful post by Shane Parrish about how writing helps you think – a subject to which I have returned several times on this blog. Shane has a typically thoughtful take on the subject (the best I think I’ve read), going beyond what I’ve said before about how blogging is like…
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Writing changes how we think about the world
I came across this lecture by Larry McEnerney from the University of Chicago Writing Program over on LinkedIn and I got so much from it. Larry makes some wonderful points about writing better. He talks about how we’re taught to follow the rules of writing rather than thinking about how our writing can be valuable…
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Shipped in 2021
Each year I do a kind of end-of-year work retro to look back on what I've been doing all year. It's something that I've done now for the past eight years (2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020) and is really for my benefit – a chance to take a step back and look at the patterns of what I've…
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Cory Doctorow on Blogging
I loved everything about this post from Cory Doctorow on blogging. He's been doing it for over twenty years and has a lovely way of capturing everything that's good about it. I liked the way he describes how the genius of it comes from the act of publishing: 'These repeated acts of public description adds…
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Input and Outputs
Austin Kleon is unusually good at writing about the creative process. I've been reading his blog for years. He periodically writes about the relationship between ideas, information and inspiration that we take in, and creative output. Like this quote from Brian Eno: 'What I really like doing is what I call Import and Export. I…
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Post of the Month – August 2019 – The Winner
Well there was some good levels of voting this month including a lot of Scottish support I think for George Gunn's post but in the end it was Tim Harford's post on the strange power of the idea of 'average' that edged it with some late voting so well done to Tim – he joins…
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How Blogging Shaped the Web
Amy Hoy has a thoughtful post on the early evolution of blogging and how choices that were made back in those early days have shaped a lot of what's happened with content on the web since. The shift from creating new pages and building your own system to one where you're using tools, form and…
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Reflections on Writing a Book
I can hardly believe it but last week marked the one year anniversary of my book being published. Happily it seems to have done really well since launch, selling a lot more than I'd ever anticipated (it's very difficult to gauge what good looks like in this context of-course but the publisher seems very happy,…
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Creativity vs Productivity
Jason Kottke had a thought-provoking post about how a focus on productivity and optimising our time might actually be harmful to creating the kind of space we need to allow our minds to wonder, to play and experiment, and to take those big leaps forward. His post was stimulated by a reflection that Cory Doctorow…
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The Journey to Writing my Book
My book was finally published yesterday. It sounds a bit cheesy to talk about a 'journey', but this does feel rather like a cairn on the summit of a gently sloping trail of learning which I've been travelling along for over a decade. When I started blogging all that time ago I had no inclination…