I have never been much of a writer. I have done some writing before, but the thought of consistent writing was a bit daunting to me.

What do I even write about?!

How do I drive my point across?!

What if people bully me online?! They do it either way.

There is an inherent fear of getting critiqued by people, and nobody loves that feeling.

It takes a lot of time and effort to flesh out ideas and write them.

It requires you to get out of your comfort zone to write something technical and put it on the internet where people more experienced

The process of writing is not rewarding enough in the beginning.

• You don’t have an audience right away

• You will be writing into a void

• You might hate what you write

Why Should YOU Write – And Why It Matters

Has it ever happened to you that you think you know a topic but you cannot explain it to someone? This is called the Dunning-Kruger Effect.

Dunning-Kruger Effect is when you think you know a subject but have fundamental gaps in the knowledge.

This is where writing comes into play.

Writing solidifies your thoughts.

When you sit down to write an idea, you have to think deeper to properly explain it.

How does it translate to writing software?

Watching tutorials and reading articles can give you the illusion that you know things but that illusion breaks as soon as you need to explain it to someone else.

Writing can help you see the gaps in your knowledge and fix them

You can be sure you know a topic if you are able to write a whole tutorial on it.

While writing you will have to do research and by the end of it, you will know more.

Writing Makes You A Better Teacher

The Feynman method says, “If you want to truly learn something, teach it to others” – The concept is that when you teach it to others you have to think much deeper.

When you write to teach others, you need a good foundational understanding to explain.

Some things you need to consider:

To teach a topic you will need to simplify it and teach it in a way where others can understand it.

You need to consider that people are not starting from your level of understanding.

I have always wanted to write and put my knowledge into words.

I was in the mindset that I need to know a lot more to be able to write and teach.

Turns out the treasure is the friends we make along the way. Like all other skills, writing and teaching require constant practice.

There is no perfect time for you to start writing, it should come as you go.

I did not get out of this mindset for a long time.

How to Get Started – Start today; improve tomorrow

Whenever I thought about writing, I thought I needed to make my own blog under my own domain.

I ended up wasting a lot of time thinking I need to make my own blog from scratch.

After all, how can I be a good developer if I don't make things difficult for myself and DIY every software I come across.

Thinking like this only hinders you from starting because there are only so many things you can do in a day and managing a blog is a lot of extra work.

When you create friction, you have a difficult time starting. You will procrastinate and end up doing nothing.

If your purpose is to get yourself out there, a custom blog is not going to help you, it's only going to put time towards something that is not helpful to your current goal.

Later on, I also read in Ultimate Guide to Writing ebook that making your own blog is not the best way to get yourself out there. You just don't have the marketing capabilities that can help you get out there.

So, I started a blog in July 2022 on Hashnode and set these goals for myself:

• Write every day

• Post at least 3 articles a week

• Don’t chase perfection

I signed up for “4 Articles in 4 Weeks” writing challenge 4 Articles and finished it (this is the last article)

It was challenging for me because I hadn’t written on a specific theme like that before and It also pushed me to write consistently.

In the 3rd week “I want to build _ because _” I could not think of anything to write and nearly gave up, but then I realized that I want to build a lot of things, so I wrote on this app that I am working on.

Key Takeaways

• Start writing anywhere

• Don't give up

• Stay consistent

How To Build In Public

Contributing To GitHub

Working in a corporate environment has its advantages but you get stuck in specific technologies and don’t get much time to experiment.

I have never contributed to any Open Source Software (OSS) before, it seemed like a monumental task for me.

I wrote a whole articleon my journey with contributing to OSS and how I overcame my fears in it.

I had to get out of the mindset that I only need to contribute to big projects.

Big projects are usually not the ones that are in dire need of contributions.

It’s usually the smaller projects. They have only a few people active in them, issues, PRs etc. stay open for a long time.

Focus your efforts on these smaller projects and make small and consistent contributions.

Over the past 40 days, I have contributed to codebases that were in Ruby, Go, Deno, and TypeScript.

I have specifically loved using Ruby. It’s so succinct and yet so readable.

Key Takeaways

• You don't have to contribute to big repos

• Start low and slow, makes it easy to overcome your fears

• Open yourself to other languages

Engaging on Twitter

Twitter is incredibly consequential to building in Public, all the cool devs hang out there.

I started with posting a tweet daily and engaging with the people I follow.

I have never been part of any group before but Twitter feels like the closest thing to it where I can interact with so many different people in a meaningful way.

There is a lot of information regarding optimizing your Twitter out there, if your only purpose is to get a lot of followers, you should definitely follow it.

Me, I find it easier for me to interact naturally.

I tweet when I feel like it and I engage with people I am interested in engaging with. It's not difficult to train yourself to be able to tweet regularly, if anything it rewires your brain to go from the default of not sharing to default to sharing.

It improves your thinking process since you are able to constantly put ideas into words in a way that others would understand it. This is an amazingly powerful advantage of the internet and sharing by default.

Key Takeaways

• Engage naturally on Twitter

• Think of ideas in a way people can understand them

• Community is a powerful motivator

My Progress and Plan

This is my story over the last month. I am optimistic about the future and I want to keep writing and sharing.

My writing plan is:

• Become proficient at putting thoughts and ideas into words

• Increase the technical difficulty over time so I can get to my actual experiences in coding over the last 3 years

• Make long-form guides

Currently, I am on step 1, I write every day on whichever topic is on my mind.

I work on idea generation and work on creating a backlog of draft articles.

I don’t overthink too much; this is kind of like the tutorial phase.

I am trying to find my voice but I am not waiting until I find it.

Takeaways

• Start now and stay consistent
• Become proficient at writing and sharing
• If perfection is the only thing stopping you from posting something, post it -- Improve it later