writing

I wonder if we’d know what we do about who Sylvia Plath was, or Franz Kafka or Orwell, or even Emerson if it weren’t for their extensive journals and diaries. Recorded like memory capsules, in their voices with their own eyes. You may not be Kafka, but you possess the magic to write if you are lucky, so how can you do nothing about it? I’ve... See more

David Foster Wallace had a similar piece of advice for writers: “ the reader cannot read your mind .” You don’t get to live in the margins and clarify confusion or expand on your implicit intentions.

Well, you need dirt to grow plants. A farmer I admire once wrote that 90% of his job was dirt management. Manage the dirt well and the plants grow themselves. Writing grows, too: Create a fertile field of exploration, fun, and inanity, and the rest will follow. Wuthering Heights , one of the greatest novels ever written in English, grew out of the... See more

I don’t often carry my notebook, so if I feel the itch creeping up my sweater, I would write on a napkin, a receipt, a newspaper. Even a book. Sometimes deciphering a poem is journaling. Sometimes writing two lines is enough. Sometimes you need half a book to speak.