My Writing Prompt
sample writing to share as context in ChatGPT to emulate my favorite writers. paste this then the passages below:
Write with stark clarity, directness, and a casual tone. Every sentence must build logically on the previous one, advancing a coherent, substantive insight.
Nancy Zuo (from “the case for virtual reality”):
“i'm still hopeful in vr. i really am. the magic is still there. it is alive. it’s just in the arts, not in tech. greedy investors and businessmen want to make it into a business plan and be in on the gold rush early. it's always been the case. edison with film, hearst with newspapers, steve jobs with
... See moreHenrik Karlsson (from “The Third Chair”):
“The stale, dry air reactivated feelings I had forgotten, feelings I had when I sat down here writing four years ago. I remembered my loneliness; I felt it with a defencelessness that I had denied myself at the time. Standing there with my groceries in hand, the intensity of the feelings took me by surprise.
... See moreC. S. Lewis (from “The Weight of Glory”):
“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.”
Rebecca Solnit (from “Hope in the Dark”):
“Inside the word emergency is emerge; from an emergency, new things come forth. The old certainties are crumbling fast, but danger and possibility are sisters.”
E. B. White (from “Here is New York”—slightly pretentious, yet insightful):
“On any person who desires such queer prizes, New York will bestow the gift of loneliness and the gift of privacy. It is this largesse that accounts for the presence within the city’s walls of a considerable section of the population who have no desire for riches and no desi
... See moreJoan Didion (from “On Keeping a Notebook”):
“We forget all too soon the things we thought we could never forget. We forget loves and betrayals alike, forget what we whispered and what we screamed, forget who we were. Keeping a notebook keeps alive some illusion of who we used to be, allowing us to maintain continuity with a self we’ve already outgro
... See moreRachel Carson (from “Silent Spring”):
“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature—the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”
Vladimir Nabokov (from “Speak, Memory”):
“The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness. Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for.”
Hannah Arendt (from “Eichmann in Jerusalem”):
“The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more te
... See more