Advice for Myself: Write More

(Also published on Substack, where you can subscribe!)

Philip K. Dick told a story about a friend of his that published a book titled “Snakes of Hawaii”. Libraries bought copies and received all blank pages - there are no snakes in Hawaii.

I’ve often felt like I ought to write something down. I’ve made games for over ten years, I have started a company that did relatively well. But I feel like in the past I’ve attempted to write under the heading of “Things I’m Absolutely Sure of and I’m the World’s Foremost Expert In” and, rightly so, delivered all blank pages.

I only thought about this recently, talking to a friend. I had a vague feeling that I should be more active on social media, tweet more, write more. Partly from a purely pragmatic point of view, as I think this will somehow advance my career and increase how much money I can make in the future, but also from a deep desire to be liked and listened to. I’ve had the good fortune of climbing further up my hierarchy of needs, and I’d guess I’m looking for the respect of others step.

Thinking about why I didn’t do it seemed interesting to me too. Laziness is a part of it, or perhaps more precisely “resistance” as Steven Pressfield would put it: some quasi-mystical inner force that keeps us from doing what we feel like we ought to, in any way it can. But more so than laziness, it manifests mostly as fear, fear that if I do write something it’ll be either ignored or jeered at. Who does he think he is to be writing about this.

Looking further into this, it seems that I am expecting other people to apply a standard that I don’t apply onto what I read or don’t read. I can’t remember the last time I read a blog post and then went and looked at the bona fides of the writer. I took the content at face value and decided whether I liked it or not based on what it contained and how strong its arguments were, and maybe how much fun I had reading it.

I never thought I felt imposter syndrome, because I never felt it at work, but I did feel that if I tried speaking about things outside of my work environment other people would think I’m an imposter. In hindsight I think that’s just imposter syndrome with a cool flip.

Paul Graham wrote that “If writing down your ideas always makes them more precise and more complete, then no one who hasn't written about a topic has fully formed ideas about it.”, and even writing about writing stuff down I realise how backwards my causation is. I’ve been waiting to know about things fully to write anything about them, when I should have been writing to find out.

Of course, I still want to be liked, and I want people to think I’m really smart, but I feel like I should write for other reasons too, to think, and to understand. This means not being right, or at least not being sure I’m right. I’ve read a lot of people’s advice, on almost everything, but I’d like to hear what my own advice to myself is.

Readers Digest, apparently, called the 36-page-long “Snakes Of Hawaii”, “perhaps the perfect book, completely devoid of typographical, factual or zoological error.” Any non-blank page can’t aim for this sort of perfection, and besides, there are some snakes in Hawaii.