Henrik Karlsson, Starting a Blog.

Henrik Karlsson, “Advice for a Friend Who Wants to Start a Blog,” January 17, 2023, https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/start-a-blog.

Reading notes.

Be yourself, integrated, and ignore what others are doing. Weird combinations of personal interests are way more interesting than just one thing. Develop your own style through embracing quirks. Chat style is more relatable than official written article style. Write for your own purposes, especially in the beginning, by writing to think things through more deeply. Writing to someone specific encourages your emotion and personality to shine because you’re trying to say things that resonate. But the writing has to be well-formed: the learning and organizing comes before the writing so the writing can be off the cuff. Simple formats to try:

• here’s a problem and how I solved it
• here are reflections on a problem I want to solve
• a list of whatever

Having a problem to solve tells the reader what they get for their work. For each piece in the first 100, work to improve one detail:

• title
• structure
• ending
• descriptions
• dialogue

Gotta work outside of comfort zone to grow, but also have to finish stuff. Deadlines can help with this. Use prompts to start.  If you don’t like what you get, start over, done try to edit it to good. Edit, but not too much. Cut the weakest 20% of the draft. There’s no audience to optimize for, let them build from what you find you want to do.