Why write?

In Alan Bennett’s The History Boys, the profoundly human (i.e., imperfect) teacher, Hector, reminds his students that “The best moments in reading are when you come across something—a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things—that you’d thought special, particular to you. And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you’ve never met, may... See more

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 specif... See more

On bad days meta-writing keeps me disciplined, giving me a reason to put pen to paper. As such, my private meta-writing is probably the greatest aid to producing public writing that I have. My journals are full of pages that start with what I planned to eat during the day and ended with a fresh idea, or an outline for a prospective article.

You’d be... See more

A quote from Japanese author and Buddhist monk Yoshida Kenko way back in 1330(!) on the value of reading books:

“It is a most wonderful comfort to sit alone beneath a lamp, book spread before you, and commune with someone from the past whom you have never met.”

The key to overcoming this precondition is to make writing a multi-pass process. Visual art is multi-pass: artists start with a rough sketch that captures the general idea for their composition. Then they go through and do a more detailed sketch, turning the rough lines into recognizable features, fiddling with proportions and placement until each ... See more