The big theme of my working life (so far) has been programming, and yesterday I published a short list of things I’ve learnt about programming. The second (smaller) theme has been writing. Since 1996, when my first piece of writing was published in The Guardian, I’ve written quite a number of articles for newspapers and magazines (including a recent 3,000 word special on Alan Turing for New Scientist) and a book.
Almost everything I’ve written is non-fiction (except my parody startup CEO Brad Bradstone), so my thoughts are about that sort of writing. I have nothing useful to say about writing fiction.
Here are a few things I’ve learnt about writing. I hope you’ll find them useful, as I think writing is a vital skill for almost everyone because good writing is simply good communicating and good communicating matters enormously in any job.