4 Creating your working draft

Once you have a compelling topic idea and understand what’s required for a blog post to stand out, it’s time to start writing! In this chapter, you will learn how to crank out a working draft, step-by-step. Consider this working draft your MVP (minimum viable product). As with any MVP, you want to focus on getting the core components in place so your work can be reviewed and improved. In this case, that means you need to capture your thoughts in writing as rapidly as reasonable, given your experience and goals. From there, you can step back, take a look, and address any major omissions or oversights. Once all the basics are in place, you can shift focus to criticizing and optimizing what you’ve captured. That’s covered in chapter 5.

Throughout this part of the book, we’ll provide concrete examples by planning, writing, and optimizing a fake blog post. The topic is using the Zig language to implement a shiny new database migration tool.

4.1 Focus and challenges

4.2 Essential prep

4.2.1 Getting a feel for how others approach the topic

4.2.2 Getting a feel for what the site publishes

4.2.3 Defining your goal

4.3 Optional warmup

4.3.1 Outlining

4.3.2 Mindmapping

4.3.3 Working from a model article

4.3.4 Copying/pasting your notes

4.4 Writing time

4.4.1 Getting words on the page

4.4.2 Eliminating blockers

4.5 PretendPiotr’s first attempt at the example blog post

4.5.1 Zig helped us migrate our data efficiently

4.6 Filling in gaps

4.6.1 Did you actually cover what you intended to cover?

4.6.2 What else should you cover?

4.6.3 What’s preventing it from being viable?

4.7 If you do nothing else