Rome was not built in a day

It was built by writing one article at a time

TLDR; I admire people who have mastered the skill of good writing. I intend to become a better writer for professional and personal reasons. The plan is to do this one article at a time. This is my first step in hopefully the right direction.

I bet you’ve had that feeling before, maybe as a kid or perhaps more recently - when you see someone so accomplished in an area you have an interest in e.g a really good guitar player, a good skater, a brilliant programmer with so many accomplishments, and you go “How did they get so good?”, and then “How do I get that good?“.

Well for me this has happened more times than I can count in several domains e.g. music, my career as a software developer etc. But one that’s almost always come up is ‘writing’. I envy people who can effectively communicate with words. You may not have the words to describe good writing yourself, but just like p*rn, you know it when you see it.

Good writing never leaves you confused about the author’s intent, every word used is intentional - never unnecessarily verbose, does not target a generic audience - it always knows who its readers are, and it’s never difficult to follow or understand - it’s always a pleasure to read. Put in another way, good writing is like a piece of music where every note, chord progression and accompaniment go so well together, that it’s difficult to imagine a different arrangement for the same piece.

So why ‘writing‘? You may ask. Why is it important that I become a better writer? Well, there are several reasons but they fall into two categories. The first and obvious one is professional, as a software developer, my job not only entails building and maintaining software applications but also coming up with technical designs for a software/feature and in some cases, getting others to buy into the ideas outlined in those documents. Being able to write technical documents that don’t leave developers and other stakeholders confused has the benefit of allowing everyone to focus discussions and meetings on the problem & solutions that the document is addressing as opposed to focusing on the write-up itself i.e. what’s missing, what a paragraph means etc. Also, I read a book recently - ‘Rework’ by the folks at 37signals, and one of my favourite quotes from it was:

If you’re trying to decide among a few people to fill a position, hire the best writer. It doesn’t matter if that person is a marketer, salesperson, designer, programmer, or whatever; their writing skills will pay off. That’s because being a good writer is about more than writing clear writing. Clear writing is a sign of clear thinking. Great writers know how to communicate. They make things easy to understand. They can put themselves in someone else’s shoes. They know what to omit. And those are qualities you want in any candidate.

It’s safe to say that being a good writer gives a person an edge professionally, and I want that edge.

The other reason is to enrich my personal relationships. Many of us have that friend or acquaintance who whenever they try to explain something or just communicate via text, you go “Yeah, I don’t understand what any of this means…I’m just going to call“, and sometimes, calling may even leave you more confused than you were before you did. I don’t want to be that person. Being a good writer I believe doesn’t just make you a better texter or letter writer, it makes you a better communicator in general, you’re better able to convey your thoughts and ideas to anyone, and we tend to gravitate towards people who can do this effectively. Essentially, everything being equal, you’d be a pleasure to converse with.

To achieve this illustrious goal of becoming a better writer, the working plan is to put out one article at a time. With each one being much better than the last. And then perhaps one day I would read something that I’ve written and be in awe.

So, now that we know I want to become a better writer and how I want to do it, you may be wondering, what will I be writing about? Who’s my target audience? How often would I be writing and publishing here?

I intend to write about all the things that interest me, so it could be highly technical write-ups about topics in software engineering, my interest in music, fictional stories - because I enjoy those, or simply my thoughts on some weird or interesting topics. Given the wide range of things I would be writing about it’s not immediately clear who my audience is just yet, but perhaps if you’re a fan of personal growth, then this might be a fun space to watch. And finally, “How often will I be writing here?“, I also don’t know the answer to this, all of this could very well be the new year energy and this could be the first and last article I write. I’m well aware that failing to plan is planning to fail, but I’ll play this one by ear.

If you made it all the way here, thanks for reading through my first article and I hope you stick around long enough to see others.