the art of writing

advice from writers, and more on writing

WorkforceGPS - Plain Language Webcast Series

Writing advice from Lenny Rachitsky:

If you want to have an existential breakdown, try to make each sentence an aesthetic masterpiece. Ditch the poetry and focus on clarity instead.

“Every time I think about how to write beautifully, I just get stuck and it just slows everything down.”

alex

Announcing: Writing Examples Today is launch day! We built this website to celebrate great writing. It’s 100% free. Each article deconstructs a piece of writing from an iconic writer. The goal is to give you X-Ray vision into what makes sentences and paragraphs come alive (so that you can... See more

David Perell x.com

alex

gabriel

"The answer is, that the book is for me. I wrote it for me. I wrote Psychology of Money for me. I wrote all my blog posts for me. I call it selfish writing. An audience of one."

https://tim.blog/2023/11/02/morgan-housel-transcript/

sari

“Most of all: the point is to aim for writing that enhances your feeling of aliveness, that lets you refine your thoughts about what matters, lets you experience with more nuance what you care about, lets you enrichen the texture of your mind.”

-Henrik Karlsson

phoebe

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).

phoebe and

Writing is a task that takes both objective and subjective intelligence. LLMs ace the objective parts the same way they ace every test; you can’t fault their grammar, semantics, or syntax. But good writing requires an additional bit of juju that makes the prose live and breathe, a light on the inside that can’t be quantified or checklisted. And... See more

Infinite midwit

sari

INTERVIEWER: As your experience about writing accrues, what would you say increases with knowledge?

BALDWIN: You learn how little you know. It becomes much more difficult because the hardest thing in the world is simplicity. And the most fearful thing, too. It becomes more difficult because you have to strip yourself of all your disguises, some of... See more

Cynthia Haven • James Baldwin: “You want to write a sentence as clean as a bone. That is the goal.”

sari