Why You Should Start Writing About Flutter
By: Lew C
Tags: Personal Development, Writing, Encouragement, Opinion, Technical Writer

Why You Should Start Writing About Flutter

There’s never been a better time

Photo by Art Lasovsky on Unsplash

You’re reading the title, and you think to yourself “I’m not a writer”. You’re a software developer, surrounded by screens and computers. Putting pen to paper, explaining to other people how to make software isn’t your speed at all and it’s not something you’re looking to get in to. I want you to know that, on a personal level, I hear you. I was exactly the same a year ago — the concept of writing a technical article repulsed me and actually made me worry. But if you’re even the slightest bit interested, and if you have some experience in Flutter, then it’s time to give it a go.

But of course, why? Why would you consider writing about Flutter? I believe that we are in a very unique time in history, where communal knowledge about Flutter is at an all-time low, and demand is at an all-time high. The reason for this is because of the comparative newness of Flutter, and Dart. Combine this with the incredible ingress of developers that Flutter is experiencing, and there is a huge need for tutorials or articles about how to use the framework. Even topics traditionally considered boring or widespread knowledge need to be written. To demonstrate this point, let’s look at how many stars the Flutter repository has had over time:

Now you can probably only extrapolate so much from how many stars a repository has on GitHub, and I get that, but this highlights how many developers are coming to Flutter, and how many people need well written articles to show them how to accomplish various tasks.

Early last year, I began experimenting with Flutter. Now this isn’t really a technical article, so I won’t go into detail, but suffice to say it was something that I really enjoyed using. After a little while I started using an online service to compile my solutions for me, when I noticed that the same company was looking for “Technical Writers” and had put out a call on Facebook for them.

To me, a “Technical Writer” meant something specific. Normally, these are the people who write very detailed documentation for software or hardware, things like manuals. I knew I didn’t have the attention span for that, and it would be hard to be passionate about. But still, I thought about contacting them to see if they would want other types of articles. Initially, I held off. As I list the reasons why I did this below, think about if any of these points hit close to home for you.

I didn’t think I had anything of interest to share

I felt like there was a glut of writers, and good content out there, without me adding to the pool. What topics I knew about, I didn’t really think I knew enough about them to actually write about them. I’d never been to university, or held a certification like Microsoft MVP, or completed any of the things I typically associate with knowledge.

I wasn’t confident in my ability to explain, and to be understood

I equated writing articles to something like trying to give tech support over the phone. No matter how much I broke a concept down or tried to simplify it, I couldn’t be sure that the person I was assisting (or, in this case, the person reading my article) would get it. How could I accurately depict something as complicated as software development when I still felt like I had so much to learn?

I was worried about misguiding readers

I’ve read my fair share of tutorials online that straight up don’t work. Sure, some things go out of date, but sometimes its clear that the instructions on hand would have never worked, and then it’s just a waste of everybody’s time. If someone were to read my tutorials or guides, and wind up even more lost, that would be really bad. My worst nightmare would be to further impede someone's progress as a software developer, and I couldn’t know for sure that absolutely everyone would understand what I was writing about.

First contact

Over the next few days, I thought it over. I figured that asking a question about whether they needed any more writers didn’t commit me to anything, and I could still easily pull out if something came up. In my case, they did need new writers. I picked a topic that I was passionate about, and just wrote my opinions on it. You can still view the very first article I wrote here. This article was received well, and they wanted me to write about other topics, but largely, I controlled what I wrote about and when. These became technical pieces, explaining how to do accomplish something in a certain programming language or framework.

Originally, I would submit my articles for publishing, and then wait about a week, and then submit them to other places and publications. I used these articles to sign up for various publications on Medium itself (like Flutter Community and Better Programming), as proof of my work. I have to say, the outcomes of this were pretty good. As a result of writing for a company with a technical background, my articles were from a purely technical perspective. I would spend a lot of time writing, researching, and taking pictures for these articles, so everybody could understand them. But was it only my technical articles that were worth something?

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

But what about my opinions?

One day, I wondered about writing an article just for Flutter Community. This would be my first article that I hadn’t created for someone else, and then cross-posted on Medium. Writing an article about anything is a time investment — you have to sit down, write the article, edit it, read it, and repeat that process like five times (the article I wrote is here). My opinions, like anyone's, are great and all, but everyone has an opinion. Would anyone who pays for Medium read how I felt about something? As it turns out, yes, they would.

Now, I’m sure there are people out there that stare at thousands of hours of reading time while sipping their Dom Perignon on the deck of the yacht they bought entirely with their income from writing articles, but for me, this number was huge. It also included some key takeaways for me:

Technical articles are important, but so are your opinions

My next most popular article (here), in which people could actually learn something, hardly even hit a quarter of the popularity of my Flutter Desktop article. Both articles were posted to Flutter Community, so people coming there could choose to learn something, or read my opinions. Three out of four times, they chose to read my opinions. People need to know how to use the framework, but they’re also interested in where people think that framework is going in the future, and generally how they feel about the framework.

You can be flexible when it comes to your opinions

Writing a technical article about a topic, like a tutorial or guide, kind of exists in a binary state. Either you are right about what you are talking about and everyone can follow along, or you are wrong, and nobody can make what you are writing about work. There’s an element of stress to structuring your documents correctly, taking the right pictures, filling people in on the background of your article just enough in cutaways, but not too much so that your article becomes unduly massive. Opinion articles, you are proposing a theory and then using your anecdotal experiences and feelings to try to prove that theory, and guiding the reader through that journey.

As you could perhaps imagine, it’s a bit easier to write an article about something you are passionate about and comes to you easily, as opposed to writing a technical article that must be backed up by the correct sources and provide the right information. You can be wrong about how to achieve a technical task, but you can’t be wrong about your opinions. Because they’re your opinions, and you’re allowed to have them 😉. When “how you feel” harmonises with the greater populace, that’s when you have a great article on your hands.

It’s possible to get an audience

There is an incredible amount of content available online for anyone who wants to read about a certain topic. But your voice could still be seen as unique. Like I said at the start of this article, this time last year, I hadn’t written a single article for anyone. If you want to get in to it (and you should try!), here’s an easy way to get started over the next six months or so:

Write an article

What do you feel like you are particularly good at? Is it the UI in Flutter? Is it streams and sinks? Whatever it is, write about the thing you find most fascinating and interesting. It’s definitely easier said than done. And there’s all the crushing concern that goes along with it, concern that you’re not good enough to be writing articles, that nobody will read it, that you’re not adding a meaningful twist on anything that’s not out there already. But you’re poorly suited to make these judgements — after all, you’re not the audience for your articles. Human beings on the internet are, each with their own interests! And if they don’t like what you read, they just won’t read it. You literally have nothing to lose by writing an article, except for a couple of hours. At this stage, you can also set up a website and post the article to your blog there. This comes in handy if you are trying to gain freelance work as a writer, as you can easily provide people a link to your work so they can review it and see if they like your writing style and ability.

See if people who are looking for writers are interested in your articles

In my case, the topic I was interested in was Flutter, and I found a company who wanted articles on that particular topic. I used my website with the article on it so show how I could write, and then I wrote articles about the topics they were interested in. Companies love fresh content for their blogs, it makes people trust what they have to say, and it also helps their SEO considerably as their blog has new content a lot of the time. Try searching Facebook and Twitter for people putting the call out for writers for a specific topic. Engage with these people, ask if they are still looking, and if they are, provide your article as a sample of what you can write about.

Listen to what they have to say

When someone tells you that your article needs improving, or that certain areas need improving in it, there are two reactions:

Surmise that you are a terrible writer and shouldn’t be allowed to write any more than reviews for breakfast cereal Accept the feedback, treat the comments like free mentoring, and make the suggested changes

It’s easy, and probably almost the default, to roll with the first option. But improving what you write is an important part of the feedback loop, and through it, you will become a better writer. Be grateful for this process! It takes someone on the other end time and mental energy to review what you have written, and to provide feedback. Challenging them on why your article is “right” and why they are wrong is almost always the incorrect course of action. Instead, try to find a way to incorporate their feedback. The same is true of submitting an article to a Medium publication — you have nothing to gain by getting into an argument with the person reviewing your article for acceptance into their publication. Some poor soul is reading probably tens of articles each day and taking time out of their day, to give you feedback on whether they will accept it or not. You should definitely respect their time as well.

Have your article get published

When your article is good enough quality (which might take some back and forth), hopefully the recipient company will publish it to their blog. That’s what happened for me, and the good people over at Codemagic. This is an important first step in the process, as it means that your content is of sufficient quality to get published somewhere. If you get to this point, excellent work! You’ve overcome the initial barrier of writing and are on your way.

Use your article to get accepted as a writer in a publication

Because your article has already been proof read by yourself and the people you originally wrote it for, you just use that same high-quality article to get accepted as a writer to a publication on Medium. This part takes time. Allow about a week or two for someone to review your story, and (hopefully!) accept you into the publication. If you’re not accepted, that’s okay, see if you can clarify your article or improve the quality any, and then resubmit it.

Think of some more interesting topics to write about

If you think of some more interesting topics to write about, keep a track record of these topics on something like Google Keep or even just whatever note taking app you have. Then, try to write a few more articles, submit them for review, and then afterwards submit those articles to a variety of Medium publications (in my case, it was Flutter Community, Better Programming and The Startup). Having access to a variety of publications widens your audience significantly, and it’s important to have as broad an audience as you can manage.

Along the way, engage with people who comment on your articles

As people comment on your articles, be sure to reply to their comments. This will increase engagement and net you more followers, as people know that you will engage with them if they leave you a comment. This also has the added benefit of providing some snapshots on what people are interested in learning about, or hearing you write about. This can drive your articles towards writing about things that people actually want to read about, instead of what you think they want to read about.

Now, with your writing experience, write some articles and submit them to the relevant publications

How much you want to write, and what you want to write about, is completely up to you. But throughout this process, you’ve honed your writing skills, and you’ve probably actually made something that people would like to read. Whereas something like an opinion piece may not appeal to a software development company, you can use your writing talent to write an opinion piece, and then publish that to one of your publications. The quality of your content will be judged by how much time people spend reading the articles and the feedback you get, so you can always tune your writing up as time goes on (based on the feedback you receive).

There’s never been a better time

My initial concerns about not having anything interesting to share, about not being good enough at explaining, and potentially even misguiding readers went completely unfulfilled. Instead, I wound up with cool side-gig writing for an online company, and also a very small following on Medium itself. Funny how you never worry about what good could come out of a situation, only the bad, hey? 😉

It’s time to start thinking about what you would like to write about, thinking about how you would structure your article, and to finally publish something great. There’s never been a better time to do this — 20 years ago you would have to get your articles physically published in the newspaper or book (and 20 years from now, maybe all the articles will be written by AI? Who knows 🤖). So find someone who wants your content and try to write some articles. I can’t wait to see what you’ll make!

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