Writing
An essay is good if it fits a context made up of 1) the truth, 2) the intellectual needs of the writer, and 3) the reader's mind. The better the form fits that context—the truer, more insight-generating, and resonant it is—the better the essay.
Henrik Karlsson • Everything That Turned Out Well in My Life Followed the Same Design Process
“If you don't have time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
Kristen Kieffer • How Critical Reading Can Improve Your Writing — Well-Storied.
It’s easier to treat writing as a low-stakes side hobby, when the reality is that writing requires us to get up-close, personal, and gut-level honest about how we are living our lives.
Allison Fallon • The Power of Writing It Down: A Simple Habit to Unlock Your Brain and Reimagine Your Life
“I would have written a shorter letter, but I didn’t have time.” ~Blaise Pascal, 1657
🎧Write Less, Please [updated]
Great writing is alchemy — you take bits of entertainment, mix in some education, and add a dash of inspiration, in order to create remarkable work.
Ayodeji Awosika • The Only 3 Types of Writing People Actually Want to Read
What we are trying to do influences what becomes salient to us. If you are looking for a friend in a crowd, faces become salient to you, faces that would have otherwise passed you by. If you are making videos, you will notice patterns in the videos you watch. If you’re not, you can watch a thousand videos and have them pass through your head
... See moreHenrik Karlsson • How MrBeast Learns
A writing example: when I look back in my notes I realize so much of what I write about today I was ruminating about 2-3 years ago. I always knew what I was going to say. I just didn’t have the tools, I didn’t have the maturity, I didn’t have the language or sensitivity to beauty to recognize what that was. So much of what I learned was latent,... See more
Nix 🕊 • things that take time
Wrong. I have to work on my writing all the time. My writing is a muscle that powers my online business, so I have to look at it and take care of it the same way an athlete takes care of their body.
Nick Wolny • Why Intelligent, Ambitious People Often Fail in Online Business
I sometimes think how glorious it must have been to have written drama in sixteenth-century England, or poetry in ancient Greece, or religious narrative in the Middle Ages, when literature was need and did not have a critical history to constrain or diminish the writer's imagination. How magnificent not to have to de- pend on the reader's literary
... See moreToni Morrison • Memory, Creation, and Writing
Art without the pressure of category. Social media is destroying our art. Algorithms are destroying art. New algos (data and social media) vs old algos (memory). [[Algorithms and Art]]