I joke that I blogged my way into a job at a startup and while that’s not entirely true it’s true enough that I have thoughts on the topic. This is my attempt to give some views on writing in case anyone at university or at the beginning of their career would find it helpful.
Why to write
- You should write because most people don’t, and there are so so many interesting things in the world that no one has written about.
- Writing builds credibility – you have some artefact to show you can think critically, are high enough agency that you can put the kinds of writing you would want to see out into the world and can execute on ideas until the end i.e publishing a piece. You might be reading this and think this is vaguely true but you are probably still underweighting it. While I was writing this I messaged the founder of the startup I’m now at about why he decided to hire me given my nontypical background and he said the writing I had done up until that point was the single most critical driver in the hiring decision.
- Writing builds context – people know what you’re interested in without you having to tell them. Both credibility building and context building can be hard to do early in your career in most other ways.
- It’s the best way to learn. Often the reason I’ve written a post is to feel like I can get my arms around an idea.
- If you (1) make the time to research something and (2) have a genuine interest in a topic even the slightest bit niche, you already have everything needed to write something interesting.
What to write
- Just write something – don’t be paralysed by the feeling that if you start you need 10+ amazing pieces, literally just having even 1 piece that is good puts you in a league very far from most people.
- If you need some prompt, “What are people on Twitter talking about that there’s not a good story for?” is a good place to start.
- Most interesting topics still have space up the stack or down the stack, e.g what are the broader lessons we can learn from X or really specifically how did X get done. For example, the Vesuvius Challenge is an amazing prize and there have been pieces written on its goals. There is still a lot of white space in writing about the higher level phenomena of groups spinning up rapid prizes/grants (Fast Grants, Impetus Grants, Vesuvius Challenge etc) but there is also white space in writing about the implementation details, the Vesuvius Challenge team didn’t just say here’s a pot of money go for it, they put in lots of deliberate effort to craft supporting infrastructure for the prize to make it function well.
- Think about what seems weird to you and trust your gut on this. E.g it is weird that rapid testing for covid was viewed by the whole media as a dangerous moral hazard and then in a few months it became absolutely mandatory, there are pieces written on both sides of this point, but not on why people’s views changed.
- Have you had the same interesting discussion more than once and can’t think of a good piece that’s been written on it? Looks like you’ve just found latent demand for a topic that no one else has served yet.
How to write something
- If you talk with 2-4 knowledgeable people in an area, you now have more context on a given topic than almost anyone in the world. If you write a coherent piece synthesising your view and what you’ve heard it will almost certainly be interesting.
- It’s easier to read everything interesting on a topic than you think. If you do this you’ll (1) likely have a long list of questions, and (2) know which questions have no good piece written about them.
- Lots of people will read drafts. If you have clearly put effort into getting some good first thoughts down, don’t be shy about asking people for their views. This is also one of the best ways to get to the 2-4 knowledgeable people. (Twitter is good for this.)
How to use your writing
- Writing is one of the best ways to get conversations, and conversations are one of the best ways to meet and get to know interesting people – put some thought into who are the people you’d love to speak with and how you can use your writing to do it. This shouldn’t just be already influential people in a field. Writing is one of the best ways to connect with people who might be closer to being peers as well.
- Writing being self-serving and instrumental, and writing being something you enjoy and do for your own curiosity, are not opposing goals. If you really put time into writing and understanding a topic, you shouldn’t be shy about trying to capitalise on it.
- Ideally, have a blog/Substack. Writing on forums is fine, but can make what you produce more siloed.
- Shoot your shot – there are lots of new(ish) media companies popping up, and while you can get a lot of value from writing on personal sites there is also a lot of value in having something hosted somewhere else. These groups will do an amazing job helping you polish a piece, clarify your own thinking, and generally are made up of great people who are excited about supporting people to write interesting things.
Some of this advice is fairly timeless and other parts are more tied to today’s world. That’s good. A lot of the most useful advice I’ve had has come from people just a bit ahead of me, they faced a similar world to the one I did and had access to similar resources.
If you’re reading this as someone who is now in their early career or has already done interesting things this post comes with an ask; consider that your advice might be more useful because of how early you are rather than worse for it, or put another way – write more.
Thanks to Santi for reading a draft of this (you should check out his writing)
Neil Hacker 