I'd been thinking about my blog post on "Getting started with Emacs? Empty your cup. There was something that didn't quite feel right about the original draft.
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Since I'm also getting used to asking for help, I asked folks on Twitter to help me figure this out. @wobher suggested splitting it up into two approaches: diving in at the deep end, and wading in gradually. In an e-mail, Mike Hall suggested simplifying the post, sketching out what the post was trying to do and how that might be spread over several chunks.

Reflecting on the post some more, I realized that not only was Mike right that the post trying to do too much, but I also felt weird about the tone of the post. It didn't feel… sympathetic enough. I'd written it in response to someone's frustrated e-mail. But if I imagined myself in the same situation – annoyed with Emacs, tempted to switch back to a tool that I was more used to – I didn't feel like that post would help me either learn Emacs or feel better. In fact, it would probably feel worse. "You need to empty your cup" almost feels like "You're learning this the wrong way," and attacks put people on the defensive.

Part of this challenge, I think, is that I'm more used to encouraging people who respond like I do. When I'm faced with something I have a hard time figuring out, I tend to blame myself, and so I look for ways to get better. When I meet people who struggle with learning Emacs and who might be tempted to translate that into an "I'm just not good enough to learn this," I share what works for me: breaking it down into small chunks and learning those, building both skill and confidence at the same time. My cup is not full at the beginning, but I sometimes worry about it being too small.

I haven't quite figured out how to deal with people's frustration. I think there are times when Emacs is just not a good fit for someone, and that if they understand that, they might still be open to revisiting Emacs instead of writing it off entirely.

But I know a little bit of that frustration with one's slowness, so maybe that's how I can connect. After all, I have the same flaws.

So I revised the post, cutting out the distracting parts and adding a little identification. The current draft feels a little better now: less like a distracted hamster trying to cram ideas into its pouches, less like a white-bearded sensei handing down wisdom from a remote mountain. I have a slightly better grasp on the weird feeling when a post is trying to do too much, and that other weird feeling when a post creates too much distance.

If you have more suggestions for improving that post (or any of these other posts), please share them. Your perspective can point out something in my blind spot or help me clarify what I really mean. There's so much I have yet to learn about writing and sharing, and I hope you'll help me with your feedback!

(By the way, can anyone recommend a service for sharing drafts and revisions publicly so that people can see previous revisions and word-level differences with arbitrary commits? Sometimes I use Github's diff or git diff --color-words, but the matching isn't always correct. I can't figure out how to get Draftin.com to do this nicely. Maybe I'll just have to get used to writing one sentence per line, like I've seen some Org Mode users do. Or maybe it's time to use the one-Org-file-for-post pattern that other people do, so that's easier to preview and diff…)