Two kinds of writers

A. Those who think they know what they are talking about

B. Those who talk like they don’t know what they’re thinking about

No reason these should be mutually exclusive but in practice they mostly are

I’m almost exclusively B. All my writing grasps at stuff just outside my cognitive reach

Blogger at ribbonfarm.com, running summerofprotocols.com, host of /gloom ☀️

The big risk for type A, which people like Paul Graham succumb to, is that they don’t actually know and should be in B-mode

The big risk for type B is that there is no there there and you’re chasing a mirage in peripheral noise

I don’t do type A not because I’m afraid of being wrong or that I have no topics I could talk about with confidence, but because talking about stuff I know inside-out bores me. I try to apply it or teach it for pay if the pay is good enough. But there is no intrinsic satisfaction to explainering for me.

I’m sure this also influences the style of writing. I don’t think you can do the Paul Graham school of “write simple prose” if you’re doing Type B. I had reluctantly bought into that approach to writing until I discovered Ribbonfarm and now no one can convince me you can’t say delve 😂