★★★★☆ | Writing | Digital | Borrow | StoryGraph | Goodreads
Reading Notes
A quick, lively read. Take aways:
- Show up and do the work. Fake it til you make it.
- Studying a favorite author in depth, and then their three favorite authors, is a great way to emulate and build on their genius.
- Get away from the computer during the creative parts of the work. Grab a pen and notebook. Go outside and walk.
- Write the book you would want to read. Similar to Rilke’s advice to his young poet.
Highlights
In my experience, it’s in the act of making things and doing our work that we figure out who we are. (Location 133)
Don’t just steal the style, steal the thinking behind the style. You don’t want to look like your heroes, you want to see like your heroes. (Location 186)
The best advice is not to write what you know, it’s to write what you like. Write the kind of story you like best—write the story you want to read. (Location 232)
“We don’t know where we get our ideas from. What we do know is that we do not get them from our laptops.” —John Cleese (Location 249)
The computer is really good for editing your ideas, and it’s really good for getting your ideas ready for publishing out into the world, but it’s not really good for generating ideas. There are too many opportunities to hit the delete key. The computer brings out the uptight perfectionist in us—we start editing ideas before we have them. (Location 280)
I have two desks in my office—one is “analog” and one is “digital.” The analog desk has nothing but markers, pens, pencils, paper, index cards, and newspaper. Nothing electronic is allowed on that desk. This is where most of my work is born, and all over the desk are physical traces, scraps, and residue from my process. (Unlike a hard drive, paper doesn’t crash.) The digital desk has my laptop, my monitor, my scanner, and my drawing tablet. This is where I edit and publish my work. (Location 288)
Step one, “do good work,” is incredibly hard. There are no shortcuts. Make stuff every day. Know you’re going to suck for a while. Fail. Get better. Step two, “share it with people,” was really hard up until about ten years ago or so. Now, it’s very simple: “Put your stuff on the Internet.” (Location 359)
Your brain gets too comfortable in your everyday surroundings. You need to make it uncomfortable. You need to spend some time in another land, among people that do things differently than you. Travel makes the world look new, and when the world looks new, our brains work harder. (Location 425)
“Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.” —Gustave Flaubert