Matter

Putting ideas into words is a severe test. The first words you choose are usually wrong; you have to rewrite sentences over and over to get them exactly right. And your ideas won't just be imprecise, but incomplete too. Half the ideas that end up in an essay will be ones you thought of while you were writing it. Indeed, that's why I write them.

More generally, I mostly don’t care about the aesthetics of writing, which are almost entirely for the benefit of readers. This includes the aesthetics of brevity and structure (the architecture as opposed to the brick-by-brick part). Sometimes I enjoy the challenge of maximal tightening, compressing, re-ordering for better flow, shortening, and si

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Step 1

Pick a topic

Step 2

Read and/or discuss with others (a bit)

Step 3

Explain and defend my current, incredibly premature hypothesis, in writing (or conversation)

Step 4

Find and list weaknesses in my case

Step 5

Pick a subquestion and do more reading/discussing

Step 6

Revise my claim / switch sides

Step 7

Repeat steps 3-6 a bunch

Step 8

Get fe... See more

My writing process, in a nutshell:

1. Stumble upon a sentence in the wild or get invited to speak— the spark.


2. Create a Sublime collection around that idea (here is my private collection).


3. Collect things obliquely related to that idea.


4. Visualize the chaos in Sublime Canvas to tidy the mental clutter (it takes one click to convert a collection into a Canvas

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