How to beat technical writer's block

These are the slides from a talk given at WordCamp US 2019.

Alright, so you’re a WordPress developer who wants to share his technical expertise with the world. Maybe you want to write on your own blog. Or maybe you want to try to write a guest post for one of the larger WordPress publications.

A common hurdle when you start writing (and even when you’ve been writing for a while) is the writer’s block. You’re stuck staring at a white page because you’re not too sure what to write about. It’s a frustrating experience for pretty much anyone.

So how can you find ideas for technical articles? This is what we’ll look at in this talk. We’ll go over some of the principles that I use for finding ideas for technical articles.

These principles aren’t only useful for finding ideas for technical articles. They’re also great for talk submissions. (Such as this one!) And my hope is that they remove some of the frustrations that you might have with writer’s block.

You can read the companion article at: https://carlalexander.ca/writers-block/

Transcript

1. How to beat technical writer's block
2. Carl Alexander
3. @twigpress
4. carlalexander.ca
5. We see our developer peers write wonderful articles
9. “Maybe I should do the same?”
10. Obstacle: Writer’s block
11. “What do I write about?”
12. “This is ”
13. Happens to both new and experienced writers
14. Makes us want to stop writing
15. Warning: Not going to talk about goals
16. What to write about?
17. Most frustrating thing about writer’s block
18. A lot of sources of material for technical writing
19. We just don’t think about them that way
20. A problem that you faced
21. We often solve problems that we couldn’t find answers to
22. Others are probably looking for answers just like you were
23. Why not write about it!?
24. Easier to write about
25. Better able to empathize
26. Something you’re working on
27. A lot of us have side projects
28. Write about them!
29. Tried a new technology?
30. Used a new concept?
31. Can't always to try new things at work
32. Postmortems
33. Talk about a concept or technology in the wild
34. Serious effort implementing things
35. Discuss what went well and what didn't
36. Interesting to other developers
37. Valuable when evaluating things for a project
38. Answer questions
39. Everyone is asking questions
40. Pick one and write about it
41. How I wrote my first article
42. Where can you find questions to answer?
43. Things you wish people knew about
44. Why I started writing
45. “I feel people should know about this”
46. “I can’t find anything on it”
47. Not a topic
48. Not for developers without a computer science background
49. Write for your past self
50. Your writing process
51. As important as where you get your topic ideas
52. Developing a regular writing habit
53. Don’t wait for inspiration to “hit you”
54. Try to write every day
55. Doesn’t matter if it’s not great
56. About getting used to the idea of writing something
57. It doesn't matter how much you write
58. We feel that we have to write a lot every time we try to write
59. Experiment with your writing habit
60. Specific time of the day
61. Amount of time per day
62. Number of words per day
63. How this played out for me
64. On writing slowly
65. Benefits to writing slowly
66. Writing is about putting our thoughts into words
67. It’s a thinking exercise
68. Hard to write if things aren’t clear in our head
69. Writing slowly gives you time to think
70. Can take a long time to write
71. Other things to keep in mind
72. Not specific to dealing with writer's block
73. Other ways to solve problems
74. Tempting to say this is “the way” to solve a problem
75. Something that worked for you and might work for others
76. Like this talk
77. You don't know everything
78. Limits to our knowledge
79. Be honest about what you know
80. Saying “I don't know” is a sign of strength
81. Do your best not to be wrong
82. Try to overcome the limits of your knowledge
83. Fact check yourself
84. Working proof of concept
85. Can be time consuming
86. It’s about practice
87. Writing is a habit
88. Doesn’t happen overnight
89. Writer's block is a setback
90. Thank you!