writing well

An essay is not the process of translating a fully-formed idea into words on a page; it is the process of discovering and testing an idea by challenging it with form, syntax, structure.

Bring them into a world. Give them a reason to stay.

I think we’ve all had that experience of reading a book or story and an author includes such an odd, beautiful, specific detail that it makes the whole scene come to life and feel indisputably real. Sometimes these details occur magically to us as writers, like little gifts.

Didion has defined a writer as “a person whose most absorbed and passion ate hours are spent arranging words on pieces of paper. I write entirely to find out what’s on my mind, what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I’m seeing and what it means, what I want and what I’m afraid of.” She has also said that “all writing is an attempt to find out... See more

Remnick does not dispute her account. “I think I would be happy if Judith Thurman wanted to write next about the National Football League,” he explained to me in an email. “The point is, I love reading her on whatever moves her, and she is a woman of parts, of wide-ranging interests and sensibility, a deep reader of literature, someone with a keen ... See more

Poetry gives the griever not release from grief but companionship in grief.

some of the best newsletters offer “a particular attitude or perspective, a set of passions and interests, and even an ongoing process of ‘thinking through,’ to which subscribers are invited.”

The problem was that I had all these ideas, but the ideas were situations; they were not stories.