writing

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, une... See more

Why do I care about these topics ?

What is it about these topics that’s interesting to me ?

Whatever the answer is, that’s where your writing begins.

You’re just trying to find readers who have the same questions you do.

Which means that the act of writing for a reader is the act of trying to find those answers—those further questions beyond—together.

Not everything I’ve produced is so obviously wrong—a lot of it is wrong in subtler ways. Even writing I produced a year ago, I’m really not sure about. The rate of learning in my life is high, and there are axioms I took for granted quite recently which I now feel shifting. Looking back on writing I did about my abundant happiness, I can see that t... See more

There’s that Oscar Wilde quote: “Everything in the world is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.”

Power in all its sundry shades of that which we want but cannot be sure that we have: status, respect, desire.

Maybe that’s what I really want when I’m writing?

Writing stuff in the 21st century (that’s this one) means writing online, and writing ... See more

People read nonfiction to learn and to feel. My framework for ensuring a blog post accomplishes both is to start with a first draft that focuses on "novel" ideas.

A novel idea is one that's not just new to the reader, but also significant and not easily intuited. Think of it as new and worthwhile . I've identified five categories:

• Counter-intuitive —

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Every time I cut something, I'll never delete it. I just copy and paste it under a line at the bottom of the document. That's how I know I'm making progress – the graveyard gets larger and larger and the only things that are left alive are the things I didn't think I should kill.

My product won’t write sentences for you. The slow process of writing is what clarifies thought, shapes identity, and cultivates a lens to the world. Writing is the whole point; it isn’t a chore to optimize, it’s an infinite game.

A good short story is, among other things, a highly organised system. Its parts feel in connection with one another. There’s very little waste or randomness. Many decisions have been made along the way, by different means, some conscious, some not. It feels fraught with intention, full of direction. It doesn’t necessarily know what it is, but it w

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