Kurt Vonnegut on picking a lane: Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style. I am not urging you to… Show more
Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about [italics mine]. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.
Kojo added
Vonnegut felt so strongly that passion about people and issues ought to be the prime mover for a writer that he would rather you err on the side of caring passionately vs. writing eloquently:
“Find a subject you care about.”
Ethan Anderson and added
It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.
Vonnegut: “What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.”
alex added
The point is, writing well, even an ordinary letter or a well-considered e-mail, demands the generosity of your time, effort, and thought. You have to care enough that it’s worth your energy, weighing that cost against the cost of not doing it.
Kojo and added
Vonnegut’s fifth item of advice is “Sound like yourself.”