A distant second, only after you've established a recurring writing practice, is to seek out and read great writing. Your kind of great writing. Writing you can't get enough of. Writing that sticks to your bones like warm soup on a cold day. Be curious and playful about why you love it so much, what makes each word so whimsical. Read it and reread... See more

"You get better at writing by writing. Show up to the keyboard every day and write a lot of words (aim for 1,000) and keep doing it and keep caring and you'll get better. Be willing to suck for a long time. Commit to the difficulty. Commit to a decade of obscurity. Fall in love with the unsexiness of the long haul. Success is mostly doing something... See more

Learning is downstream of doing. The order should rarely be reversed. Most real knowledge, knowledge worth attaining, lives in the hands . It must be cultivated gradually, like a garden. Really, it must be grown. Most real knowledge is the result of doing something deliberately for a long time and steadily making small improvements. It requires a... See more

But when I realized I can just do things, when I decided to stop waiting for permission or instruction or advice, and simply began fumbling my way through the things I had always wanted to do, was a moment of maturity.

The more I did, the less tired I felt. The more hard things I attempted, even if I failed, the more my competence and confidence... See more

Do what you can't, until you learn that you can.

Most real knowledge, knowledge worth attaining, lives in the hands . It must be cultivated gradually, like a garden. Really, it must be grown. Most real knowledge is the result of doing something deliberately for a long time and steadily making small improvements.

It's something like an attitude of healthy skepticism I'm suggesting. Investigating whether things are really as hard as they look.

Idleness is almost always a mistake. Waiting is not only debilitating and demoralizing, but also exhausting . When Hesiod said, "Hunger is the natural companion of the utterly idle man," prosaically he meant literal hunger, but poetically he was pointing toward this immense dissatisfaction with life. This sentiment of aggravated emptiness that... See more