Summary: Abhishaike Mahajan reflects on his year of writing a technical blog, producing 37 articles totaling about 128,000 words. He shares the challenges and joys of writing, including the stress of meeting deadlines and the thrill of engaging with knowledgeable readers. Through this experience, he has gained a deeper appreciation for writing and the importance of crafting compelling narratives.
I’m usually working on somewhere between 1 to 4 articles at a time and they are rarely ever abandoned outright. (View Highlight)
used to happen more early on, when I lacked experience on how I should satisfactorily wrap things up. (View Highlight)
Note: Interesting that he more frequently abandoned articles earlier in writing journey.
sometimes I’m not working on anything at all, because the whole idea of writing feels so deeply stressful that I prefer to not think about it. This has happened twice so far. (View Highlight)
Putting essays out on a schedule can be really exhausting. (View Highlight)
I’ve settled into a pace of an article every 2 weeks (1 week only if I have a backlog of unpublished things), and while I have a healthy lifestyle at the moment, writing has still managed to swallow up basically all my other hobbies. (View Highlight)
It’s nice in some ways to have a single, all-consuming thing to pour myself into outside of work, but I sometimes crave more heterogeneity. (View Highlight)
You’d think the bottleneck is ideas, but that’s not it at all. Those are actually really easy to come up with. (View Highlight)
There are so many interesting things in this field that nobody has bothered to ever write down. Why? The answer I’ve settled on is that the best people to write about a given topic usually have far better things to do. (View Highlight)
The far bigger hurdle iscreating a story around the topic. (View Highlight)
This can be fun, but it is often a lengthy slog in the earliest stages, especially if the [thing] I’m covering doesn’t have easily accessible online resources. Which, more often than not, is the case. (View Highlight)
Writing has helped me understand my field a lot more. (View Highlight)
my conceptual underpinnings of this area, the zeitgeist of it, where it currently stands, where it will go, and so on, are all so much clearer. (View Highlight)
itself! That does help in refining my own thoughts, but the far more important part is that much more knowledgable people read my work, reach out, and then I get to learn their takes on where the future is going. It’s a flywheel. (View Highlight)
Even scientific writing can be emotionally taxing (View Highlight)
I usually have a vague worry that I’m completely wrong about whatever I write about, and there’s almost a reassurance that can be found in someone fervently supporting my self doubt. You’re right! You’re right! My fears confirmed, now I can rest easy. And hopefully improve for the next essay. (View Highlight)
Because I’m writing about the field I love, that generally selects for people who also love that same thing, so the meetings are always very nice. (View Highlight)
An unintended side effect of writing is that you learn to enjoy other writing a lot more. (View Highlight)
Nowadays, I have a much deeper appreciation for writing in all forms. I suspect this is the case for many people who have a blog. (View Highlight)
In the early days, I wrote as if nobody would read it (which was largely true) and that gave me a sort of freedom. Anything was on the table for coverage, whatever felt most interesting to me in the moment. But as the year has gone on, with my list of subscribers reaching into the thousands, I sometimes find myself anticipating their reactions mid-sentence, mid-title, and so on. (View Highlight)
my true audience is much smaller than the numbers would imply. (View Highlight)
I feel like that’s just the nature of technical writing; people are busy, and will only stick with a dense piece if it’s something they are personally deeply passionate about it. (View Highlight)
So who are Brian’s true fans? Probably people who work in policy or industrial manufacturing or the like. Almost certainly less than several hundred people worldwide. (View Highlight)
