How to Write Blogs

Hi again.

This blog doubled in subscribers this past month. I’m not sure what happened, but thanks and welcome to all of you!

The goal is to document and share my thoughts. Unpack, refine, and crystallize ideas - that is the point of this blog. I thought today I’d share some thoughts about writing, what makes writing good, and how to write well.

What Makes Good Blogs

I’ve found a good blog is a lot like a good meal. A good meal checks four boxes: it’s palatable, digestible, satiating, and high in nutritional value.¹

That means fun to read (palatable), easy to consume / understand (digestible), not too small or too big (satiating). For nutrition, the essential ingredient is that it must tell the reader something new, or at the least present something in a new way.

Bonus points if it feels personal, authentic, home-made. AI is like processed food; cheap and bad. AI-generated content makes the organic stuff stand out even more these days.

More tactically I think a good blog post is anywhere between 300-800 words. Longer than that it must be skimmable (add in headers and text styling so I know where to look!); shorter than that and it coulda just been a tweet.

How to Write Good

Like many things, to produce good writing requires 1) taste and 2) practice. Taste can be learned; find other writers you admire, understand what bad writing looks like, do this by (wait for it..) reading a bunch. I’ve included few great reads on writing in the footnotes.²

As for practice, simply start by writing down your ideas as they occur (it’s very hard to come up with good ideas on the spot, you much capture the lightning in a bottle when and where it strikes) - write them in a notes folder, notebook, or your twitter feed for real-world engagement.

Once you have a good idea worth expounding upon, write the v1 as fast and chunky as you can. Just get it OUT, this is where the ideation occurs. Much like any prototyping, the best is advice is: first make it exist, then make it good

On making it good: I try to write in 2-3 sittings if I can; it produces better results when you have a chance to leave and revisit. When you restart, reread all of what you’ve written, refine as you go. Give it a backbone. Consider having a trusted friend give you feedback.

Re: AI - my advice is you’re allowed to use AI to research, but you should always write the content yourself. If it’s a blog post that requires research (a how-to guide or something non-philosophical), quizzing Perplexity is probably the most efficient. But your writing should be your writing else it’s not worth as much.

Why Writing is Good

As I’ve said, writing is inherently selfish. The big winner is not the reader but the author for having forced themselves to sit down and collect and explore and tame their thoughts.

Good, prolific writing compounds. It creates more new ideas worth exploring, which creates more to write about. This is why the previous section is important. Good writing will move the needle further for your thoughts and the thoughts of the reader.

Speaking of the reader, there are many beautifully social reasons to write. It’s an intimate, vulnerable media; when you read you get to literally hear someone’s thoughts with your own brain and internalize it with your own taste.

Content is the new resume. The world gauges you by what you share. It’s a meritocracy in that sense - if you write enough good stuff people begin to trust and empathize with you. You earn their readership. An audience becomes the new currency.

And deep down, writing is uniquely human. It is the vehicle by which our human condition has transcended millennia and human mortality. It is how powerful ideas produced by the likes of Homer, Confucius, Virgil, Chaucer, Adam Smith, Marx, Einstein have escaped their brains and made their way into ours.

Hope that helps.

Peace,
Ramsey

1  Much like a good meal doesn’t need to be doused in fancy dressing, a good blog shouldn’t need to keep the reader entertained with many images and figures

2  Some great ones from legends like Paul Graham (here, here, here) and Veryn Klinkenborg (and Derek Sivers)