firehose/app/priv/blog/engineering/2026/04-18-writing-the-slow-way.md
2026-04-18 09:20:23 +01:00

2.5 KiB

%{ title: "Do you need a virtual Jamie Dobson?", author: "Willem van den Ende", tags: ~w(writing ai), description: "Writing and publishing have multiple goals and audiences. My hand written drafts rarely make it out to the public, unless it is a comment or a micro post. AI generated makes it out, but may confuse readers. Handwritten post.", published: true }

Most of my hand written notes don't make it out in to the wild. Even when someone (thanks Mark Dalgarno) says: "this would be a good micro-post", and I have created this site to give me permission to quickly post something, it might not happen.

By the time I have written things down, my perspective may have shifted. If not then, it definitely has shifted by the time I get around to editing.

Over the half-term I have sat down with pen and (e-) paper. It really does help to slow me down and think. But I still need to open a laptop to edit and publish. This introduces friction. "Friction is good for learning!" I hear you say. If it is essential friction, yes. If it is accidental friction, not so much.

You see, I wanted to publish a piece on essential versus accidental friction, probably wrote a draft somewhere and then left it.

Jamie Dobson said on LinkedIn... So yeah, I went to that ad platform and couldn't find back the post, and I lost my train of thought. It was something along the lines of writing by hand, going for walks, throwing chapters of his books away. That is all fine and dandy, I apply that process. Minus the publishing step. The throwing away? I've got that covered.

As it happens with slow-ish writing. I am sitting down with my keyboard, rambling. Chris Nesbitt-Smith made a virtual Jamie Dobson to critique his writing. It is the only critic that encourages him to curse in his writing. As Emmanuel Gaillot would say: "Fuck that shit".

Jamie kindly offered Chris to critique his writing for real. And then I have this punchline, that relates to the post. But my thread was lost hunting for links. I believe it comes down to Sitting for the blues, "sand in my heart". I'll leave you with the punchline:

So I agree with Jamie. No virtual Jamie needed.

(a LinkedIn comment was written while editing this post, hunting for links. The dopamine hits are real.)