Writing
Note to self:
Leaving this here for next time I’m halfway through a piece, staring vacantly at the page and slowly losing my grip on reality.
- The first draft is to make it exist.
- The second draft is to make it functional.
- The third draft is to make it effective.
Leaving this here for next time I’m halfway through a piece, staring vacantly at the page and slowly losing my grip on reality.
Sublime • Sublime on Substack
Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something — anything — down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft — you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft — you fix it up. You try to say what you have to say more accurately. And the third draf... See more
First drafts - Austin Kleon
... See moreThere's also something humbling and awful about what's on the page is never as good as what's in your head and so if you keep it in your head it's safe and good and you're not going through this awful uncomfortable middle period … I think this is why people hang on to projects or write and rewrite them … there's a real ugliness to the early creativ
If your job is to write every day, you learn to do it like any other job.
William Zinsser • On Writing Well, 30th Anniversary Edition: An Informal Guide to Writing Nonfiction
Although I don’t condone such a formulaic approach to writing, I think it’s perfect for the repetitive tasks we face on a daily basis. After all, there’s no sense in reinventing the wheel for every item on our to-do lists. By making templates, we can complete them more quickly, more efficiently, and with a minimum amount of effort—leaving us time a
... See moreFrancine Jay • The Joy of Less, A Minimalist Living Guide: How to Declutter, Organize, and Simplify Your Life
Why templates matter
I would argue that the paragraph, not the sentence, is the basic unit of writing—the place where coherence begins and words stand a chance of becoming more than mere words. If the moment of quickening is to come, it comes at the level of the paragraph.