the nature of creativity

This is why it’s very difficult to teach people how to write, because first you have to teach them how to care. Or, really, you have to show them how to channel their caring, because they already care a lot, but they don’t know how to turn that into words, or they don’t see why they should.

Instead, we rob students of their reason for writing by giv... See more

Adam Mastroianni • 28 Slightly Rude Notes on Writing

Gmail

I worked in the Writing Center in college, and whenever a student came in with an essay, we were supposed to make sure it had two things: an argument (“thesis”) and a reason to make that argument (“motive”). Everybody understood what a “thesis” is, whether or not they actually had one. But nobody understood “motive”. If I asked a student why they w... See more

Adam Mastroianni • 28 Slightly Rude Notes on Writing

Yancey Strickler’s Nine Creative Meditations

To me or to the mean - Focus on what makes your work strange or unique rather than trying to fit in with what everyone else is doing.

You are your audience - Create work that satisfies your own desires and interests rather than trying to please an imagined mass audience.
Small is more rewarding than big - V

Lots of people worry that AI will replace human writers. But I know something the computer doesn’t know, which is what it feels like inside my head. There is no text, no .jpg, no .csv that contains this information, because it is ineffable. My job is to carve off a sliver of the ineffable, and to eff it.

(William Wordsworth referred to this as “wide... See more

Adam Mastroianni • 28 Slightly Rude Notes on Writing

In providing a precise experience, you are necessarily polarizing. There’s a certain tyranny of NPS or averages you have to decouple from – where averages blunt a nuanced understanding of a product or experience. There’s that funny truism that the most authentic Chinese restaurants have the most 1 star reviews.

Distinctive features are not universal... See more

Nix • the delight of specificity

I’ll leave you with a touching passage from Christopher Alexander on the nature of attention ⟣

One of the most moving moments in my life, was also one of the most ordinary. I was with a friend in Denmark. We were having strawberries for tea, and I noticed that she sliced the strawberries very very fine, almost like paper. Of course, it took longer t

Nix • the delight of specificity

All writing about despair is ultimately insincere. Putting fingers to keys or pen to paper is secretly an act of hope, however faint—hope that someone will read your words, hope that someone will understand. Someone who truly feelsdespair wouldn’t bother to tell anyone about it because they wouldn’t expect it to do anything. All text produced in de... See more