writing and creativity

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.

An essay is not a vehicle of knowledge transmission; it is a landscape to think in, and a path to get there.

To make something good, just do it. To make something great, just redo it, redo it, redo it. The secret to making fine things is in remaking them.

If you have time to consume, you have time to create.

I was dead tired of “should-ing” myself into productivity and overriding my own creative impulse and rhythm.

Beginner writers have 2 choices:

1. Curate other experts

2. Say something ultra-specific

Why only 2?

Credibility.

If you've never published anything, readers will not trust you to give "general advice."

But by curating other experts, you aren't claiming to be "credible" at all.

You're borrowing credibility.

Let's say you write about productivity advice.

Mos... See more

The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.

— Robert Hughes, 1996

The act of creation causes imagination, not the other way around. To understand this is to understand the ecology that fosters the unique. Agency is precious because the lucidities that purposeful work and responsibility bring are the real education. The secret of the world is that it is a very malleable place, we must be sure that people learn thi... See more