Writing

"Finding your way in life is like unlocking the combination of a safe. You have to go forwards and backwards. Life is not a direct march from A to B. The twists and turns are progress, not regression. What feels like a setback in the moment is later revealed to have been part of the path all along. Each move was necessary to get to your end goal."

By contrast, “deep freewriting” describes a practice in which you set a timer, then commit to writing without stopping or deleting until it goes off, while staying mentally present with the process. Importantly, that needn’t mean writing fast, and could even mean writing very slowly – just as it’s possible to run very slowly yet still be running,... See more

“ Write about where you’ve been and where you’re going. Become a niche of one .”

Something isn't clickbait if you deliver.

And it's especially not clickbait if you take your audience on a journey where they discover something extremely useful.

“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, maybe even someone long dead. And it’s as if a hand has come out and taken yours.”

"In many cases, what you hope to learn by reading books or listening to podcasts can only be learned by attempting what you fear. Some knowledge is only revealed through action."

“Trust your obsessions. This is one I learned more or less accidentally. People sometimes ask whether the research or the idea for the story comes first for me. And I tell them, normally the first thing that turns up is the obsession: for example, all of a sudden I notice that I’m reading nothing but English 17th century metaphysical verse. And I... See more