| "Turns out, I just don't like writing." For many of us writing is tough and quite hard work so it's understandable why many don't write much. For instance, when I look back at my posts on HN—which I rarely do because it's embarrassing—I see typos, wrong word usage and grammatical errors that I didn't notice at the time. I only wish I could correct them. I had a colleague who is now deceased but he could take pages and pages of handwritten notes and they were perfectly legible, logically coherent and could be essentially typed into papers with little or no editing. I envy his ability, I only which I could write with such accuracy and fluency. I've often wondered why I can't do that. It seems to me that too many concepts come into my head at once and I lack the ability to sort them quickly and write them out in a linear/coherent fashion with enough speed. The result is that editing can take more time than the actual writing. It's somewhat of a disincentive, so much of what I'd like to write doesn't get written. It's interesting to compare say Mozart and Beethoven in this regard. Looking at Mozart's handwritten scores one sees page after page of almost perfect notes without cross-outs or alterations. On the other hand some of Beethoven's scores are such an unholy mess they're almost illegible. On evidence, it seems the mental processes of both these geniuses worked in quite different ways. Edit: it seems to me whether one likes writing or not one has to do so to communicate efficiently and effectively. I've often wondered how many great ideas have been lost because they were never documented. |