writing and creativity

Sometimes maybe it’s best, in art and writing, to be as dumb as possible, follow the joy, because at the very least that's real. And there, you’ve taken the first step towards the truth.

Why is it that a simple channel change like telling a story about a suffering person helps these people so much? From the process viewpoint the reason is simple. They feel better because they have switched identities. They are no longer identified as sufferers, but have become fair observers, creators, tellers of a story. The earlier suffering was

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Be willing to produce some crap and make mistakes. It will release a lot of pressure.

Be prolific and commit to as much volume as you can muster.

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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So here they are, my personal rules for blogging.

1. Three posts a week, more or less.


2. One idea per post. If I find myself launching into another section, cut and paste the extra into a separate draft post, and tie off the original one with the word “Anyway.” Then publish.


3. No hedging, no nuance. If I’m getting in a twist about a sentence, take it out.


4. Gi

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But busyness has a way of stealing creativity from you. Generative work, like art and writing, requires long periods of nothingness: it’s only in that wide empty space that ideas emerge. Long runs, hot showers, commutes that don’t involve harried Slack messages and listening to podcasts at 2x speed. Sitting at the edge of a dock, listening to the o... See more

Creativity has two parts:- Creative discovery mode: shuffling things around, exploring. Playful.- Implementation mode: creating something robust and concrete.- Revisit the work the next day in an alert state and assess whether it is ready for linear implementation.

It has been claimed, for instance, that the reason there are more poets per capita in Iceland than in any other country of the world is that reciting the sagas became a way for the Icelanders to keep their consciousness ordered in an environment exceedingly hostile to human existence. For centuries the Icelanders have not only preserved in memory b

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If the only point to writing were to transmit information, then it would deserve to become obsolete. But the point of writing is to create information, not simply to pass it along. In the past, educated persons used journals and personal correspondence to put their experiences into words, which allowed them to reflect on what had happened during th

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