Speaking from personal experience, however, it feels clear that for our brains, the act of reading and reflecting on a book is not all that different from the act of writing one. In both cases, we are seeking out novel connections, combining existing concepts to produce new ones.

My impulse is to say I don’t mind whether my ideas are original, but that’s not exactly true. I don’t want my writing to feel redundant or derivative of popular ideas that have been circulating forever, but to me that’s less about having wholly original thoughts and more about being in conversation with the world around me. Taken too literally, thi... See more

In this mode, I found, I had stronger opinions than when I was trying to be Hemingway. If something wasn’t working, I knew what to do about it, immediately and instinctually, in the form of an impulse (“Oh, that might be cool”), whereas before I’d been rationally deciding, in stiff obeisance to what I thought a story should, or must, do. This was a

... See more