If you break down the Chinese character for speech (言), it is said to mean: think twice (二) with your head (亠), then let it out through your mouth (口). I think writing should be handled as carefully as speech. If my wrong knowledge spreads, it can harm many people, and correcting it is even harder. So writing has always felt like a burden to me.
Gerald Weinberg’s book on writing introduces something called the “fieldstone method.” It’s a technique that works like building the fieldstone walls you see along the roadside: when you find a suitable stone, you sort it, shape it, and stack it. But a stone that is only piled up will weather away someday. In other words, no matter how good an inspiration or realization is, it disappears if you don’t write it down.
Recently I made a good friend I can talk with about development. From simple topics to ones that are hard to bring up carelessly, we talked freely and I enjoyed it, but it felt like a pity that the contents of our conversations just flowed away and vanished. I felt that the realizations from our conversations and debates were unrefined fieldstones, and that they weathered as time passed.
While I was thinking about what to do, another friend suggested that writing short posts on social media might work. I often get inspiration from people who share good knowledge on social media. I have hardly ever left short opinions on social media, so it feels awkward, but I think I should stack the fieldstones into the wall before they weather away.
