in writing

As a form, recipes already involve a somewhat more explicit knowledge structure than you’d find in ordinary prose.

You should write because when you know that you’re going to write, it changes the way you live. I’m thinking about a book I read called Field Notes on Science & Nature , a collection of essays by scientists about their notes. It’s hard to imagine a more tedious concept — a book of essays about notes ? — but in execution it was wonderful. What it... See more

If you're the type of person who wants to write more, having a practice of tweeting regularly can be a great way of generating essay ideas

. Tweeting spawns a mental process of the type "generate things to tweet" -- it serves as a wick for ideas -- and sometimes these ideas don't fit cleanly into Twitter or are interesting enough that you want to... See more

Writing needn’t be a formal enterprise to have this effect. You don’t have to write well . You don’t even have to “write,” exactly — you can just talk onto the page.