the art of writing
advice from writers, and more on writing
Brie Wolfson and
the art of writing
From George Saunders, on nuance and embracing complexity:
... See morethe writer doesn't have to have a fixed firm idea, but has to be able to take the reader on a journey to remind her that the world is complicated. From the very beginning, I understood writing to be about some kind of moral or ethical imperative. Absent that, I'm not that interested in it,
Beautiful, on writing
BALDWIN: When you are standing in the pulpit, you must sound as though you know what you’re talking about. When you’re writing, you’re trying to find out something which you don’t know. The whole language of writing for me is finding out what you don’t want to know, what you don’t want to find out. But something forces you to anyway.
247 You will know that you’re done with something when you can’t imagine making it better. For some writers that’s a state of exhilaration: They’ve done everything they can. This beautiful accomplishment! Nothing can improve it. Others of us arrive at the same place, despondent: This ramshackle thing. I’ve reached the end of my powers. Nothing can
... See moreElizabeth McCracken • A Long Game
When used properly, metaphors enhance speech. But correctly dosing the metaphorical spice in the dish of language is no easy task. They ‘must not be far-fetched, or they will be difficult to grasp, nor obvious, or they will have no effect’, as Aristotle already noted nearly 2,500 years ago.
Benjamin Santos Genta • How changing the metaphors we use can change the way we think | Aeon Essays
Not just reading a lot, but paying attention to the way the sentences are put together, the clauses are joined, the way the sentences go to make up a paragraph. Exercises as boneheaded as you take a book you really like, you read a page of it three, four times, put it down, and then try to imitate it word for word so that you can feel your own
... See more
There’s a quote I like from Theodor Adorno, who said, “for a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes place to live." While I’ve never been a refugee, I still feel that quote really strongly, as someone who’s never quite felt fully at home in most of my ordinary life– always a bit of an alien, always an outsider, always a minority, always... See more
visakan veerasamy • Notes Versus Posts
Current AI writing tools are a great way to mass produce writing that is intensely mid, and makes you feel dead inside. Can we use AI to help the best writers do better work?
I don't know. But let's think about the bottlenecks for good writing.