Right now I’m coaching for Inkhaven, a month-long marathon writing event where our brave residents are writing a blog post every single day for the entire month of November.

And I’m pleased that some of them have seen success – relevant figures seeing the posts, shares on Hacker News and Twitter and LessWrong. The amount of writing is nuts, so people are trying out different styles and topics – some posts are effort-rich, some are quick takes or stories or lists.

Some people have come up to me – one of their pieces has gotten some decent reception, but the feeling is mixed, because it's not the piece they hoped would go big. Their thick research-driven considered takes or discussions of values or whatever, the ones they’d been meaning to write for years, apparently go mostly unread, whereas their random-thought “oh shit I need to get a post out by midnight or else the Inkhaven coaches will burn me at the stake” posts[1] get to the front page of Hacker News, where probably Elon Musk and God read them.

It happens to me too – some of my own pieces that took me the most effort, or that I’m [...]

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Outline:

(02:00) The quick post is short, the effortpost is long

(02:34) The quick post is about something interesting, the topic of the effortpost bores most people

(03:13) The quick post has a fun controversial take, the effortpost is boringly evenhanded or laden with nuance

(03:30) The quick post is low-context, the effortpost is high-context

(04:28) The quick post is has a casual style, the effortpost is inscrutably formal

The original text contained 1 footnote which was omitted from this narration.

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