Writing is Composable

Today Fred wrote a post about how writing is a conversation. There are some incredible gems in it:

What I have learned from writing online regularly for over twenty years is that writing online is a conversation.

What I mean by that is that you are not trying to publish complete ideas. You are engaging in a conversation with the world and you are a participant in that... 

So to everyone out there who is struggling to polish their posts and make them perfect before hitting publish, I say "don't bother". Think about writing online like being at a cocktail party or a dinner. Think of it like a conversation starter or a witty reply that takes the conversation to the next level. Because that's what writing online is. A conversation.

I also didn't know that the term “freemium” emerged from a conversation on his blog. 🤯

I like the description of writing as a conversation. And one of the great things about it is that the more you do it the better conversationalist you become. One of the reasons is because writing is composable, and it has compounding effects. I've been saying this in my head for years, and it's time to get it on the page.

In software development, and especially in crypto, composability refers to the idea that pieces of code and functionality can be picked up, reused, and recombined ad infinitum (here’s a great piece on composability by Linda Xie). Writing is the same. Every idea and post becomes a Lego block that’s part of your toolkit, forever available to be assembled however and whenever you want. In a way, each post you write is a powerful primitive.

Over time I’ve found myself linking to my own ideas more and more. That’s because they’re readily accessible, and the ideas they represent are now part of my vocabulary. As you write more, these posts can be rearranged in different ways. They provide a reconfigurable foundation for new ideas to emerge, and in that sense, they continuously build on top of one another. This makes the next new incremental post or idea easier to flow out of you and the process of assembling thoughts more fluid.

Composability is powerful, and it's also a cheat code for getting thoughts and ideas out into the world.