I promised to explain a bit the super-writing idea.
During my PhD I had a class on scientific writing. During the class the professor was focused on various ways of speeding up word processors and blind typing, but some of the lectures were actually useful. He explained that you write the document once, but hundreds of people need to read it. So your goal is to make their effort smaller and their experience better. For example, they express to get the data in the same format, so just format the data accordingly.
This idea surfaced again and again, when I had to write elevator pitch or patent disclosure, licensing contract or presentation for my peers. You do not get to invent templates unless you are a luminary. First of all you learn which templates are used in your field, and then you fill these templates in from your associations chains/marker links.
The most useful templates for me are:
- Causal: if this then that
- List: the reasons for are ten-fold
- Example: this are examples before and after and this is how I do it
- Personal: I remember that, and so I learnt
- Authority: in this article something is mentioned, what do we think about it
- Statistics: this is the distribution of something, no let us raise hypothesis of what could cause it
Obviously the list of useful templates is professionally biased and highly personalized.
Now you can fill these templates with information. But you already have all the information conveniently encoded in your head in form of hyperlinks, or linked lists or fantastic landscapes or other visualizations. Placing the information within the templates is like fitting pieces of puzzle: it is a bit tricky to get the parts interlock, but once you start going the progress is fast.
This is the basic idea behind speed-writing. But to really good in it, there are several technical things to learn. I am not that good as a writer [no bestsellers yet], but I will occasionally mention the tips of more accomplished writers in this blog.
