How we write and edit in Lex (Live Session)
How, then, to proceed? Skipping over, for the moment, the first draft, assuming some existing text to work with, my method is this: I imagine a meter mounted in my forehead, with a P on this side (“Positive”) and an N on that side (“Negative”). I try to read what I’ve written the way a first-time reader might (“without hope and without despair”). W
... See moreGeorge Saunders • A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: From the Man Booker Prize-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Lincoln in the Bardo
Creativity has to start somewhere, and we are true believers in the power of bracing, candid feedback and the iterative process—reworking, reworking, and reworking again, until a flawed story finds its throughline or a hollow character finds its soul.
Amy Whitaker • Art Thinking: How to Carve Out Creative Space in a World of Schedules, Budgets, and Bosses
So we might understand revision as a way of practicing relationship; seeing what, when we do it, improves the relationship between ourselves and the reader. What makes it more intense, direct, and honest?
George Saunders • A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: From the Man Booker Prize-winning, New York Times-bestselling author of Lincoln in the Bardo
Editing[*] is deliberating—choosing a word or a thought, dismissing or advancing; it comes up often in this book as a way to describe artistic decision-making. And in my journalism career, editing had served me well. My temperament was well suited to it. I always had trouble writing—I was too self-conscious (you can see a pattern). And I couldn’t b
... See moreAdam Moss • The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing
If you’re going to do high-level creative work, you have to accept the messiness of your initial creations, knowing that excellence is born from the sisters of patience and iteration.
The second you start condemning young and fragile ideas, you’re toast.
1:56:32 – writing as thinking and re-writing as re-thinking
Tiago Forte • Tiago Forte: The Future of Education
