Mickey Patel
@mickeypatel
Mickey Patel
- Don't wait to start writing until you have something to say. Start writing so you can find out what you have to say. Your first idea is rarely your best idea. It can take a lot of reps before you discover something worth keeping.
A writer could blast out her opinions, but writers are at their best not when they tell people what to think but when they provide a context within which others can think.
from How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen by David Brooks
- How can you ensure that the things you say are true and novel and important? Believe it or not, there is a trick for doing this. I learned it from my friend Robert Morris, who has a horror of saying anything dumb. His trick is not to say anything unless he's sure it's worth hearing. This makes it hard to get opinions out of him, but when you do, th... See more
from How to Write Usefully by Paul Graham
- Let's put them all together. Useful writing tells people something true and important that they didn't already know, and tells them as unequivocally as possible.
from How to Write Usefully by Paul Graham
- People who are stuck often ask themselves, What am I supposed to do next? That question often comes from a place of paying attention to your thoughts, not your body. You’re too busy being slammed by your feelings to read what they’re telling you.
But how do you pay attention to your body, how do you parse your feelings, how do you reach that sense ... See morefrom a blog is a space for dreaming
”In my experience, here’s how essays form: You get all these bits of data that stick in your head… file drawers in your head. At a certain point you realize one of the drawers is now full, and you might have an essay.” Tim Kreider on the artist at midlife.
P.S. I just found an old video from the time I interviewed Neil deGrasse Tyson, one of the most famous scientists in the world.
When I asked him about the poetry of his language, he said he almost never says something in public that he hasn't written down before. "Short words that are potent are what should be promoted in writing."
from Daily Writing #5: Writing Makes You a Better Speaker by David Perell
If you update the language and some references, books written thousands of years ago sound like they could have been written today. The human condition remains the same. Your book has all the wisdom you need. Read metaphorically, and apply it to your modern life.
from How to Live: 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion by Derek Sivers
When people give opinions, add a question mark. If they say, “Immigration is bad,” change it to, “Immigration is bad?” Let the questions drift away, unanswered.
from How to Live: 27 conflicting answers and one weird conclusion by Derek Sivers