thoughts on writing
My product won’t write sentences for you. The slow process of writing is what clarifies thought, shapes identity, and cultivates a lens to the world. Writing is the whole point; it isn’t a chore to optimize, it’s an infinite game.
Michael Dean • Mega-Update
If you have a plan—if you know the end when you start—it’s no fun to write that novel.
“Writing is often the process by which you realize you do not understand what you are talking about.”
Attention Required! | Cloudflare
Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia.
Kurt Vonnegut • Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style
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))
People naturally remember musical language, and I would encourage writers to inject their prose with a bit of music. When you’re writing, think about repetition and variety. Crescendos and rests. Pace and punctuation. Read your work out loud, and feel the rhythm of the words in your voice.
Derek Thompson • Why Simple Is Smart
I like the idea that, at the end of the day, it’s the reader who generates the book’s meaning as much as the writer, and it’s the writer’s job to start that transaction but not necessarily to finish it.