I have absurd requirements when it comes to writing. A big part of this comes from the fact that I’ve been developing software for over a decade. I have certain habits, tools, and expectations for how my work should proceed. Let’s detail out my… issues.

I’ve been somewhat astounded by just how similar writing is to software development ¹. This is probably a self fulfilling prophecy. I’ve been developing software for years, so of course I’d take the skills I learned there and apply it to my writing.

So perhaps I should rephrase: I’m amazed at how well my own personal principles of software development have translated into writing.

It seems to me that many of the issues so many writers have ² could be mitigated by approaches developed for writing software. There’s a lot of “principles” or approaches I could cover, but I’d like to focus on one: iteration.

I first started writing a couple of years ago. I did it on a whim. I was tired of reading the same thing and wanted to try my hand at writing something I’d like.

Unlike most people (I think), I don’t always learn first what I need to do before I do it. I often try to learn the absolute minimum, then tackle the largest project I can with what I know. I then look back and ask myself, “What did I do wrong?” So long as I can figure out at least a little bit of what went wrong and why, I can then go back and fix those things.

On the plus side, I’m not the kind of person who finds themselves stuck with writer’s block, or writer’s paralysis, or the ever-learning but never-doing cycle. I write, then I edit.