Writing
Love to write~
Writing
Storytelling, then, is born from our need to order everything outside ourselves.
John Yorke • Into The Woods: How Stories Work and Why We Tell Them
“The best way to think is to write.”
Farnam Street • Happy Accidents
Critical theorist Walter Benjamin once distinguished between two types of storytellers: one is a keeper of the traditions; another is the one who has journeyed afar and tells stories of other places. But there is a third, and that is the exile. The exile, with a gaze that is obscured by distance and time, may not always be precise in terms of
... See moreImani Perry • South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation
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
Each word is a portable cathedral in which we clarify and sanctify our experience, a reliquary and a laboratory, holding the history of our search for meaning and the pliancy of the possible future, of there being richer and deeper dimensions of experience than those we name in our surface impressions. In the roots of words we find a portal to the... See more
Maria Popova • The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows: Uncommonly Lovely Invented Words for What We Feel but Cannot Name
Obstacles to fluent writing
- Any variation on: “I can't say that!”
- “What if people think I'm stupid?”
- “What if people think this is boring?”
- “What if people think I'm ignorant?”
- “What if people think I'm trying to be superior?”
- “What if this isn't good enough?”
- “What if sharing my ideas results in my being scooped?”
- “Is this part of my job?”
- The vague
How to use a personal website to enhance your ability to think and create?
To 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
Writing isn’t recording your thoughts; it’s thinking on the page.