What Creators and Innovators Can Learn from On Writing
Wei had written and rewritten the product description for his new app eleven times, each version thicker with words like "revolutionary," "next-generation," and "seamlessly integrated." He showed it to a friend outside the industry, who read it twice and said, "I still don't know what this does." Wei felt the sting of that, then looked again and saw she was right — the description was built to sound innovative rather than to explain anything. He deleted it and wrote one sentence about what the app actually did for a person on a Tuesday morning. It was less exciting to write. It was also the first version anyone had understood on the first read.
The whole book, compressed
This edition works through 4 core lessons — take them one at a time, not all at once.
What's different for your conditions
Tap whichever ones sound like you. Nothing here is sent or saved — it's just for your own noticing.
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The core lessons, applied to you
Strip your project descriptions down to honest, plain language
A creator describing a new product or project reaches for words like "revolutionary" and "seamless" to signal ambition, and the description ends up sounding like every other launch post instead of explaining what the thing actually does for the person reading it.
Write one sentence describing your project the way you'd explain it to a friend who knows nothing about your field. Use that sentence as the first line of your description, and cut every adjective elsewhere that doesn't add concrete information a reader could act on.
Protect a consistent block of time for writing about your work
A creator treats writing about the project — the description, the update post, the artist statement — as an afterthought squeezed in right before a launch, so it's rushed and generic compared to the care put into the work itself, undercutting a project that deserved better framing.
Set a fixed weekly block — even 20 minutes — dedicated only to writing about your work in progress: a short update, a note on what changed and why. Protect it the same way you protect studio or build time, so the writing habit builds alongside the project instead of trailing behind it.
Read other creators' descriptions and statements as ongoing education
A creator scrolls through other people's launch posts and portfolios constantly but only to compare outcomes — views, reactions — never studying why one description made them want to click and another made them scroll past, so their own writing never improves from all that exposure.
Collect five project descriptions or artist statements that made you want to learn more and five that didn't. Identify the specific sentence-level difference — a concrete detail, a plain verb, an honest admission — and apply it to your own next piece of writing.
The story behind your work is material, but craft decides if it lands
Why you built this, what personal problem or itch it grew out of, is often the most compelling part of your project's story. But that material only reaches a reader when it's told with specific, honest detail and real editing discipline, not when it's inflated into a founding myth that sounds more impressive than believable.
Protected writing time can feel like it steals from the actual making, and plain language can feel like it undersells work you know is genuinely new. Don't treat writing as separate from the work, and don't inflate the description to compensate for a modest amount of writing time. A short, honest, well-edited description written in a protected ten minutes usually communicates more than a longer, breathless one written in a rush.
Name one thing, honestly
If a stranger who knew nothing about your field read your current project description, could they tell you what it actually does?
Good. Now look back at the "Try this" line under whichever lesson feels most connected to what you just wrote, and treat that as this week's actual assignment — not all 4 at once.
The practices from this edition
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Run this for seven days
Collect five project descriptions or artist statements that made you want to learn more and five that didn't. Identify the specific sentence-level difference — a concrete detail, a plain verb, an honest admission — and apply it to your own next piece of writing.