✎ On writing

Begin with a good quote. Hide the attribution in the middle. End with a good quote.

Some teachers refer to this as the 2-3-1 tool of emphasis, where the most emphatic words or images go at the end, the next most emphatic at the beginning, and the least emphatic in the middle, but that's too much calculus for my brain. Here's my simplified version:

Everyone fears the long sentence. Editors fear it. Readers fear it.

Most of all, writers fear it. Even I fear it. Look. Another short one.

Shorter. Fragments. Frags. Just letters. F... f... f... f. Can I write a sentence without words? Just punctuation? #:!?

Write what you fear. Until the writer tries to master the long sentence, she is no writer at

There’s a lot of writing out there in the world, but the stuff that stands out in our modern, noisy world seems to follow one approach: It takes a stance.

Writing, specifically creative writing, is a path to better understanding yourself and your lens on the world.

First drafts tend to be a bit chaotic because writing is, at its core, a process of discovery. When you first put those initial words on the page, you’re essentially thinking out loud—trying to make sense of a topic, find connections, and articulate ideas that may not yet be fully formed.

I call this building a “dump doc.”​ This exploratory phase is

Here’s how The Socratic Method works:

• Understand the belief: See if your writing clearly states its thesis.

• Reflect : Summarize the thesis and clarify your understanding in simple language.

• Gather evidence : See if you’ve provided solid evidence for the thesis with data, analysis, and facts.

• Challenge assumptions : Question the thesis’s

A generalization is taking one or a few facts and making a broader, more universal statement. For example, if all the girls you know play with dolls, you might make the generalization that all girls play with dolls. When you find a sweeping statement in your draft, challenge it and ask:

• Is this always true?

• Can I think of counterexamples?

• What