Writing
Love to write~
Writing
“The trick to writing well is to...
– take long sentences and make them short
– take confusing ideas and make them clear
– take unrelated concepts and make them related
...without losing the main idea in the process.”
– take long sentences and make them short
– take confusing ideas and make them clear
– take unrelated concepts and make them related
...without losing the main idea in the process.”
3-2-1: On asking permission, the trick to writing well, and the magic of reading
The exciting thing is not that there's a lot left to write, but that there's a lot left to discover. There's a certain kind of idea that's best discovered by writing essays. If most essays are still unwritten, most such ideas are still undiscovered.
Paul Graham • How to Write Usefully
Students writing home had two things uppermost in mind: to impress their parents with their progress in the art of letter writing, and to ask for cash.26 The medieval epistolary style was formal and highly structured, and students, often destined for a career as an official or a clerk, were keen to demonstrate their progress in mastering this art.
... See moreAndrew Pettegree • The Invention of News: How the World Came to Know About Itself
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,... See more
Nix • things that take time
“Be yourself. Whether on Substack or anywhere else, it helps immeasurably to be who you actually are, to let yourself be seen and heard for your true self, and, in that way, to write what only you can write. What does that mean? To write what only you can write? Well, only you can answer that. It is a question to dwell on, to enter into, to sit
... See moreTo write about something hard to explain, write a detailed letter to a friend about why it is so hard to explain, and then remove the initial “Dear Friend” part and you’ll have a great first draft.
Noah Smith • Interview: Kevin Kelly, Editor, Author, and Futurist
Good stories are explorations of the human condition; thrilling voyages into foreign minds. They’re not so much about events that take place on the surface of the drama as they are about the characters that have to battle them. Those characters, when we meet them on page one, are never perfect. What arouses our curiosity about them, and provides
... See moreWill Storr • The Science of Storytelling: Why Stories Make Us Human and How to Tell Them Better
I devoured the books because they were the rays of light peeking out from the doorframe, and perhaps past that door there was another world, one beyond the gripping fear that undergirded the Dream.