“When I wrote ‘Fahrenheit 451’ I hated book burners and I loved libraries. So there you are.” Ray Bradbury Advertisements
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Tag Archives: writing
Paper = slow food for thought
Like a scarce piece of snail mail, it gets our attention. A story lies within the envelope and thus we feel compelled to spend more time with it. But another email augurs the birthing of threads, as it speeds up the time it was suppossed to save. In his book Social Acceleration: A New Theory […]
Story unbridled
Make yourself not begin. Keep postponing your creative impulses until you store up some more thinking. The forest always hides secrets. When you keep gathering string, the variables appear endless. But the extra attending is crucial. The unbridled story is no longer a diversion when it becomes destiny. Once the end of the rope ceases […]
How technology impacts the way people write
From Nietzsche’s Writing Ball, to Stephen King’s typewriter, to Steve Jobs’ Macintosh and iPhone, technology has changed the way we write. Describes Matthew Kirschenbaum in The New Republic: “Our writing instruments are also working on our thoughts.” Nietzsche wrote, or more precisely typed, this sentence on a Malling-Hansen Writing Ball, a wondrous strange contraption that looks […]
Writing with a pencil
If you write with a pencil you get three different sights at it to see if the reader is getting what you want him to. First when you read it over; then when it is typed you get another chance to improve it, and again in the proof. Writing it first in pencil gives you […]
I weighed the prose and the cons
Letters to a young poet ✍️ Follow @wellsbaum on Instagram
Literary Coffee
On the rocks, of course. Write drunk, edit sober. Subtle reminder: “The first draft of anything is sh*t.” Ernest Hemingway
Creativity is a fancy version of productivity
People confuse busyness with productivity. Answering emails all day is mostly a waste of time, as is instant messaging co-workers. Doing something — typing into little boxes all day — fulfills the human desire to feel useful. Similarly, people often perceive what artists do is an unnecessary use of time. But creativity is a fancy […]
Information resurfaced with Readwise
The glut of information means that we need to review things more than ever. And one of the most useful tools I’ve come across is Readwise. Each day or weekly (up to you), it emails you a dose of your Kindle and Instapaper highlights. Rereading through them not only reminds you of the interesting passages […]
Book review bingo
When it comes to book reviews, authors have to take the good with the bad. But writer Paraic O’Donnell has created a bingo of book reviews all cliche and positive in nature. Needless to say, I’d love to see an indifferent version. But maybe that’s what the FREE SPACE is for.
Philip Roth on naps
“Let me tell you about the nap,” he laughs. “It’s absolutely fantastic. When I was a kid, my father was always trying to tell me how to be a man, and he said to me, I was maybe 9, and he said to me, ‘Philip, whenever you take a nap, take your clothes off, put […]
Mind recess
Inactivity cultivates new insights. It’s not so much as being bored than it is the value of pausing. It’s a good thing we can’t write everything our brain says down on paper. Most of it would be jibberish. Even when we dictate our thoughts onto the computer, we’re impeding the darts of words from overwhelming […]
Happy Bullet Journal Day!
If you look around Pinterest and Facebook groups, you’ll see that bullet journalling is all the rage but what most people don’t know is that Ryder Carroll is the originator of the Bullet Journal Method. Today marks five years since Carroll introduced bulletjournal.com to the world, helping millions of people like myself organize and prioritize […]
No guarantees, guaranteed
In releasing your thought debris onto the internet, two questions may hold you up: Will anyone will read it? Will anyone care? They certainly won’t read it if you don’t post it. And two, no one will ever care as much as you. Guaranteed. So, why wouldn’t you just drift into the freedom of expression? […]
Things that stress writers out
Inspired by Hannah