When Writing, Look at What You Are Trying to Describe More Than at Your Words
Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. Attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. Stay eager. ― Susan Sontag
open.substack.com
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:
- 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.
- Another way to phrase it: the best w
Celine Nguyen on Substack
Write how you speak. Record yourself talking about a topic and then transcribe the recording. Pay close attention to the rhythm of your natural sentences, versus the rhythms you try to use when writing to “sound” more professional in your writing.
Nicolas Cole • The Art and Business of Online Writing: How to Beat the Game of Capturing and Keeping Attention
In Bird by Bird, the novelist Anne Lamott elegantly captures this rhythm of creation. “You find yourself back at the desk, staring blankly at the pages you filled yesterday. And there on page four is a paragraph with all sorts of life in it, smells and sounds and voices and colors,” she writes. “You don’t care about those first three pages; those y
... See moreCal Newport • Slow Productivity: The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
Taste requires originality. It invokes an aspirational authenticity. Writer George Saunders calls this “achieving the iconic space,” and it’s what he’s after when he meets his creative writing students. “They arrive already wonderful. What we try to do over the next three years is help them achieve what I call their “iconic space” — the place from ... See more