How to Write Usefully

Title: The Art and Utility of Essay Writing

An essay should not just aim to persuade, but to be useful. To be useful, an essay must be correct, but correctness alone is not enough. An essay should make strong claims that are as accurate as possible without being false. Precision and correctness are like opposing forces; satisfying one often means ignoring the other.

Useful writing is bold but true, providing important information that the reader might not already know. Useful writing communicates something true and important as unequivocally as possible. However, this doesn't mean that every idea will be novel to everyone. It's sufficient if an idea is novel to a lot of readers.

Ensuring that what you write is true, novel, and important requires a certain trick: don't publish anything unless you're sure it's worth hearing. This approach, known as the "publication bias", is considered beneficial in essay writing. It involves writing a fast first draft, then spending days carefully rewriting it.

Useful writing also requires importance. This can be achieved by writing about topics that seem important to you, as they'll likely be important to a significant number of readers as well.

Novelty in writing can be achieved by writing about topics you've thought about a lot. If you notice something that surprises you, it will probably also surprise a significant number of readers.

The fourth component of useful writing, strength, comes from thinking well and skillfully using qualification. Qualification is an important skill in its own right, not just a tool to avoid saying false things.

Lastly, essays should be written as simply as possible, not just for the reader's sake, but also because it helps get things right.

However, be aware that writing essays that are important, novel, correct, and strong can make people mad, especially if you contradict their cherished beliefs. But despite the potential backlash, keep writing. The internet has made it possible for anyone to publish essays online, leading to an explosion of ideas waiting to be discovered.

The original article: https://paulgraham.com/useful.html