Several Short Sentences About Writing

What do you notice? Whatever you notice. Behavior, thought, overheard words, light, resemblance, Emotion, totality, particularity, Whatever you find in the habitat of your perceptions, Anything, no matter how minute, Whether you’re working or reading or taking the subway. The pattern is particular to you, An element in what gets construed as “style

Imagine it this way: One by one, each sentence takes the stage. It says the very thing it comes into existence to say. Then it leaves the stage. It doesn’t help the next one up or the previous one down. It doesn’t wave to its friends in the audience Or pause to be acknowledged or applauded. It doesn’t talk about what it’s saying. It simply says its

You don’t have to write short sentences forever. Only until you find a compelling reason for a long sentence That’s as clear and direct as a short sentence. You’ll be tempted to say, “But short sentences sound so choppy.” Only a string of choppy sentences sounds choppy. Think about variation and rhythm, The rhythm created by two or three sentences

Learn to distrust words like “genius,” “inspiration,” “flow,” “natural,” and “organic” when you think about your work. (Don’t use them when you talk about it either.)

Learning to write begins anywhere, at any time in life.

Is it possible to practice noticing? I think so. But I also think it requires a suspension of yearning And a pause in the desire to be pouring something out of yourself. Noticing is about letting yourself out into the world, Rather than siphoning the world into you In order to transmute it into words. Practicing noticing will also help you learn mo

“And then one day.” You know exactly how those four words feel. You know exactly what they do. When you get lost in your writing, remember them. Don’t use them: think about the possibilities they contain. The ability to gather and redirect, To rise above the level of the prose and look around, As if you were standing in a crow’s nest Looking out ov

Start by learning to recognize what interests you. Most people have been taught that what they notice doesn’t matter, So they never learn how to notice, Not even what interests them. Or they assume that the world has been completely pre-noticed, Already sifted and sorted and categorized By everyone else, by people with real authority. And so they w

See which words the sentence can live without, No matter how inconspicuous they are. Every word is optional until it proves to be essential, Something you can only determine by removing words one by one And seeing what’s lost or gained.