It starts with research, reading, watching, and learning — never with writing. First of all, I flood myself with information about the subject — let’s take a person as an example: Da Vinci. I’ll read books about who he was, from different angles and different authors, watch YouTube videos, go on Wikipedia, on social networks, watch a documentary, or [my favorite for especially niche subjects — dive into subreddits or other internet forums where I can usually find specific, off-the-beaten-path information]
After that, I’ll let myself absorb and process the information — I won’t touch it for a few days, sometimes even weeks — and only then will I come back to it [even though, according to spaced repetition and intervals, it’s better for me to return to the material every so often, at least every few days so it stays fresh — though not really enough to embed it into long-term memory and gain a deeper understanding; but in practice this almost never happens because I get pulled into a completely different field]
In short, at this stage two weeks have passed since the initial exposure [in this case of Da Vinci, four especially intensive weeks in which I researched the man from every possible angle] - only here do I write a first draft. The steps are pretty simple and it looks like this:
- Write for 20–40 minutes straight, everything that comes into my head, without stopping and without significant corrections, sometimes even with terrible spelling mistakes [like I’m doing right now] - just letting the words run and the hands type
- Stop
- Come back to it to fix, expand, remove excess information
- Return to deep research, add sources, fix mistakes
- Lean on LLMs to refine the wording without changing my writing style, improving what I can without harming the original product
- Expand, a whole lot, while doing deep research
- Finish
- It’s always open, so by now the ‘draft’ is no longer a draft - and becomes something a bit more finished
- Here I’ll come back each time to add or change new things I’ve learned.. after weeks, months, or even years.
I think it’s worth leaving this page as a draft forever. There’s something a little romantic about the idea that the page about drafts will stay a draft - despite the fact that there are probably spelling mistakes here, certain errors, or ideas that aren’t fully complete and coherent. Yeah, cool. Decided.
It’s an especially great idea because it’s so hard for me to leave this page as a draft; I’m reading it again now and dying to fix, improve, delete, edit, and add.. it’s a good exercise. This site is made specifically for unfinished ideas. The old habit that forces me to upload every piece of content to the internet and the wider public as final needs to be thrown into the bin of failed habits that don’t work and lead nowhere.