Writing valuable papers

Writing is hard. Writing requires taking something that exists only in your mind and bringing another person’s mind to that same place. All the tips you’ve ever read are in service of that. The first step is finding your reader where they are so you can bring them to where you are.

Unlike a conversation or even a live presentation, there’s no back and forth or the feedback of bored faces telling you to move on. So you really have to know your reader to preempt what they’ll be thinking as you guide them to you.

There are so many aspects to this: from structuring to rhetoric, from how to quickly get a first draft done to how to effectively edit - critiquing is easier than creating!

I read one book on writing per year as a commitment to my craft and can recommend my favorites.

For now, here’s a great video I recently came across about how to write something valuable. It’s long, so watch the first five minutes and give up if you don’t like it. Life’s too short for the sunk cost bias.