1. The writeup is called a node. If you already know that and know what the hell HTML is, skip this.
2. Some nodes have nothing written. Only a title. You can write something in one of them or start a new one.
3. After I write on my scratchpad (see the thing that says scratchpad in the upper right hand box?) I copy it to another scratchpad to put in hard links. (why copy? Well, if you want the writeup for anything else, you don't want to take the stupid hard links back out!)
4. A hard link is where you surround a word or words with the squared off parentheses (square brackets). That makes it light up.
5. Lighting it up isn't enough. Now go to the box ABOVE where you are writing that shows how the writeup will look and click on the hard links you've put in. Some will go right to a writeup. Some will go nowhere. Some will go to a list. If you pick cool stuff off the list you can hard link it by putting the title inside those square parentheses and then putting the vertical bar | between the title of the cool stuff and the word/phrase you are linking it to. Yes, this is a pain. That will teach you not to light up whole phrases, so there.
6. Now copy it again and post it.
7. Some people think you should soft link it now. Some don't. Watch them fight in the cat box! To soft link it, type words in the search box at the top of the screen. It will go to a writeup or a list or nothing. If it goes to a writeup and you click on search again, it will go back to your brilliant writeup and the soft link will appear at the bottom.
8. Now you are done. Sit back and wait for the votes! You've done it! You are brave and wonderful even when they nuke the damn thing.
9. Start again.
On my very first writeup I had the help of a god, so it has actual hard links. I did my second three years later, no god, and I found E2 Help mostly incomprehensible. So I winged it. My initial hard links suck and I had no idea what a soft link was. Never mind, I'm still here.
GhettoAardvark says re How to Post a Writeup: Noding for Poets (how-to): re: step 5: If you click on that teeny little link near the bottom of the writeup that says "link view", it'll actually /tell/ you which links go to a node and which ones don't. Speeds things up greatly.