Insights from 50 writing tools by Peter Clark
- Don't repeat words that might be too near each other.
- Put noun and verb really close to the start of the sentence if you want to make it really long.
- Use simple language if talking about something more emotionally salient.
Conversation
Thoughts on being a good online writer
- Don't worry about it at the beginning as nobody is going to read it.
- Write high-quality pieces - ideally something nobody has written about before.
- Share your links on communities (ex: Reddit)
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How to get better at structure in writing
- The New Yorker and The Economist are good at structure. When reading a piece, try to figure out what are the ideas the author is trying to communicate.
- Then think how would you structure the ideas vs how the author did.
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writing workflow
- Writes on .
- Initially writes ideas/drafts as comments.
- Think "What do I want the reader to takeaway from this piece?" and write it down.
- Discovers the structure of the piece while writing.
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research process
- Queues up multiple papers and books about the particular subject he's learning about and would only read on that topic for weeks.
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Important thoughts internalized through writing
- Use narratives strategically.
- Stories are a very good way to transmit a message.
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Questions I had:
- Books/papers on naturalistic decision making?
- How do you find the best papers/books on a certain topic?
- Any good reads on other sorts of deliberate practice-like activities?
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Forgot to tag you but would love your input on these! (I had a few longer ones as well that couldn't fit in 280 characters 😅)
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Replying to
Big questions! I'll go through them one by one:
Re: NDM, start out with Klein's book Sources of Power and Power of Intuition. Then skim Beth Crandall's Working Minds.
Also, read Kahneman and Klein's paper: fs.usda.gov/rmrs/sites/def
And trace the citations.
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Re: finding resources to read. This is a bit of an art. I tend to Google first, and then look up citations at the bottom of Wikipedia. But I also pay attention if some blog post/Tweet thread cites a book/paper. Then it's usually a simple case of following their citations.
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For deliberate practice, I'd say go through Ericsson's Peak (my summary here if you don't want to: commoncog.com/blog/peak-book) and then jump to the Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance cambridge.org/my/academic/su
On that note, if you want to lowkey pick up on what's interesting in NDM, it pays to subscribe to the NDM podcast naturalisticdecisionmaking.org/podcasts/
And I'm eyeing the Oxford Handbook of Expertise, which is ALL NDM, but it's crazy expensive oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/o
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Replying to
Hey just wanted to say a quick thanks for taking the time to answer my questions and linking me so many resources!
It means a lot and definitely appreciate it.
Curious. How many hours do you dedicate to reading and writing per day? I'm fascinated by how prolific you are.
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