the art of writing
advice from writers, and more on writing
Brie Wolfson and
the art of writing
Feeling like you’re worth listening to is a byproduct of making hard decisions and teasing out of them cohesive and convincing personal stories that help you make sense of the world.
Molly Mielke • confidence
If you revise trying to answer every objection anyone has to your work, you will write something unobjectionable. Nothing is worse than unobjectionable fiction.
Elizabeth McCracken • A Long Game
Harry Dry rules for copywriting:
1) A great sentence is a good sentence made shorter.
2) Writing great copy begins with having something to say in the first place.
3) Copy is like food. How it looks matters.
4) Since the look of copy matters so much, don't write copy in Google Docs. Write it in Figma (so you can write and design at the same time).
5)
... See morephoebe and
relatable, on writing like you talk, by Jason Fried:
Over the last 20+ years I’ve been part of too many discussions where someone goes “I’m having a hard time explaining this or that…” Then they say “I just really want to say this…” And then they say it and it’s clear, concise, and obvious! They nailed it, but…
…it’s as if they aren’t even listening
... See more10 key insights from Lenny Rachitsky on building a successful newsletter:
1. What do people ask you about that you don't have a great answer to? Viral essays are hiding inside this question. If people keep asking you the same question and nobody's written the answer, take on the challenge yourself.
... See more
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.
Ezra Klein on the dangers of using ChatGPT for serious writing and the importance of intellectual labor in the writing process:
... See moreChatGPT will never tell you is that the problem with what you're doing is that it's the wrong thing entirely chat gpt is always going to give you the answer of how do you tweak how do you rewrite how do you do the thing
I think of writing a lot like walking. It’s rarely the most popular, the most effective, or the most efficient way of getting to your destination. I don’t always want to do it, and it’s not always technically enjoyable; sometimes it’s boring or slow, sometimes it’s tiring and pointless, sometimes it’s cold or wet or windy and I’m retracing the same... See more