writing
“How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it’s just words.”
— David Foster Wallace
Victor Hugo once remarked, “Everything had already been said, but nobody listened, so it had to be said again” —and his wise words bear repeating.
Tim Leberecht • Bullshit Jobs Will Save Us All
Something moved them, irked them, inspired them, possessed them, and then electricity shot everywhere in their brain and then—crucially—they laid fingers on keys and put that electricity inside the computer. Writing is a costly signal of caring about something. Good writing, in fact, might be a sign of pathological caring.
Adam Mastroianni • 28 Slightly Rude Notes on Writing
Writing increases your rate of revelation. This is true irrespective of the subject because writing is a process of reflection, assertion, and iteration.
Writing clarifies your own ideas. Writing begets new ideas too. Writing lets you explore ideas in depth even if you won’t have time to act on them all. Writing shows people how you think and lets... See more
Writing clarifies your own ideas. Writing begets new ideas too. Writing lets you explore ideas in depth even if you won’t have time to act on them all. Writing shows people how you think and lets... See more
Anu • Writer-Builders
Long practice teaches an artist to direct their gaze in an unusually focused way; it trains them to repurpose areas of their brain; and it changes the very structure of the brain’s neural networks. Ocean’s unusual patterns of thought – and his unusually developed brain – were normal in trained artists. Other neurological researchers have shown that
... See moreRoland Allen • The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper
in order to be an artist, i must show up at the page. use the page to rest, to dream, to try.
So our job as writers is not to diddle around our whole lives in the dot but to take one big step out of it and sink into the big sky and write from there. Let everything run through us and grab as much as we can of it with a pen and paper. Let yourself live in something that is already rightfully yours—your own wild mind.