the art of writing

When you have trouble writing, it’s usually because you don’t know what you’re trying to say. Most writing problems are actually thinking problems. And you can't copyedit your way out of poor thinking.

The kind we love is focused, challenging, sustained, with a pen in hand, making note of new turns of phrase and peculiar, precise words, and feeling our brains get ever-so-slightly reconfigured by the text. The kind of reading we love requires a piece of text be worked over so many times that the author probably never wants to see it again. The... See more

It wasn’t that I didn’t have anything to say, I was just writing to the wrong people about the wrong things.