The thing about writing is that you can't really sit down and say "and now I'll write a good thing" the way you can with most work. Instead you have to just tend your state: read good stuff, take notes, have conversations, and wait nervously for piece of writing to arrive.

I feel like I say this to a lot of people, especially aspiring fiction writers. In my experience, it is really important to do two things.

One: You have to train yourself to notice things. It's not 100% natural at first – it certainly wasn’t for me – but raising those antennae is a very worthwhile thing to do. And it snowballs: once I got started ta... See more