28 slightly rude notes on writing

making art is painful because it forces the mind to do something it’s not meant to do

Lots of people worry that AI will replace human writers. But I know something the computer doesn’t know, which is what it feels like inside my head. There is no text, no .jpg, no .csv that contains this information, because it is ineffable. My job is to carve off a sliver of the ineffable, and to eff it.

(William Wordsworth referred to this as “wide... See more

Other emotions—anger, fear, contentment—are deep enough to snorkel in, and if you keep swimming around in them, you’ll find all sorts of bizarre creatures that dwell in the depths and demand description. Bitterness, on the other hand, is three inches of brackish water. Nothing lives in it. You can stand in it and see the bottom.

The poet Paul Valéry said that, for every poem you write, God gives you one line, and you supply the rest.2 Amy Lowell, another poet, described those in-between lines, the ones you provide, as “putty”. You get no credit for God’s lines; all artistry is in the puttying.

loss for words

I probably sound like one of those guys who is always like, “AI will never do this , or I’ll eat my hat!!” and then he has to get his stomach pumped because it’s full of hats.

The internet is full of smart people writing beautiful prose about how bad everything is, how it all sucks, how it’s embarrassing to like anything, how anything that appears good is, in fact, secretly bad. I find this confusing and tragic

Something moved them, irked them, inspired them, possessed them, and then electricity shot everywhere in their brain and then—crucially—they laid fingers on keys and put that electricity inside the computer. Writing is a costly signal of caring about something. Good writing, in fact, might be a sign of pathological caring.

The poet Paul Valéry said that, for every poem you write, God gives you one line, and you supply the rest.2 Amy Lowell, another poet, described those in-between lines, the ones you provide, as “putty”. You get no credit for God’s lines; all artistry is in the puttying.