Thoughts on writing process

[raphlinus]

I've been refining my writing process, and people have expressed interest.

• Seek to minimize controversy. Most things exist as tradeoffs, emphasize positive side of tradeoff space. imgui would be a good example (partly because it's a chance to write down some "softer" thoughts on imgui)
• Avoid emotionally charged language. Ableist and gendered language (when not needed) out.
• When there's likelihood of confusion, circulate a draft and take feedback.
• Have a queue, and have blogs in draft. This gives time to think about what I'm going to say. "compositor is evil" took 18mo. New plan: use issues to make this more explicit, encourage feedback earlier.
• Target audience: a curious person who doesn't necessarily have a solid background. Take the opportunity to teach. (Contrast: "wall of greek" papers full of math content, seem to be more about showing off prowess)
• Assume good faith, and ignore bad faith. (Mostly relevant in comment sections)
• Generally I read the final draft aloud before publishing. Gives a chance to fix language poetry issues, rough transitions, missing pieces of the narrative.

A few thoughts on my "research" rebranding. In most case, the blog is the most efficient way to get research results out, with open source code as the artifact of record. I do occasional papers and conferences too.