the art of writing

Putting aside the need to earn a living, I think there are four great motives for writing, at any rate for writing prose. They exist in different degrees in every writer, and in any one writer the proportions will vary from time to time, according to the atmosphere in which he is living. They are:

(i) Sheer egoism. Desire to seem clever, to be... See more

DP: Writing now has to be really, really good to stand out. People got really upset last December when I tweeted that AI’s writing is already better than the majority of Write of Passage students would be with a day’s worth of work. It made a lot of people upset, but I think it’s true. AI’s writing is great with a good prompt, which is why people... See more

Constantly ask: what am I trying to say? Then ask: have I said it?

When I sit down to write, the meadow is still sunk in darkness, and above it, satellites pass by, one after the other. My thoughts are flighty and shapeless; they morph as I approach them. But when I type, it is as if I pin my thoughts to the table. I can examine them. They feel porous to the touch and crumble. But among the fragments, I discover... See more

I think that greatness is best described as “invisibility.” Great writing is invisible. It might take you a minute or two to get into the flow, but once you’re reading it, you’re flowing through it and don’t even realize you are reading words. Your mind is hallucinating the story for you, so seamlessly that it feels like you’re imagining it for... See more