fiction is made out of experience, your whole life from infancy on, everything you’ve thought and done and seen and read and dreamed. But experience isn’t something you go and get—it’s a gift, and the only prerequisite for receiving it is that you be open to it. A closed soul can have the most immense adventures, go through a civil war or a trip to... See more

But the essay as a literary form has long preceded the internet. So has the debate over the aesthetic metrics of a good essay. Merve Emre cites Virginia Woolf’s 1905 screed “The Decay of Essay Writing,” where Woolf bemoans the “amazing and unclothed egoism” of a new class of writers. “If one can set aside [Woolf’s] disdain, there is a larger point,... See more

E. B. White on writing for children (1969) This is it. https://t.co/a1Kj9TwfJN

if any artist tells you, “I am a camera,” or “I am a mirror,” distrust them instantly, they’re fooling you, pulling a fast one. Artists are people who are not at all interested in the facts—only in the truth. You get the facts from outside. The truth you get from inside.

Gornick, again: “Truth in a memoir is achieved not through a recital of actual events; it is achieved when the reader comes to believe that the writer is working hard to engage with the experience at hand.”

There are times I sit down to write this thing and all I’ve got is a spark of an idea. There’s nothing fiery in my belly waiting to get out. This is one such time. I was whining about it to my husband and he wisely said, “just write about all your half ideas.”

“Write from the scar, not the wound” the old saying goes. Share only from scar tissue once it’s all healed over and you’re strong enough to withstand any poking. A memoir is not a diary; it is not a big messy cake, it’s more like something that’s been moulded using those metal cookie cutter shapes. Selected, crafted, arranged for consumption.

Words are magic. Words are really magic. They add so much. You can take a TikTok video, and you think the TikTok video is the end in itself. You don’t need any gloss on that, but you absolutely do. It’s so much funnier if you can articulate what is embarrassing or weird or impressive about what that person is doing. That is a great hack.