Writing Quality Essay

I have been slacking off a little lately and didn’t write as much. Work has been catching up and I didn’t get many chances to try out new technologies or to contemplate on things in general. Putting excuses aside, I also have a hard time coming up with ideas that I consider decent enough to publish.

When I first came to the US and had access to a uncensored internet, I was amazed by the abundance of information flowing around. I spent countless hours surfing sites such as LifeHacker, Buzzfeed, which are full of articles that are short and easy to consume. A lot of them are list articles such as “Top 10 tips to make you more efficient” and so on. Nowadays I have avoided them as much as possible. This post on HuffingtonPost has summed up my reasons very well.

I have to admit that many list articles are of high quality, like this one, but I just can’t see myself writing essays in that format, which will just encourage my laziness and make my essay unthoughtful. Ideally, I want to write essays that are somewhat thought provoking, like the ones by Sam Altman, Stratechery, and of course Daring Fireball.

What I appreciate most in these articles is their original thinking. I’m opininated but at the same time I feel like a lot of my opinions came from others and hence, lack originality. While my opinions easily resonate with others they are quickly forgotten as well.

So what can I do? I find this essay by Paul Graham extremely helpful. The main takeaway for me is that coming up with original ideas and putting them into an essay is an iterative and crafty process, just like writing a program:

• You start with an end goal in your mind
• You spend a period of time thinking through the major components
• You start writing and get something that’s simple and working
• You keep revisiting and refining the essay until it is good enough for release

I’m going to try this out in my next essay, which is likely about building enterprise application with startup technology stacks.

Obviously this is not going to be easy but I’m already up for the challenge.