why I write
But this silly desire to be an exceptional young writer wasn’t egoistic craving. It was a biological obligation. He couldn’t help it. He couldn’t turn it off. Even when he tried not to write, he was writing. He imagined paragraphs in his head, imagined whole novels, composed of sentences that weren’t even made up of words, just the essence of words
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An essay is not a vehicle of knowledge transmission; it is a landscape to think in, and a path to get there.
If I want to be a writer who is any good, I really think I am going to have to be bored more often, which means sequestering my attention to my surroundings: the mundane, the slow, the IRL.
Confessions Of An Attention Seeker
just wanted to be in a better place than I was when I wasn’t writing.
Jami Attenberg • I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home
An attraction to that which was absent. A sketch, an outline, never fully formed, but still, it existed as an idea. Filling in the imaginary blanks with information I did not have but found I could invent quite easily. A thing we do as writers. If we just give ourselves permission. But also, there was something about simply feeling the sense of the
... See moreJami Attenberg • I Came All This Way to Meet You: Writing Myself Home
Writers are magpies. We observe, mimic, remix and remake. Being transparent about how our work exists in community is great.
Saeed Jones • Here Are Some Ideas For Essays You Could Write
So the point of my keeping a notebook has never been, nor is it now, to have an accurate factual record of what I have been doing or thinking. That would be a different impulse entirely, an instinct for reality which I sometimes envy but do not possess.