Writing

We need to find the minimum viable scaffolding to get our work started and then focus on doing the work from there, making little adjustments as we go. ... Every minute we spend looking for The Right Tool is a minute we’re not using our perfectly good word processor to bang out the next great American novel.

Don't Put the Tool Before the Craft: Brea... See more

Writing Strategies

Whether through imaginative engagement or literal neural synchrony, the psychology of narrative suggests that we crave stories aligning with how we actually think and remember. And how we think is often non-linear: full of associations, symbols, and relational webs. Thus, storytelling that “mirrors the mind” – with its tangents, recursions, and net

As he researched, he copied out quotations from this host of writers and thinkers in addition to his own observations and notes, that he then fit under konvoluts (literally sheaths, or “bundles”) — fashion, idleness, iron construction, museum, mirrors — that reflected the cultural structures of the time. ... It was essentially a card catalog; a dat... See more

Writing Strategies

lean into macro challenges while finding the easiest way to manage micro challenges. The hour-by-hour challenge of continuing to write is less important than the month-by-month challenge of continuing to write.

Nat Eliason 6.6.2022

Writing Strategies

If you lose momentum or want to be prolific, go to the city. But if your thinking feels stale or you want to work on longer-form pieces, consider a retreat to the country.

David Perell 5.23.2022

Writing Strategies

his experimental mixing of Wordsworth's Tables Turned with Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky is a joy to behold.

Writing Strategies

unsourced

1. Fragmentary style of writing for different purposes:

Pascal to underscore that total and complete knowledge is God’s alone.

Nietzsche to underscore human perspectivalism.

Others to emulate the ancients (or rather their surviving linguistic ruins.)

Kabballah to emphasize the task of the righteous to collect and reassemble these fragments of God.

2. Ma... See more

Writing Strategies

Lynch's 70 scenes on 3X5 cards = 1 feature film.

For Lynch, ideas come from somewhere outside us, and our job is to tune into their channels. The imagination is a diving inward. Artistic invention is a matter of staying in the depths until you encounter something down there. It might be beautiful, or frightening, or absurd; but it comes to you. You ... See more

Zettels June 2025

writing for film - storyboarding

a form I turn to from time to time: a loosely structured list of associated thoughts and reflections. I’m glad this approach has resonated in the past, and I hope it does so again. I’m drawn to it, I think, because it reflects the provisional and associative nature of thinking. It also reflects the way fragments of thought, often surfaced from anot... See more