the art of writing

Write little phrases that will “open a door to a scene”: Often, we can’t see our entire project in its full form, but we can see little pieces of it. A curtain moving in the morning light, for example. A man sneaking around a house. Jotting down these little hints “open a door” for your future writer-self.

I tell my students to liberate a certain part of their mind that, because they are good, humble people they may have likely suppressed, and that's the part that wants to be known, that wants to be famous or rich or whatever. I say that part is not entirely separate from the part of you that wants to be a great writer. Which is not separate from the... See more

On writing about what you know, via Robert Pirsig (1974 interview):

Write about what you know. And he said, if you write about what you know and you do it carefully and sincerely and make sure it's really what you know, that'll be plenty exotic to everybody else in this book. I've really tried to do that, and I've tried to justify what I've done to

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"In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts."

But the future is not a self-fulfilling prophecy - 8 billion people on this planet have a voice and that carries far more weight than one person with 8 billion dollars. We just forgot how to exercise it.