On writing
Expression is compression
It takes 50 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. So whenever I feel like I don’t have enough ideas to create something meaningful, I go collect more experiences and spend time processing them by writing and talking to friends.
Even writers who work full-time spend most of their hours away from the keyboard. Full-time
... See moreAlicia Kennedy on writing for speaking instead of reading:
“This voice, simply put, is a bit more leaden than my writing-for-reading voice. I don’t have access to all my tools: Sentences need to be short and to the point, as opposed to my usual long, somewhat convoluted (but hopefully artful), highly punctuated tendencies. (I did recently receive an
In The Left Hand of Darkness, Le Guin writes:
As they say in Ekumenical School, when action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.
Which is another way of saying, when you can’t write, read. When you can’t read, sleep
My product won’t write sentences for you. The slow process of writing is what clarifies thought, shapes identity, and cultivates a lens to the world. Writing is the whole point; it isn’t a chore to optimize, it’s an infinite game.
Michael Dean • Mega-Update
There’s a wonderful letter Chekhov wrote to his brother Alexander about the meaning of grace, how grace is when you make the least number of movements between two points – and that type of athletic prose has always appealed to me, coupled with light-handedness and restraint. Elegance, to me, is writing just enough. And, as James Baldwin said, in
... See moreWhen I write, I get to observe the transition from this fluid mode of thinking to the rigid. As I type, I’m often in a fluid mode—writing at the speed of thought. I feel confident about what I’m saying. But as soon as I stop, the thoughts solidify, rigid on the page, and, as I read what I’ve written, I see cracks spreading through my ideas. What... See more
Henrik Karlsson • How to Think in Writing
'I have enormous respect for my art as an art and my craft as a craft, for skill, for experience, for hard thought, for painstaking work. I hold those things in reverence. I respect commas far more than I do congressmen.
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Revision clears unnecessary obstacles away so the reader can receive the story. That is why the comma is important. And why the
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