Writing
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From your mouth
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2 min read
Words signify a consciousness, of which a newborn or pet can only hear. The baby goes on to break a word up into its individual sounds, eventually coalescing into a communicative language of memes while your dog relies on its own form of internal narrative. There is some form of mental awareness in all creatures.…
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Don’t hold that thought 💬✒️
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1 min read
When in doubt, speak up. Talking is a tool for excavating thoughts—microphone in hand or not. It’s only after the speaking occurs do the words begin to flow. The same goes for writing. One doesn’t need an audience in order to do it. The movement of the pen gears the brain into motion so that…
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Reexamining the Kiss Principle
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1 min read
“Keep it simple and stupid.” That was the acronym coined by aircraft engineer Clarence Johnson during the early 1930s. He proposed the “H” style tail for airplanes which helped stabilize flight. Keeping it simple is always easier said than done. What may appear visually simple, took a deduction of complex details. We don’t get to…
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‘Good work only comes through revision’
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1 min read
After a lifetime of hounding authors for advice, I’ve heard three truths from every mouth: (1) Writing is painful— it’s ‘fun’ only for novices, the very young, and hacks; (2) other than a few instances of luck, good work only comes through revision; (3) the best revisers often have reading habits that stretch back before…
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‘The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it’
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1 min read
“Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it. The more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more…
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On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft
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2 min read
“Reading is the creative center of a writer’s life. I take a book with me everywhere I go, and find there are all sorts of opportunities to dip in. The trick is to teach yourself to read in small sips as well as in long swallows. Waiting rooms were made for books—of course! But so are…
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‘The writer feeds his book’
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1 min read
The writer feeds his book, he strengthens the parts of it which are weak, he protects it, but afterwards it is the book that grows, that designates its author’s tomb and defends it against the world’s clamour and for a while against oblivion. Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
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Why Leonardo da Vinci wrote backward
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1 min read
Leonardo da Vinci wrote backward (mirror writing) because he didn’t want others stealing his ideas. Writes Da Vinci biographer Rachel A. Koestler-Grack: “The observations in his notebooks were written in such a way that they could be read only by holding the books up to a mirror.” But did a genius who combined art and…
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Writing is a wrestling of words
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1 min read
Writing is like wrestling, a tug of war with words that only make sense when we put them down. We anticipate the next letter, next word, the next sentence, with the prayer that it all comes together: grammar, structure, and meaning. Perfection is futile. The only fight we win is taking on the resistance that…
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Abraham Lincoln on writing
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1 min read
“Writing, the art of communicating thoughts to the mind, through the eye— is the great invention of the world.” Abraham Lincoln
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All writing is in the edit
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3 min read
This post may contain affiliate links. Please see the disclosure for more info. Like photography, all writing is in the edit. When you fall into writer’s block — a myth, by the way — you should move freely between devices, formats, and even different places in order to shake out of it. Here’s one recommended writing approach I…
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Keep them guessing
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1 min read
They say write to be understood. But what’s the point in spelling it all out? Said author William Faulkner in an interview with the Paris Review: INTERVIEWER Some people say they can’t understand your writing, even after they read it two or three times. What approach would you suggest for them? FAULKNER Read it four…