I am an endless repository of writing advice, mostly superstition and a bit of which I’ve written down. The most useful thing I’ve read recently is this excerpt from Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Repair:
Phaedrus found that rhetoric at the University level was taught as a branch of reason alone. He was also having trouble with students who had nothing to say. Especially one girl, who was a serious, disciplined, and hardworking student. She wanted to write an essay about the United States. Phaedrus told her to narrow it to Bozeman but she couldn’t think of anything to say. Phaedrus told her to narrow it down to the main street of Bozeman. Still nothing. He then said “Narrow it down to the front of one building on the main street of Bozeman. The Opera House. Start with the upper left-hand brick.”The next day she returned with a 5,000 word essay on the front of the Opera House on the main street of Bozeman, Montana.
We get blocked from our own creativity because we just repeat what we have already heard. Until we really look at things and see them freshly for ourselves, we will have nothing new to say. “For every fact there is an infinity of hypotheses. The more you look the more you see.”
The difference between “trying” and “doing” is something I touched on in Day 2: Yoda Timers. I think there’s a closely related difference between “trying to write” and “writing.” Namely: “trying to write” feels like looking for things you already know, whereas “writing” feels like looking at with fresh eyes. This is something a high school art teacher taught me as well, about drawing realism. If you want to write more, pick something and examine it in as high resolution as possible. The amazing thing about reality is its endless, almost unnerving detail.
I am an endless repository of writing advice, mostly superstition and a bit of which I’ve written down. The most useful thing I’ve read recently is this excerpt from Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Repair:
The difference between “trying” and “doing” is something I touched on in Day 2: Yoda Timers. I think there’s a closely related difference between “trying to write” and “writing.” Namely: “trying to write” feels like looking for things you already know, whereas “writing” feels like looking at with fresh eyes. This is something a high school art teacher taught me as well, about drawing realism. If you want to write more, pick something and examine it in as high resolution as possible. The amazing thing about reality is its endless, almost unnerving detail.