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I’ve run into a bit of a snag when I write something lately. You may have encountered these problems too.
- Someone has already written what I want to write, but there is no motivation to write, what should I do?
- I always feel that my thoughts and experiences are not worth sharing and waste other people’s time.
- It took time and effort to write it, but the reading volume and feedback were mediocre, and confidence was shattered.
To sum up, what I want to write, others have already written; what I don’t want to write, it’s boring to write; what I want to write, I can’t write clearly, others can’t understand. It’s over, I don’t want to write anymore.
These questions all have a common contradiction, that is, I have brought in the role of “other people”. “Others” have seen it, “Others” may not like it and worry about wasting “others” time. We worry about “others” and blame our own insecurities for not wanting to write.
But that’s just an excuse.
In fact, the enemy of our creative desire is not “insecure self-confidence”, but the confusion between the concepts of “writing for ourselves” and “writing for the reader” – when we should write for ourselves, think about others; we should write for others As I write it, I feel that I should stick to myself.
- Write for yourself: write for your own desire for knowledge and expression;
- Reader-oriented writing: In order to address the reader’s needs, write content that the reader cares about.
Are you writing for yourself, or for your readers? I used to swing back and forth between the two ends of the scale.
1. My writing experience
1.1 Writing for readers
The earliest inspiration for my “writing method” was Luo Ji’s thinking and getting. They polished the content with the concept of “saving time for users through knowledge services”. As a user at that time, I felt that such content was particularly useful. And this idea of delivering content as a service has always influenced my writing. At that time, I thought that the content of the content was actually to present the knowledge of others to the readers with a clear structure (story introduction-conclusion first-expansion-argument-end sublimation) plus simple and easy-to-understand vernacular.
I also use a similar idea to connect with the boss’s friends to polish short content, make courses, write articles on knowledge and dry goods, and form content groups. At that time, I felt that doing a good job in content meant doing a good job in translating the content. But then my mind started to change a bit because I met a colleague.
We were helping the company’s business to write Zhihu answers together. I found that he always jumped out of our original knowledge structure and wrote in-depth content that attracted the attention of many high-net-worth users. What’s more, he can always quickly combine Zhihu’s hot list issues to produce in-depth content. The immediate shock to me is that, more important than the expression itself, is the quality of the content itself.
The breadth of knowledge can be manifested in that it is easy to establish rich conceptual links for many things, it is easy to find commonalities between different things, and it is always possible to abstract the essence of higher dimensions from the existing complex and chaotic information. I also realized my lack of knowledge.
1.2 Writing for yourself
After restarting freelance writing, there is more time to explore different content formats. I clearly feel that because there is no restriction on topic selection, I can expand on the issues that I am most concerned about and confused about at the moment, and then spend time looking up materials and reading books. In order to solve one problem, I encountered another problem. Slowly, I started to follow my own pace, sparking curiosity, and writing complex structures that I didn’t expect.
But writing too much for yourself means getting further away from the reader.
In the podcast “Records of the Lives of Internet Writers” 1 , an Internet writer said that when you are completely immersed and the more you write, the more you write, then your works will be on the street. Waiting for you to cool down for two days, and then look at the content of this immersive writing, you will find that many places need to be revised.
This is true of fictional works, not to mention non-fictional reasoning content.
Just recently, some reader feedback pulled me out of my self-immersion. Some people say that the content of the article is too complicated; some people say that it feels very clear at first, but after reading it, it becomes confused. So I began to reflect, am I too inclined to “write for myself”? How should creators balance “facing themselves” and “facing readers”?
How to balance yourself with your readers
After much thought, I found that “facing myself” and “facing the reader” are not contradictory.
In fact, any thinking and knowledge are valuable in themselves, otherwise it would not have been invented. As for whether it is valuable to readers, it depends on whether you can effectively relate it to the problems the readers are currently encountering.
For example, ” automatic thinking ” is a spontaneous, uncontrolled thinking activity. It is just a psychological knowledge if not related to the problem. But it can be the culprit behind our prejudices and stereotypes; it can also be a key factor in making us constantly regurgitate the pain of the past and fall into internal friction and anxiety.
For the author, the key is not only how to help readers establish a link between them and the concept, but also the internal motivation to ensure the output of writing. Therefore, we must not only ensure the creative power, but also ensure that the content written is seen by people, and also overcome the psychological barrier of “someone has already written it.”
When we write, we may have a certain object in mind, it may be our relatives, friends, lovers, or the reader may be ourselves. If we introduce the time concepts of past, present, and future, and replace the reader with the self in different time and space, then the readers we face are the present self, the past self and the future self.
- The present self: the self who is trying to understand the current mental process at this moment;
- Past self: Go back in time, and have not experienced as rich a self now;
- Future self: time travels, the self who will come back to see at some point in the future.
The steps of writing can be: first write down the most exciting and exciting strokes for the current self, then provide more useful advice to the past self, and summarize the experience that can be referenced to prepare for the future self.
Facing the present, past, and future self, each has its own focus, so let’s look at it one by one.
2.1 My current self
If you are asked to describe a person who is waiting for the subway in front of you, or write about your mental activities at the moment, or look up a company’s historical story, or understand the origin of a psychological term, even if it is to write a diary reviewing the day, Also written are the memories and feelings of those events at that moment. To ask questions, to think. These processes themselves are inseparable from the “now”.
The biggest problem with writing for yourself is that you may always be in a state of distraction when you should be facing yourself: critical of the past, worry about the future. Unable to enter the state of seeking knowledge and writing at will.
There are three steps to solving this problem.
Step 1: If there is a touch, remember it immediately .
Have you ever missed a time of inspiration? If you don’t record your feelings at the first time, it will be very difficult to recall and record after two days. Because in the moment, your heart is touched, and then you can deduce your thoughts through writing. But the period of time to be touched is very short, usually within two days. After this period of time, the feeling of being touched will dissipate and become a thing of the past. So when you have an idea, you have to write it down immediately to maximize the restoration of the situation at that time.
Step 2: Don’t judge, just diverge .
Writing for yourself is a “state”. I often feel clueless when I see the first draft when I write an article. At this time, I will try to write a running account first. Looking back at my previous diary, before many inspirations burst, there were some inexplicable ramblings of my own. Here is a more typical Xpress record.
When you are writing, you should be fully engaged in it, don’t stop, get into the flow as much as possible, let yourself spread out, not be responsible for anyone, as long as you are writing freely at the moment. At this time, the words flow naturally from your fingers, and your thinking will continue to burst with new sparks with the progress of the words, connecting more stories and concepts that you have never thought of before.
The essence of free writing is spontaneity and honesty. You need to record the content of free association quickly and non-judgmentally. When you record, let your brain go. No control, no choice, no re-reading, no revision, and let yourself write.
– “Rebuilding Yourself with Writing”
“Freewriting” has also been used as an effective form of psychotherapy 2 . It may be messy, trivial, and verbose, and no one can read it, but it jots down every thought that pops into your head—not only for your physical and mental health, but for building a habit and motivation to write.
Step 3: Find problems and be curious .
As you explore your heart, some questions will come to your mind, and these questions will spark your curiosity and become your motivation to keep exploring.
The purpose of “writing for oneself” is to understand, to use words to make thinking flow, and to clarify one’s current issues. As for how to present it, it’s not important, the important thing is to think clearly; If you can’t figure it out, you have to find the reason why you can’t figure it out.
In ” Re-understanding “Curiosity”: A Self-Rescue Guide for Learning Motivation , I shared that there are three states of our grasp of information: “know”, “don’t know” and “tip of the tongue”. The reason for weak curiosity is either that you know too little, and you have only tasted it; or you know too well, and you lose the sense of mystery. Let your curiosity be fully stimulated by putting yourself on the tip of your tongue.
2.2 Past self
If you talk about your “current self”, you should be as divergent as possible, and write whatever comes to your mind. When facing your “old self”, try to be as restrained and critical as possible.
2.2.1 Overcoming the curse of knowledge
Why write about your past self? Because to a certain extent, we can only solve the problems of people with similar experiences as ourselves, and the help we can give is based on what we have seen, heard, thought and thought. The readers are actually their “past selves,” and they don’t know anything about what their “present selves” have experienced.
You can do a little experiment with someone around you: first sing a song in your head, and then tap the lyrics with your hands. No matter how careful and precise you are. All the other party heard was a dull “da da da da da”. The “curse of knowledge” makes people always overestimate how well others understand them. So the phrase we often talk about is “Why don’t you understand yet”.
When confronting your past self, the most important thing to overcome is the curse of knowledge, the assumption that the other person knows nothing about it.
2.2.2 Equal dialogue with readers
Why is posture important?
In ” 28 Years of Writing Mind Facts ” 3 , Liu Run mentioned the “sense of object”, as if the author was sitting across from the reader, sharing his views like an old acquaintance. Behind the sense of object is actually a writing gesture. That is to say, when you are writing, you will neither be condescending to be a teacher nor flatter your readers; instead, you will introduce readers from the heart as first-time visitors with an equal attitude.
When I read Stephen Pinker’s “A Sense of Style”, I always had a question about the “classical style” mentioned in the book: since writing is thinking, why can we be sure before writing? Shouldn’t you be thinking while writing?
In fact, what the classical style should emphasize is a kind of “posture” that is clear to the chest. No matter how tangled you are when you’re writing, or how painful it is when you’re researching, you shouldn’t let the reader feel that.
In fact, this is a kind of “camouflage”, which digests complex derivation and huge fragmented information by itself, and only presents the parts that readers can understand.
No matter how complex the formula and derivation process are, it is not necessary to fully present it in the article, but to activate the reader’s visual senses as the goal, and to have an equal dialogue with the reader.
Taking the “tour guide” as an analogy, the classical style is to make tourists feel that “I am familiar with this place”, but in fact, before guiding tourists, you have come here many times, and you are familiar with the scenic spots.
2.2.3 Subtract the content and highlight the main line
Writing an article is like a sculpture. I have been doing subtraction, removing unnecessary things, and the rest is what this article really wants to express.
There are too many feelings and experiences in our minds, but we can only explain a small part of them clearly in the limited number of words and time. Either, spend more space and time to do a more comprehensive and systematic arrangement; or, cut off other details and present readers with relatively pure context, questions and answers.
It takes courage and determination to cut off other “thinking” that excites you, because if you want to write well and in depth, you must be as divergent and abstract as possible, which will inevitably go off topic. So you need to determine the main line, and then judge and remove the content that is irrelevant to the main line, even if it is the part you specifically want to write.
For example, the classical style advocates “no argument, but direct display for readers to see”.
Even if you don’t know the mathematical calculation process behind these, you can know some concepts, principles, and knowledge. Classical style is common in popular science articles and books. The purpose of writing is to allow readers without professional knowledge to see what you see, not to let them understand the complex principles behind things.
It’s like I made a camera for you to use. I just need to tell you what this camera can be used for and how to use it to take pictures, without telling you the imaging principle of the lens and the design path of the circuit inside the camera.
2.2.4 Make the content more specific
Experts can not only fully convey the details of their feelings, but also take into account the dismantling of complex things into simple categories; they can skillfully use various analogies, stories, and cases to make “the past self” understand deeply, and give To produce precise symbols, to summarize and abstract these indescribable truths, giving people a bright and memorable feeling.
This is about the “ladder of abstraction” proposed by Samuel Hayakawa.
The top layer of the ladder corresponds to some grand abstract words, such as country, freedom, value, growth; the bottom layer of the ladder corresponds to concrete words, such as Beijing Tiananmen, bicycle, 5 yuan a bag of potato chips, an increase of 20% month-on-month of sales.
To give another example, say “a music player has a lot of memory”, this is in the position of the abstract layer, more concrete is “5 GB of memory”, and more concrete is “put 1000 songs in your pocket” .
When writing an article, if you keep staying at the highest level (abstract level), the content you say will be easy to be “false and empty”, making people confused; and if you keep staying at the bottom level (representational level), you will be like an old woman The foot wraps were smelly and long. Only when it is used flexibly and interspersed can the written content be both vivid and profound.
But it’s not enough to just make the content more tangible. We also need to go to the top of the abstraction ladder to see how to make the “future self” better recall and use.
2.3 Future self
Such as the question mentioned at the beginning: someone has already written the content you want to write, and there is no motivation to write, what should I do?
Are you worried that someone has written it? No, your concern is that readers have already seen and know what you want to write about. Since everyone already knows it, why write it again?
This question seems to be asking, the future self must know more than the current self, so is it necessary to write to the future now?
Needed. Because forgetting is human nature.
2.3.1 Reasons why people like to forget
People will continue to learn and receive new information, and they also need to spend brain power to process and process. If the brain uses all its resources for memory, there will be no resources to process new knowledge.
It is said that there is nothing new under the sun. I also found that most of the opinions and knowledge I have written have actually been written by many people, but they are all based on personal experience. Although the knowledge and content are similar, the experience is different from the case. , the use of the scene is different, and the connection method of other concepts is different, its role is to help readers review the knowledge and experience at the right time, so that they can have a different understanding based on their recent experience.
Also because people like to forget, in addition to accumulating a large number of cases and insights, we also need to devise impressive “spells” for “future self” – establishing classification.
2.3.2 Establish classification
Although people are prone to forget specific information, they are very sensitive to the classification of information. Our memory is divided into “short-term memory” and “long-term memory”. Through short-term memory, information is processed and classified to form “classification”. After the brain has memorized the classification, in order to optimize memory, the specific information of the auxiliary memory model is discarded.
For example, a scientist whose memory has been cleared wants to establish a gender classification for himself, so he measures the hair length of some male and female samples and finds that many girls have longer hair than boys, and will initially abstract the conclusion as “hair length” It’s a woman, ignoring how many centimeters the hair was measured before. Later, the scientist found that some women also have short hair, so he started to look for other specific characteristics, and he found that girls are generally slender. “Body shape” has become one of his categorical variables for judging gender.
In order to recognize the classification of gender, it is necessary to establish new classifications, such as long hair, medium hair, short hair; tall, short, fat, thin. It is then deepened and consolidated in the brain memory.
Similarly, when writing and taking notes, we also need to establish a clear conclusion for our “future self” to help our future self classify and store more effectively so that it can extract information efficiently. From the perspective of “abstract ladder”, establishing a classification is to extract and summarize the commonalities of data, cases, and stories, and finally construct an abstract classification that is easier for the brain to remember.
So how do you build the taxonomy? In fact, we can stand on the shoulders of giants. Day and night, long-term and short-term, rationality and sensibility, needs and liking, strong and weak, yes or no… The predecessors have already helped us make a good classification, and we can fully understand the problems encountered in reality based on these classifications .
As you are reading this article, I mainly use two categories: “self and others” and “past, present, future”. No matter how complicated and confusing the content I want to express, it will become clearer and easier to remember once the filters are classified.
2.3.3 Pitfalls of Classification
However, there are also traps in classification and concepts. Justice and evil are not either one or the other.
I have participated in a learning community before, and I feel that although the people in the group are very good at learning, chatting in the group sometimes abuses various big words to judge and evaluate other people’s affairs, and use concepts and categories to define a person’s existence.
For example, how to define “stress resistance” at work? Working from morning to night for a month in a row, does high-intensity work count? If someone uses such a classification to define people, if they do not reach it, they are “not resistant to pressure”, which is called abusing the classification to attack others. Everyone’s threshold for stress is different, and their understanding and choice of work are also different. If you mutually agree with this standard, you can work together; if you don’t agree or can’t accept it, you don’t have to deny yourself because of it, and label yourself as “not resistant to pressure”.
Back to the topic of writing, when sharing “key concepts”, my purpose is to try to find the blurred boundaries in the seemingly mutually exclusive concept groups.
If you’ve read a few of my articles, you’ll see that I often use a title format similar to “How to Escape the Trap of XX”. The reason is that concepts often help us to understand things, but they also influence our cognition and make us fall into various cognitive biases. What I can do is first talk about the general meaning of the concept, then dig and explore its adaptive boundaries, and discuss how it should be used within the boundaries. The classification itself is not important. What is important is that you need to keep yourself in a “grayscale cognition” of things, and use a dialectical perspective to see the classification and definition in the mouth of others.
Classification should be the ladder for our understanding of the real world, it should not cloud us, but should help us to generate more questions, seduce our curiosity and desire to explore the world further.
3. Conclusion
Writing is both enjoyable and painful. It is said to be pleasant because when we face our “current self”, we can express our thoughts and enjoy ourselves. It’s painful because we have to face our “old self” and try our best to make complicated ideas and complex information look like the readers like, and then pass it on.
However, the difficulty of balancing ourselves and the readers lies in the control of the state. We cannot consider the readers’ preferences when we are immersed in the creation, and we have to cut off some irrelevant but wanted to express content in order to make the point of view of the article clearer.
When we try to communicate with readers on an equal footing as a tour guide, we also need more patience to introduce them one by one, assuming that the reader is the first time to come to this field of knowledge.
When facing the past self, at the bottom of the abstract ladder, use analogies, stories, and cases to concretize the point of view; when facing the future self, at the top of the abstract ladder, use classification to deepen and consolidate its memory, so that it can be easily recalled.
The last question: what is the purpose of our writing?
Samuel Hayakawa gave the answer in Invitation to Linguistics:
Writers use language to sort out their experiences and attitudes, so that they can play a role in the minds of readers, so that readers can also sort out their personal experiences and attitudes. After this rectification, the reader’s mind can become slightly more tidy.
I feel like a reader’s “thinking organizer”. In the depths of the reader’s heart, there is already a lot of classified information, as well as some unclassified scattered pieces of information. What I want to do is to help readers explore the classification of things. Boundaries, so that their hearts are clearer.
Thank you for your patience to see here, I hope my experience, thinking and summary can have some influence on you and help you take one more step on the way of writing.
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