Sometimes people talk to me about posts I’ve written on my blog, or posts they wish I would write. At some point during the discussion, I’ll almost always ask the person why they don’t start up their own blog or contribute to someone else’s. Very few people actually seem interested when I probe them about writing posts on technical topics.
My mother was always the one who told me (and her students) that everyone has a story. She said that writing could be therapeutic in ways you probably won’t consider until you’ve written something that someone else enjoys. Just as software developers exist to write software for their users, writers exist to write stories for their readers. There’s nothing that says technical people can’t become excellent writers who inspire others to learn and share their knowledge with others.
The goal of this post is to encourage technical people to enjoy writing, write efficiently and feel comfortable doing it. I’ll roll through some of the most common responses I’ve received about why technical people don’t blog about what they know.
I don’t think I’m really an expert on anything. I’m not an authority on any topic I can think of.
I’m leading off with this response because it’s the most critical to refute. If you don’t take away anything else from this post, let it be this: you don’t need to be an expert on a topic to write about it.
You can find examples of this by rolling through some of the posts on my blog. I’d consider myself to be an expert on one, maybe two topics, but I’ve written over 450 posts in the span of just over five years. I certainly didn’t write all of those about the one or two topics I know best.
Write about what you know and don’t be afraid to do a little research to become an authority on something. A great example of this was my post, entitled “Kerberos for haters.” I had almost no expertise in Kerberos. In fact, I couldn’t even configure it properly for my RHCA exam! However, I did a ton of research and began to understand how most of the pieces fit together. Many other people were just as confused and I decided to pack all of the knowledge I had about Kerberos into a blog post. Positive and negative feedback rolled in and it was obvious that my post taught some readers, inspired some others and angered a few.
What a great way to lead into the next response:
What if I say something that isn’t correct? I’ll look like an idiot in front of the whole internet!
Been there, done that. Every writer makes errors and comes up with bad assumptions at least once. Readers will call you out on your mistakes (some do it delicately while others don’t) and it’s your duty to correct your post or correct the reader. I’ve written posts with errors, and I’ve gotten a little lazy on my fact-checking from time to time. As my middle school journalism teacher always reminded me, the most important part of a mistake is what you do to clean it up and learn from it.
In short: you’ll make mistakes. As long as you’ve done your due diligence to minimize them and respond to them promptly, your readers should forgive you.
Speaking of errors:
I’m great at a command prompt but my spelling and grammar are awful. I write terribly.
This is easily fixed. If you’re one of those folks who live the do-it-yourself type of lifestyle, pick up a copy of The Elements of Style by Strunk & White. There are free PDF versions online or you can borrow one from your nearest journalist. No matter the situation you’re in, this book has details about where punctuation should and shouldn’t be, how to structure sentences and paragraphs, and how to properly cite your sources (really vital for research posts).
Hauling around a copy of an ultra-dry reference book may not be your thing. If that’s the case, find someone you know who has a knack for writing. You can usually find helpful folks in marketing or corporate communications in most big companies who will take your post and return it covered in red ink ready for corrections (thanks, Garrett!). I’ve even spotted some folks on Fiverr who will do this for as low as $5.
I’ll wrap up with the second most common response:
I don’t know who I’m writing for? What if I write about something simple and the really technical folks think I’m a noob? What if I write something crazy complex and it goes over most people’s heads?
I’ve done both of these. Most Linux system administrators worth their salt know how to add and remove iptables rules, and they’d consider it to be pretty trivial work. Would it surprise you to know that out of over 450 posts, my post about deleting a single iptables rule is in the top five most accessed posts per month? I receive just over 11 percent of my monthly hits to this post. People are either learning from it or they can’t remember how to delete the rule and they want to use the post as a quick reference. Either way, the post is valuable to many people even if I think it’s the simplest topic possible.
On the flip side, I went nuts and wrote up a complete how-to for a redundant cloud hosting configuration complete with LVS, glusterfs, MySQL on DRBD, memcached, haproxy and ldirectord. I thought it would be valuable knowledge to a few folks but that it might sail over the heads of most of my readers. Again, I was wrong. The post is constantly in the top 10 most visited posts on the blog and I’ve probably received more feedback via comments, email and IRC about that post than any other. Once again, a post I thought would be mostly useless turned into a real conversation starter.
Let’s conclude and wrap up. Keep these things in mind if you feel discouraged about writing:
• Write about what interests you whether you’re an expert on it or not
• Don’t be afraid to fail
• Be responsive to your readers
• Even if you think nobody will read your post, write it
• Always ensure your voice shines through in your writing — this is what makes it special and appealing
译文：本人声明，个人英语水平有限，这篇文章是用有道翻译出来的，不保证绝对的合理、正确。请各位见谅！
有时人们和我谈论的文章，我已经写在了我的博客上。或者，他们希望我写帖子。在某种程度上在讨论中,我几乎总是问这个人,为什么他们不启动自己的博客或别人的？当我调查他们在技术主题有没有写文章时，似乎很少人对此抱有浓厚的兴趣！。
我母亲总是告诉我的人(和她的学生),每个人都有一个故事。她说在写作方面，你可能不会考虑到你要写别人喜欢的东西。就像软件开发人员编写软件时，是否会意识到用户存在,作家写故事时是否在意读者的存在。没有任何人或事物能说技术人员不能成为优秀的作家，激励他人学习和与他人分享他们的知识。
这篇文章的目的是鼓励技术人员喜欢写作,写作可以有效的,让人感觉舒适。我会回复我已经收到了关于为什么技术人员博客对他们不知道的知识或其他的。
我不认为我真的是什么专家。我不是一个我能想到的任何话题的权威人士。 我主要用这个反应,因为它是最关键的反驳。如果你不带走什么从这篇文章中,让它是这样的:你不需要成为一个专家一个主题来写。
在我的博客上，你通常可以看到这样的例子滚动在我的文章上。我认为自己是一个专家,也许两个主题,但我写了超过450的帖子在刚刚超过五年。我当然没有写这些我知道最好的一个或两个主题。
写你所知道的,不要害怕做一点研究成为权威。一个很好的例子,这是我的文章,题为“Kerberos为仇敌。“我几乎没有专业知识在Kerberos。事实上,我甚至不能为我配置正确RHCA考试!然而,我做了大量的研究,开始了解大部分的碎片组合在一起。其他许多人一样困惑,我决定把所有的知识对Kerberos组织成一篇博客帖子。正面和负面反馈卷,很明显,我的帖子教一些读者,激发了其他一些和愤怒。
一个伟大的方式领导到下一个反应:
如果我说的东西不是正确的?在整个互联网中我看起来像是个傻瓜!
我已去过某处或经历过某事。每个作家都无法避免错误和出现糟糕的事情，假设至少一次。在你犯错误时读者会打电话给你(有些做精致而其他不),这是你的责任来纠正你的帖子或正确的读者。我写文章有错误,我已经有点懒惰了，在我的文章里不时地漏洞百出。新闻作为我的中学老师，总是提醒我,最重要的部分：在你开始学习清洁之后。 简而言之:你会犯错误。只要你做了你的最大努力，减少和应对它们,你的读者应该原谅你的。
说到错误:
即使在命令提示符下，但我的拼写和语法依然是可怕的。我写的很烂。
这很容易解决。如果你一个人住的diy式的生活方式,拿起一份由斯特伦克和白色风格的元素。网上有免费的PDF版本或者你可以从你最近的记者那里借一本。无论你在何时何地,这本书的标点符号详细描述了应该和不应该的地方,如何构建句子和段落,以及如何正确地引用来源(真正重要的研究文章)。
拖拽在一个超长参考书的副本可能不是你愿意干的事。如果是这样的话,找一个你知道有本事写的人。通常可以在市场或企业沟通找到这样的人，在大多数大公司将你的帖子,还覆盖着红墨水准备修正(谢谢,加勒特!)。我甚至看到有些人在Fiverr谁会做低至5美元。
我将结束...
第二个最常见的反应:
我不知道我写的什么吗?如果我写一些简单的，真正的技术人员会认为我是新手吗?如果我写点东西疯狂的复杂,超过大多数人的头会痛吗? 我做了这两个。称职的大多数Linux系统管理员知道如何添加和删除iptables规则,他们会认为这很琐碎的工作。会惊讶你知道超过450个帖子的知识,我的帖子删除单个iptables规则是每月前五名的最多访问量的文章吗?这篇文章我获得每月刚刚超过11%的打赏。人们从中学习或许是因为不记得删除规则，又或者他们想要使用一个快速参考职务文件。不管怎样,对许多人来说这个职位是有价值的,即使我认为这是最简单的话题。
我们的结论和总结。记住这些东西。
如果写文章使你感到了气馁:
•写你感兴趣的不管你是专家还是业余
•不要害怕失败
•能够响应你的读者
•即使你认为没人会读你的文章,还是要写出来
•总是确保你的声音照耀在你的写作——这就是令其特殊和有吸引力的关键。
另一方面,坚持写一个完整的冗余与lv云托管配置完成的指南,从而,在DRBD MySQL,memcached,haproxy ldirectord。我认为这是有价值的知识,但它可能会跳过我的大多数读者的大脑。再一次,我错了。十大最多访问量的帖子，不断访问博客的帖子，和我可能得到更多的反馈通过评论、邮件和IRC职位比其他任何。再次,我想将大部分无用的陈述变成了一个真正会话的开始。
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