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How to Begin
Read promiscuously. Imitate, copy, but become your own voice. Write about that which you want to know. Better still, write toward that which you don’t know. The best work comes from outside yourself. Only then will it reach within.
Colum McCann • Letters to a Young Writer
I recommend this to any creative person in any discipline. If you’re a painter and you can’t think of anything to paint, copy a landscape or a portrait by a painter you like. If you’re a writer and you feel like you’re not capable of writing something new, find a poem you like and type it out again. If you’re a chef and you’re drawing a blank in th
... See moreAhmir "Questlove Thompson • Creative Quest
I know a painting coach who tells her students to listen for resistance in the copying process. “Do you hear that?” she asks. “It’s the echo of your unique style.” Those moments highlight the second benefit of copying: it reveals your voice.
Ironically, the more we imitate others, the more we discover how we’re different.
David Perell • Daily Writing #27: Imitate, Then Innovate
Not just reading a lot, but paying attention to the way the sentences are put together, the clauses are joined, the way the sentences go to make up a paragraph. Exercises as boneheaded as you take a book you really like, you read a page of it three, four times, put it down, and then try to imitate it word for word so that you can feel your own musc
... See moreThe way to do a piece of writing is three or four times over, never once. For me, the hardest part comes first, getting something—anything—out in front of me. Sometimes in a nervous frenzy I just fling words as if I were flinging mud at a wall. Blurt out, heave out, babble out something—anything—as a first draft. With that, you have achieved a sort
... See moreJohn McPhee • Draft No. 4
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 of red wine, or from managing an in-house spider colony (this was Salvidore Dali’s process). No matter how you arrive, conscious or unc... See more