Julia Evans on writing: 'Write for one person' (quote)

Simon Willison posted a quotation by Julia Evans on 15th June 2026 at 2:05 am. The quotation reads, "Instead, I picture a specific person and I just write for them. Often this person is 'me, but 3 years ago' or a good friend."

What was posted

The page collects a short quotation from Julia Evans and attributes it as a quotation collected by Simon Willison. The post timestamp is 15th June 2026 at 2:05 am, and the page explicitly states, "This is a quotation collected by Simon Willison, posted on 15th June 2026." The quoted guidance is concise: picture a specific person and write for them, with Evans adding that the imagined person is often "me, but 3 years ago" or a good friend.

Context on the page

The quotation appears on Simon Willison's weblog alongside a list of recent articles on the site. The page lists "Publishing WASM wheels to PyPI for use with Pyodide - 13th June 2026", "Claude Fable is relentlessly proactive - 11th June 2026", and "Initial impressions of Claude Fable 5 - 9th June 2026" as recent items. The page also shows taxonomy-like labels or counts: the words "writing" and "julia-evans" appear with the numbers "31" and "29" respectively on the page.

Those elements frame the quotation as part of an ongoing stream of short posts and links on the weblog, where Willison collects or posts brief items and related links alongside longer pieces dated in June 2026.

Why it matters

Evans's line compresses a common piece of craft advice into a single, actionable habit: choose a single imagined reader and orient every sentence toward them. That reduces abstract audience thinking and gives writers a concrete target. Framing the imagined reader as "me, but 3 years ago" or a good friend gives a repeatable, personal heuristic for tone, detail level, and assumed knowledge. In practice, this can help writers decide which background details to include and which technical shortcuts to take.

The placement of this quotation on a technical-minded weblog alongside recent posts about WASM, PyPI, and Claude Fable suggests the advice circulates among software and technical writers as well as general communicators.

What to watch

Watch Simon Willison's weblog for further collected quotations or links in June 2026, and look for any longer posts where Julia Evans might expand on this sentence-level habit. The site's recent-items list shows new entries on 13th, 11th and 9th June 2026, indicating additional nearby posts where the quotation sits.