on writing
We are writers, and we never ask one another where we get our ideas; we know we don’t know.
Stephen King • On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft (A Memoir of the Craft (Reissue))
Takeaways from Jerry Seinfeld on Tim Ferriss:
To survive in comedy you have to be a writer
“As any writer can tell you it’s 95% re-write”
“I think I could solve just about anyone’s life, I don’t care what you do, with weight training and transcendental meditation” Jerry Seinfeld
“If you could take your experiences and ask to trade them in, the las
People read nonfiction to learn and to feel. My framework for ensuring a blog post accomplishes both is to start with a first draft that focuses on "novel" ideas.
A novel idea is one that's not just new to the reader, but also significant and not easily intuited. Think of it as new and worthwhile . I've identified five categories:
A novel idea is one that's not just new to the reader, but also significant and not easily intuited. Think of it as new and worthwhile . I've identified five categories:
- Counter-intuitive —
What to Write About
“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”
—Terry Pratchett
The way to get novelty is to write about topics you've thought about a lot. Then you can use yourself as a proxy for the reader in this department too. Anything you notice that surprises you, who've thought about the topic a lot, will probably also surprise a significant number of readers. And here, as with correctness and importance, you can use t... See more
Matter
Sometimes writers sit down and it's all pouring out of them. Each word - exactly the right one - is just sitting there, juicy and bursting with potential, easily within reach on a nearby branch. Every idea flows naturally from the last and in an order which provides a neat crystalline structure to the whole endeavour.