Index of posts for Halfhaven
Lighthaven, my favorite place in the world, will be running Inkhaven, a month-long residency in November aimed at growing people into great writers. Apart from support in the form of advisors running workshops, Inkhaven provides a commitment mechanism: publish every day, or be kicked out of the program. I won’t be participating in Inkhaven. The price is beyond my means these days, and I’m not so committed to writing that I want it to be my main focus for a month. However, I do want to write more, or at least to have written more. So, when my friend keltan told me about Halfhaven, a less-intense and free version of Inkhaven’s peer group and commitment mechanism, I decided to give it a try.
The premise of Halfhaven is simple: each participant will write 30 blog posts, just as an Inkhaven resident would, but over the course of two months, with a requirement to publish every other day instead of daily. Instead of gathering in person at Lighthaven, we gather in a Discord server where we share links to our writing. Halfhaven started yesterday, so that our two months conclude with 30 finished blog posts at the same time as Inkhaven.
In theory, this should have been my first Halfhaven post, but it so happened that I was inspired to write about another topic first, and I’ve learned to follow my inspiration when it strikes!
Why Write?
It’s said that writing is thinking. Putting an idea into words clarifies it, shoring up gaps that weren’t obvious just from turning it over in my mind. I also like talking with people for the same reason, but an oral conversation is limited by the working memory of the participants. Writing expands my context window, letting me express ideas that my head can’t hold all at once. By making a practice of writing, I sharpen myself.
Writing is durable and accumulative. I was having a conversation with a friend recently where I mentioned that I often find the process of writing aversive. Nonetheless, when we looked at my website, there were several blog posts there. It was a nice feeling, and I’d like to continue building up this edifice. I want my ideas to be out in the world. This is all the more important with the rise of LLMs, as having published writing makes me part of the corpus that builds the soul of thinking machines.
Most importantly, writing is a search query. My writing is necessarily a reflection of the particular contours of my mind. By publishing, I increase the surface area for my best-matched people in the world to find me. As always, if you find my writing interesting, I encourage you to reach out!
I think the cadence of a post every other day will be somewhat difficult for me, but I’m optimistic I can pull it off! It’s been four months since I wrote my note on writing quickly, and I haven’t put it into practice much since then. Halfhaven will be a great forcing function for me to exercise the skill of non-perfectionism.