writing
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
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
All Day I Dream About Substack (ADIDAS)
Bernadette Mayer's Writing Experiments
writing.upenn.edu
You must never think at the typewriter — you must feel. Your intellect is always buried in that feeling anyway. (Ray Bradbury)
Maria Popova • What Is Creativity? Cultural Icons on What Ideation Is and How It Works
At the origin of all good non-fiction writing is someone who thought: I want to know more about that. I want to understand how it works. I want to know where it came from and who was responsible for it. I want to understand its implications. It is a child gazing at the stars.
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
Almost everything I've written seems wrong now
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... See more
How the work really gets done
What I write is all mine, it’s a living thing, it’s an extension of me that wanders out into the world. It is desire turned inwards instead of outwards, focused instead of displaced. It’s a way to access self-knowledge and self-respect.
Ava • how to avoid half-heartedness
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