George Saunders: What Writers Really Do When They Write
Editing is easier when you know the patterns_
When it comes to essay writing, the idea of “patterns over process,” is just as relevant.
Tootzi instilled a philosophy of “all that exists is the artifact that’s on the table.” It doesn’t matter if your ideas come from your mind, your heart, your soul, your belly button, the tops of mountains, a bottle ... See more
When it comes to essay writing, the idea of “patterns over process,” is just as relevant.
Tootzi instilled a philosophy of “all that exists is the artifact that’s on the table.” It doesn’t matter if your ideas come from your mind, your heart, your soul, your belly button, the tops of mountains, a bottle ... See more
Michael Dean • The Secret Architecture of Great Essays
Lately, when I’m stuck on a piece, I will print everything I’ve written and re-read it with a pair of scissors in hand. As I go, I will cut out the pieces that feel like they’re working: a phrase here, a sentence there, entire paragraphs if I’m lucky. Then I’ll lay out all the cut-out pieces on my desk and move them around, trying to find the right... See more
Mason Currey • Seek funny leaps
A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: From the Man Booker Prize-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Lincoln in the Bardo
George Saunders • 9 highlights
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From George Saunders, on nuance and embracing complexity:
... See morethe writer doesn't have to have a fixed firm idea, but has to be able to take the reader on a journey to remind her that the world is complicated. From the very beginning, I understood writing to be about some kind of moral or ethical imperative. Absent that, I'm not that interested in it, ac
”In my experience, here’s how essays form: You get all these bits of data that stick in your head… file drawers in your head. At a certain point you realize one of the drawers is now full, and you might have an essay.” Tim Kreider on the artist at midlife.
With sufficient care, that wheelbarrow full of things could become an entire system of meaning, saying truthful things about our world, some of which might have been impossible to say via a more conventionally realistic approach. That system would mean, not by the plausibility or acuity of its initial premise, but by the way it reacts to that premi
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