becoming a better writer

Do Your Homework

“I might print out like 100 articles from LexisNexis,” says Attica Locke , who has written a series of novels set in Texas. “As I read them, I began to understand what matters to this community, what’s interesting about this community, what has been a problem in this community, and somehow the crime that this thing is going to be c... See more

13 Mystery-Writing Tricks Used by Acclaimed Novelists

Have killer voice. How do you develop killer voice? Be confident. How do you develop confidence? Read oodles and write oodles more. If you’re sending a “list newsletter” you better have one hell of a point of view because, well, there are oodles-upon-oodles of list newsletters out there. Generally, like with much good writing, the magic for readers

On Being a Good Newsletterer

I have come to the conviction that if you cannot translate your thoughts into uneducated language, then your thoughts were confused. Power to translate is the test of having really understood one's own meaning.

—C.S. Lewis

“I wish I could observe life like Maggie Nelson,” I said to my manager.

“You can,” he replied. “I think reading literature makes one much more attentive. I go from ‘writing op-eds about who is good and who is bad’ to ‘writing vignettes about what's amusing, unusual, or thematically resonant’ in my head. It's like, ‘What genre do I want my internal ... See more

Jasmine Sun • 🌻 Audience of One

If you’re a young woman who wants to write fiction, it’s useful to read zeitgeist-y contemporary writers like Sally Rooney, Ottessa Moshfegh, Elena Ferrante, and Mary Gaitskill—but you’d be missing a great deal by not reading Clarice Lispector and Edith Wharton.

Celine Nguyen • Everything I Read in July 2024

When All Else Fails, Go to the Movies

“It’s what I call the Don Draper Principle,” says Abbott, “because he always did that on Mad Men . I tend to see something, usually horror, something that completely demands my attention and is very big and spectacle-oriented, because it can knock me out of what I’m thinking about in a good way. Or sometimes it... See more

13 Mystery-Writing Tricks Used by Acclaimed Novelists

"How to clarify a concept you can't articulate:

1. Change mediums. Draw it. Photograph it. Sing it.
2. Change levels. Explain what is one level up (bigger picture) or one level down (finer details).
3. Change fields. What would this concept look like in different fields?"

(James Clear newsletter)

we’ll need to return to David Ogilvy to explain it. Part of his influence comes from two books, Confessions of an Advertising Man (1963) and Ogilvy on Advertising (1983), which laid out his approach to advertising, and how clear, resonant language and crisply executed graphic design could turn a mere commodity into something desirable. But the book... See more

Celine Nguyen • The Divine Discontent

Obviously you can pick books that fit your interests, but if you’re looking to read to be a better writer, setting goals to read books that will improve your range of knowledge, even if they aren’t as fun as Harry Potter or whoever, is vital. You might not love every second of The Magic Mountain or The Unconsoled , but you will have absorbed someth... See more

Blake Butler • Maximizing Time for Reading

from the radio producer Ira Glass, on feeling disappointed by your own work:

All of us who do creative work...get into it because we have good taste. But there’s a gap. For the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making...It’s not that great. It’s really not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’