on writing

Good writing is meditative writing. It’s a polished and cohesive train of thought, devoid of superfluous babble. If intrusive thoughts make their way into your writing and you neglect to edit them out, your work will suffer. Quality writing does not arise from a stream of consciousness or absent-mindedness. It’s a practice of meditating on a... See more

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 last

... See more

If you write to please others, you are selling out. You are in the process of audience capture. This way of talking, which is how the fear in me talks, is common—as if writing for an audience and writing for yourself are at odds with each other. I really used to feel like that.

But I no longer think that it is quite right. The relationship between... See more

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:

• Counter-intuitive —

... See more