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Joan Didion on Keeping a Notebook
I’ve been doing some research into notebooks, commonplace books, and the like. A friend of mine pointed me towards a Joan Didion essay, On Keeping A Notebook, that appears in Slouching Towards...
View ArticleStephen King On Twilight, 50 Shades of Grey, Lovecraft & More
Stephen King speaks on a number of topics and takes questions from students, faculty and others in a “Master’s Class” at UMass Lowell. I sometimes think that people don’t challenge themselves very hard...
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The Structure of a Story
“Human beings master the basics of storytelling as young children and retain this capability throughout their lives.” — Stephen Denning When psychologist T. A. Harley researched the academic literature...
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David Foster Wallace: Five Common Word Usage Mistakes
I’m a big David Foster Wallace fan. His 2005 commencement speech will go down as one of the best ever. If you’re aware enough to give yourself a choice, you can choose to look differently … You get to...
View Articlethe WAR of ART and the Unlived Life
A voracious reader and best-selling author emailed me shortly after my post Anne Lamott: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. He proceeded to tell me the book was full of terrible advice, the...
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Ernest Hemingway’s 1954 Nobel Acceptance Speech on Working Alone
“Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.” Solitude is an important aspect toward accomplishing great things, creative or otherwise. In fact, it’s one of the commonalities found amongst the routines of...
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Gabriel García Márquez — 1982 Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
“To oppression, plundering and abandonment, we respond with life.” Gabriel García Márquez was believed by many to be one of the world’s greatest writers. Two of his books, Love in the Time of Cholera...
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Ernest Hemingway on Writing
“Find what gave you the emotion; what the action was that gave you the excitement. Then write it down making it clear so the reader will see it too and have the same feeling that you had.” Ernest...
View ArticleAdvice to Writers: A Compendium of Quotes, Anecdotes, and Writerly Wisdom
In response to Ernest Hemingway on Writing a reader passed along a pointer to Advice to Writers, “a compendium of quotes, anecdotes, and writerly wisdom from a dazzling array of literary lights.” Jon...
View ArticleThe Science of Improving Your Performance at Almost Anything
Improving our performance is something we all seek to do. Given that we spend a lot of time doing things that we never get better at, I thought I’d share my “developing world class performance” file...
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Eudora Welty to The New Yorker— The best job application ever
In March of 1933, Eudora Welty, then 23 and looking for writing work, sent this beautiful letter to the offices of The New Yorker. “It’s difficult,” writes Shaun Usher in his introduction to the...
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Hunter S. Thompson on Finding Your Purpose and Living a Meaningful Life
In April of 1958, Hunter S. Thompson was 22 years old when he wrote this letter to his friend Hume Logan in response to a request for life advice. Thompson’s letter, found in Letters of Note, offers...
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“Intelligence to accept or reject what is already presented as knowledge”
“There are some things which cannot be learned quickly and time, which is all we have, must be paid heavily for their acquiring.” Hemingway has contributed to our wisdom on writing — both general...
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David Foster Wallace on Argumentative Writing and Nonfiction
In December 2004, Bryan A. Garner, who had already struck up a friendship with David Foster Wallace, started interviewing state and federal judges as well as a few key writers. With over a hundred...
View ArticleThe Future of Writing In the Age of Information
David Foster Wallace remains both loved and hated. His wisdom shows itself in argumentative writing, ambition and perfectionism, and perhaps one of the best, most profound, commencement addresses ever....
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Creativity and the Necessity of Giving up Your Best Loved Ideas and Starting...
“You need all kinds of influences, including negative ones, to challenge what you believe in.” — Bill Murray “Any year that passes in which you don’t destroy one of your best loved ideas is a wasted...
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Ursula K. Le Guin on The Human Spirit
In her acceptance speech for the National Book Foundation’s 2014 Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, Ursula K. Le Guin offered this soul-touching look at humanity. I think hard...
View ArticleStephen King Shares His (Long) Reading List
At any question and answer session, a reader inevitably asks Stephen King what he reads. Everyone, myself included, wants to know what’s on Stephen King’s reading list. Now we know. In On Writing: A...
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Steven Pinker Tells us Why our Professional Writing Sucks (And What to Do)
Harvard’s cognitive psychology giant Steven Pinker has had no shortage of big, interesting topics to write about so far. Starting in 1994 with his first book aimed at popular audiences, The Language...
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What Can We Learn From the Prolific Mr. Asimov?
To learn is to broaden, to experience more, to snatch new aspects of life for yourself. To refuse to learn or to be relieved at not having to learn is to commit a form of suicide; in the long run, a...
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