All we’re talking about here is starting.
Focus on getting the ball rolling.
Take comfort in the fact that what you’re writing won’t be finished in just one day, week, month, or longer.
But at least the journey will have begun.
It doesn’t matter whether what you write is a whole outline, a few paragraphs, or just a handful of sentences.
That little bit, no matter how minute, is actually a whole lot more than you may realize.
That’s because you’ve given your brain permission to start working on the problem.
Once you do that, you may stop, but your brain won’t.
You’ve effectively kicked off a thread that continuously runs in the back of your mind, chipping away at the problem, even when you sleep.
It feeds off of your life’s experiences, collecting ideas and making connections, all of which your brain will incorportate into your writing.
When I’m prewriting, I’m bouncing ideas, words, and phrases around in my head.
To get that to happen, I intentionally pull myself away from my desk and go do something mindless.
If I try to chain myself to my desk, my brain senses that restriction, and that’s when writer’s block sets in.
So I step away from the headlights of the blank page and the expectations of the keyboard.
It’s, in fact, the inability to write that allows my brain the freedom to roam.
Needing something to do, it immediately gets to work chewing on ideas.
When that happens, I’ve learned to just stand back and listen to the dialog going on in my head.
You could say I’m brainstorming, but it goes much deeper than that.
What I’m really doing is rehearsing what I’m going to write.
As I get into this process, I sense my motivation to write gradually build.
My hands start hurrying through the task I’m working on, my legs begin moving a little more swiftly, or my foot gets a little heavier on the gas pedal.
It’s time to high tail it to my desk.
My brain wants…no, it needs to seek out that blank page so it can download its thoughts and hammer them out into sentences.
Before I know it, I’ve got a whole page of content staring back at me.
I don’t even remember the page being blank (or driving home for that matter).
That’s because I was focused on my thoughts as they streamed out of my head and onto the screen.
Prewriting morphed into actual physical writing.
Now that I can trust this will happen, I no longer feel obligated to force myself to sit in my chair.
With writing everywhere around me, I never actually turn my back on it.
It’s all one big rehearsal.
My brain literally writes for me.
I often say that the physical act of writing is me just transcribing what I’m hearing in my head (however insane that might sound).
Give your brain a chance to roam.
The two most important things about this file are that:
it lives inside the project (at the project root) and it’s easy to edit. The fact that the WORKLOG lives inside each project allows it to serve as my compass.
When I switch from one project to another, I think, “where as I and what’s the next action?”
So I immediately open the WORKLOG, get my bearings straight, and set my course.
This file is giving me ideas about where to start, what to tackle when I get lost, or where to go next after I complete a task.
These can be starting points for applying hacks #1 and #2.
The WORKLOG also comes into play when writing, which is why it must be easy to edit.
Once the synapses start firing in your brain, ideas may rush in faster than you can manage them.
This can get in the way of writing fluently because your brain wants to go off on all these tangents.
The WORLOG file to the rescue.
When an idea pops into my head that would pull me away from what I’m writing—but I can’t move on because I’m afraid I’ll lose it—I jot it down in the WORKLOG.
Then, I follow up on these items later when I return to look for my next task.
And since those ideas came so effortlessly, it means getting started with the next writing task isn’t nearly as difficult.
? The answer is that you’re responding to questions.
You’re not thinking about structure, like you do in formal writing.
You don’t worry about a beginning, middle, and an end.
The arc.
The headings.
You just speak your mind.
So how, then, can we use this hack for writing?
Well, it’s pretty simple.
You only need Node 10 or better.
You can install it using nvm.
$ nvm install 10
Node includes npm. You can think of these questions as little writing katas.
With each burst of information you communicate, you’ll have the ball rolling (hack #1), and your brain will be less burdened with the information its been hording.
You’ll then have free cycles to organize, shape, and rewrite what you’ve written down until it’s something you love.
Let’s circle back to e-mail, where we know writing comes so easy, and figure out how to build on that to write fluently.
If someone comes to him asking the same question, he just points them to that page.
Instead of letting e-mail replies eat up his whole day, he reinvests that time into writing actual documentation.
So brilliant.
Let’s say you’re writing an e-mail, and, mid reply, you realize you’re answering a question that could be documentation.
Go on, keep writing.
Once your reply gets to a certain length, pull it out, shape it to fit the form of the documentation you want, post it, and reply with a link!
Thanks to my buddy, that’s how a lot of the documentation I write starts out.
This hack is great for documentation writers as well as support personnel.
Whenever a question comes up, either one of two things is true:
It indicates documentation is missing. The documentation already exists, you just need to help the person find it. The outcome of either scenario is the same.
The question will be covered by documentation.
But writing documentation now feels as easy as writing e-mail.
Have you ever skimmed the headlines and concluded, “I now know everything that’s going on in the world.”
Oh, you know you have.
I certainly have.
Admittedly, skimming headlines is not the best way to stay informed.
But what if turned this habit around and use it as a brain hack for writing?
Headlines could provide that structure you’re looking for.
Instead of starting by writing full sentences, tell your story in headlines.
What are the eye-catching headlines that would draw readers in?
What do you want them to know?
What’s the logical progression of that information?
Write down those headlines and skip the details.
Surprise, you’ve just hacked your brain into identifying your major points.
That’s outlining.
All you need to do now is fill the space in between them.
But what are the details to fill in?
Assume you just shared your document with your reader, but all it contains are headlines.
That person is now going around reciting the headlines you wrote like an know-it-all.
Ask yourself: what are they missing?
Where’s the nuance?
What do they need to know to get the story straight?
Now’s your chance to get your readers past the headlines and educate them.
You can blend this hack with the previous one by writing all the headlines as questions.
Then sort them into a logical order.
Answer them one by one, like you’re being interviewed.
When you’re done, go back and swap those questions with statements.
Now you’ve got your manuscript.
So begin by telling your story in headlines, then advance your audience past the headlines so they get the full story.
With the action, of course.
Before the title screen, boom, there’s an action-filled opening scene.
You can do the same with your writing.
Open your writing session with the action.
When writing documentation, I like to start with the main procedure.
What does the user have to do first, second, and third?
Get that part filled in.
That’s the meat of it.
Now, let’s iterate.
Who’s going to read it?
Keep that audience in mind.
What are they going to accomplish or learn?
Write that down.
What do they need to learn it?
Write that down.
How’s it going to benefit them?
Write that down.
Add a conclusion to tell them what they learned.
Now give it a title.
Voila, you’re done!
All by working inside / out.
By cutting to the chase, the rest followed.
Notice the action serves as a content fly trap (hack #7).
It’s something tangible to write about.
You get warmed up writing the procedure, which is mostly action rather than words.
While you’re doing that, it gives you time to think more about the topic in the background (prewriting).
And now those words have something to stick to.
== Ventilated
In ventilated prose, you start each sentence on its own line.
This style is similar to how you write code.
Using this technique has transformed how I write and think.you write prose like you’re writing a list.
Each sentence, phrase, or chunk gets its own line.
When you’re ready to start the next one, hit return and keep typing.
Simple as that.
If you’re a developer, you’ll recognize this as how you write statements in a programming language.
Let’s consider the benefits it brings.
each thought gets its own space; so it can breathe == Ventilated
In ventilated prose, you start each sentence on its own line.
// This style is similar to how you write code.
Using this technique has transformed how I write and think.you can comment out phrases or leave comments in between them, which facilitates collaboration each sentence gets is own line number, which facilitates pairing as we’ll talk about later it makes transitioning from an outline to prose almost effortless and it’s easier to detect problems with flow (e.g., you keep starting sentences the same way) Ventilated prose is so simple, yet it has fundamentally changed how I write.
That’s because it aligns best with how I think when I write, which allows me to write fluently.
And since most energy goes into editing rather than writing, the ability to rearrange the text really matters.
Writing speed is actually writing agility.
I now write exclusively using ventilated prose and I couldn’t imagine going back.
I encourage you to give it a try.
But it’s not just any reading.
The best hack I’ve found to get a big picture view while also catching all the little errors is to do what I call a couch read.
Find a comfortable couch to stretch out on, bring up the document on a portable device such as your phone, and start it reading from top to bottom.
Why does this work?
Humans only have one locus of attention.
When you’re at your desktop, that attention is constantly being tugged on.
And your brain anticipates this.
So it stops focusing on the details in the document.
When I’m horizontal on the couch and relaxed, I become hyper focused.
In this mode, I can really dig into the text and think about what is being said.
I’m also just seeing one paragraph at a time in my field of view.
This gets me dialed in.
My brain begins rearranging the words.
I might think of a phrasing that I just couldn’t think of before.
I might think of a better way of explaining something.
I might even realize the whole structure is upside down.
I’m thinking about my words in a different way, from a new perspective: couch-driven writing.
I strongly encourage you to “couch read” all your documents, especially when your writing becomes less fluent.
It will give you a fresh perspective and a whole slew of new ideas to jump back into.
= Write Without Pain
Author Name <author@example.org>
A paragraph is just a paragraph.
No pain involved.
== Belgium in a nutshell
image::central-station.jpg[Central Station]
* Beer
* Chocolate
* http://devoxx.be[Devoxx]The bulk of what you’re looking at when you read are the words.
That’s what informs, persuades, calls into action.
You don’t want anything to get between you and those words.
And that’s where your focus should be when writing.
Everything beyond that is polishing and window dressing.
And that’s why you should only worry about it once you’ve completed your manuscript and are ready for publishing.
That’s not to say tools aren’t helpful.
They certainly are.
But plain text puts you in direct contact with what you’re writing.
It’s just characters, lines, and your thoughts.
Raw.
Pure.
Unobtrusive.
Even intimate.
It allows you to concentrate all your energy on what you want share; what you want to say.
= Document Code Without Pain
Author Name <author@example.org>
Code is a first-class citizen!
[source,groovy]
----
println "AsciiDoc is code friendly!"
----
TIP: Use the include directive to import tested code.When you do need to influence the formatting or semantics, you can do so with simple markup like stars for bold, underscores for italic, a note to the reader, or a hint to the publisher.
Just enough to add some structure and semantics to your document, but not so much that it forces you to break your writing flow.
For me, it’s the foundation for writing fluently, and I’m confident it will be for you as well.
Get the ball rolling Prewrite Keep a WORKLOG Answer a question Reply with links Tell your story in headlines Use a content fly trap Open with the action Ventilate your prose Pair up Do a couch read Write like yourself A Dozen Ways to Hack Your Brain to Write Fluently
Here’s a list of the brain hacks we covered today that I use to write fluently.
And, in fact, I used most of these brain hacks when writing this talk.
Hopefully you’ll find these techniques useful for your own writing.
Since you’re programmers, I don’t have to remind you that there’s no silver bullet; no one hack that will get you to write fluently.
But if you blend these together, combine that with advice you’ve received from others, and throw in some of your own, you’ll find ways to get the ball rolling…and usually, that’s all it takes to unlock your potential.
