I Give the Worst Writing Advice in the World

I talked to a friend who wants to start a blog and wanted some advice on that—how to find her voice and so on. A few random thoughts:

1. It is the stuff about you that is odd that is interesting. So, don’t think to much about how you are supposed to do it, or what the genre convetions are. Just try to amuse yourself.


2. Another way to phrase it: the best w

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I like thinking small. I like thinking of my reader as an individual.

And even if I did this out of sheer stubbornness at first, I’ve come to think this is exactly the strategy for creatives in the current moment.

There are now so many tools for people who want to bypass the system. Almost none of them existed when I started my lonely path as a one-p... See more

When Emerson wrote, “To be great is to be misunderstood,” he was not focused on developing a blockbuster, nor was he trying to appeal to the masses. But he was speaking a lot of truth.

Sometimes you’ll be ahead of your time or the joke won’t land or the recipient of your email won’t give you the time of day. Sometimes you’ll be the runner up. Someti... See more

What most successful Substacks offer to subscribers is less a series of discrete and self-supporting pieces of writing--or, for that matter, a specific and tightly delimited subject or concept--and more a particular attitude or perspective, a set of passions and interests, and even an ongoing process of “thinking through,” to which subscribers are ... See more

To uncover interesting ideas, continuously make yournext point whatever interests you most. Skip everything that bores you.

When something bores you, it probably bores your readers too. And if something entertains you, it probably entertains them too. You're a proxy for your die-hard readers.

That’s the irony of self-indulgent writing: writing for y... See more