the art of writing

Trust the process.

Very few writers really know what they are doing until they’ve done it.

-Anne Lammott

Sentences short, brave, and clear.

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) Ka

”In my experience, here’s how essays form: You get all these bits of data that stick in your head… file drawers in your head. At a certain point you realize one of the drawers is now full, and you might have an essay.” Tim Kreider on the artist at midlife.

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”

—Terry Pratchett

“All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence you know”—a sentence, he added, without “scrollwork or ornament.”

the secret to good writing is to say an old thing in a new way or a new thing in an old way.

- Richard Harding Davis

I wanna write a poem. But I want it to say what you’re thinking. I wanna patch up the holes when your boat starts sinking. I wanna write that ‘one of a kind’ poem, that ‘free your mind’ poem, that ‘I like how you made that rhyme’ poem, that ‘I like that last line’ poem, that ‘Can I hear that one more time? (That is, if you don’t mind.)’ poem. I wan

If only I had more time to write less.

– Alex

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 musc