Opinionated Advice on Doing Inkhaven Good
I went to Inkhaven last November, here's my approximately 37,000 word post about it. In case you don't want to scroll through that, though, here's some advice I'd give to Jenn-shaped entities in later cohorts.
Social
- You will be surrounded by smart, thoughtful, writerly people. Your primary goal should be taking advantage of this. Try to read many posts from your peers, so you can talk to them about their writing. Then go and talk to them about the words they wrote.
- Strongly recommend setting a deadline of 10 PM for your publications, so you have the last two hours of the day to read from the firehose of publications, and talk to people.
- Look, you have (slightly crappier access to) blog post writing at home! You do not have the ability to bother other people, in person, about the words they wrote in the past 48 hours while they are trapped in a writer's retreat with you.
- If someone else writes a post that excites you, consider doing the following:
- Write a post in response. Your response could be a riff/extension, a disagreement, or a secret third thing.
- Ask them to collaborate on a post with you
- Ask them to talk to you about it
Ask them to make out with you about it
- During your stay, consider running events, or making art, or going on adventures, or other things you can then write about.
- In order to do all of the above, you must have slack. Build slack by having a few posts ready to go at any time - it doesn't mean you necessarily need to have them written down; if there's a post rattling in your head that you're like "yeah I can bang this out in an hour" about, that's good. As long as you're not miscalibrated about the amount of time it takes.
Writing
- Have a list of posts you want to write
- Think about all the kinds of posts you want to write (diary entries, factual reports, standup routines, lw-type sequences etc) and have a few of each on hand, bc you will want to write different kinds of things from one day to the next
- Keep adding to your list during your stay. It's not unusual to walk out of Inkhaven with a longer to-write list than the one you had coming in
- Think about form, in addition to content. Pen a post that is a big joke.
- Do not expect to finish more than like 3 effortposts during your stay.
- You can certainly work on more than 3 effortposts (I made significant progress in and got useful feedback on 2-3 additional drafts that I didn't publish in November), but one simply cannot lock in enough to pump out effortposts regularly. Even one a week is ambitious imo.
- Many residents and advisors expected to write more effortposts than they ended up managing to, update accordingly.
- Obviously, work on as many effortposts as you can. But also if you come in with a to-write list that is 20 effortposts, that will not help you on days when your brain needs a break and you just need to get something out quick.
- Accordingly, your list of posts that you want to write should have many short, simple pieces
- e.g. tales from your life, themed linkposts, a list of your favourite books/movies/video games and why you like each one, a point you keep explaining to people
- It may be more useful to think about Inkhaven as a way to closely observe and then change your relationship with writing (and thinking), rather than thinking about it as a bootcamp for pumping out words.
- Experiment with different kinds of writing.
- Have fun with your writing.
- Pay attention to the kinds of writing that you enjoy working on.
Advisors
- Try to work on more than one piece a day so you have the slack necessary to take full advantage of the advisors, who may take more than a day to get back to you with feedback on your draft.
- If there is an advisor you like the writing of, consider writing a piece specifically for them to review (i.e. one that you think they will particularly like and/or have unusually useful things to say about) to get particularly rich feedback
- There's no law against sending a half dozen advisors the same draft.
Misc
- A Claude project with all of your extant good posts in the project files will give you much more useful advice than talking to a bald llm.
- idk why "bald" was the word that came to mind. You know what I mean.
- There will likely be a sad dearth of spicy food on campus. Fix this by getting the incredibly spicy fish soup at Easterly (2323 Shattuck Ave). Alternatively go to Zhangliang malatang which is 2 blocks north of that, but only go there for lunch because it's packed during dinnertime.
- Also consider making a pilgrimage out to Outta Sight Pizza in SF for really really good NY-style pizza.
- Stay up inadvisably late to have conversations with other people, at least some of the days.
- Write for yourself. Avoid looking at analytics.
Other People's Opinions
Some people are not Jenn-shaped, and maybe advice/reflections from other people would be more useful for them. Around one billion retrospectives were written, here are some that focus more on the nuts and bolts of getting words out regularly:
- So you want to go to next year's Inkhaven - Amanda (resident)
- What I Learned Writing a Blog Post Every Day - Rob Miles (resident)
- Inkhaven Retrospective - Abram Demski (resident)
- Writing in public is still underrated - Daniel Paleka (resident)
- Why people like your quick bullshit takes better than your high-effort posts - Eukaryote (advisor)
- Contra Jenn on How to Do Inkhaven Good - Mingyuan (resident)
- Effortscaffolding: a Guide - slime mold time mold (advisor)
Some posts I like from the greater blogosphere:
- why you should start a blog right now - Guzey
- Advice on writing - Devon Zuegel (h/t Daniel Paleka)