Category Archives: writing

Writing Will Make You a Better Writer

Posted on February 1, 2010 | Leave a comment

I’m a three-time (soon to be four-time) published author. When aspiring authors learn this, they invariably ask what word processor I use. It doesn’t fucking matter! I happen to write in Emacs. I also code in Emacs, which is a nice bonus. Other people write and code in vi. Other people write in Microsoft Word and code in TextMate+ or TextEdit or some fancy web-based collaborative editor like EtherPad or Google Wave. Whatever. Picking the right text editor will not make you a better writer. Writing will make you a better writer. Writing, and editing, and publishing, and listening – really listening – to what people say about your writing. This is the golden age for aspiring writers. We have a worldwide communications and distribution network where you can publish anything you want and – if you can manage to get anybody’s attention – get near-instant feedback. Writers just 20 years ago would have killed for that kind of feedback loop. Killed! And you’re asking me what word processor I use? Just fucking write, then publish, then write some more. One day your writing will get featured on a site like Reddit and you’ll go from 5 readers to 5000 in a matter of hours, and they’ll all tell you how much your writing sucks. And most of them will be right! Learn how to respond to constructive criticism and filter out the trolls, and you can write the next great American novel in edlin.

—Mark Pilgrim

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Posted in quotes, writing

My Idea of a Writer

Posted on January 19, 2010 | 2 Comments

My idea of a writer: someone interested in “everything.” I’d always had interests of many kinds, so it was natural for me to conceive of the vocation of a writer in this way. And reasonable to suppose that such fervency would find more scope in a great metropolis than in any variant of provincial life, including the excellent universities I had attended. The only surprise was that there weren’t more people like me.

—Susan Sontag

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Posted in academe, quotes, writing

Tagged

Exclusively by Answering Machine

Posted on December 14, 2009 | Leave a comment

For a long time, he communicated exclusively by answering machine. I would leave him a message at some point during the day—he didn’t answer the phone—and then, late at night, when I was no longer at my desk, he would leave a very long response on my voicemail. I didn’t take this personally—it was a quirk of his, and I think he was perhaps more open and direct speaking to a machine than he would have been speaking directly to another voice.

—Deborah Treisman on David Foster Wallace

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Posted in quotes, technology, work, writing

Tagged

Sugar Rush

Posted on November 30, 2009 | Leave a comment

For seven years I ate at Bob’s Big Boy. I would go at 2:30, after the lunch rush. I ate a chocolate shake and four, five, six, seven cups of coffee – with lots of sugar. And there’s lots of sugar in that chocolate shake. It’s a thick shake. In a silver goblet. I would get a rush from all this sugar, and I would get so many ideas! I would write them on these napkins. It was like I had a desk with paper. All I had to do was remember to bring my pen, but a waitress would give me one if I remembered to return it at the end of my stay. I got a lot of ideas at Bob’s.

—David Lynch

(Via.)

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Posted in coffee, movies, quotes, work, writing

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A Semi-Hermitic Existence

Posted on November 13, 2009 | Leave a comment

From the Washington Post’s profile of Edward P. Jones:

“He makes his home near Washington National Cathedral in an apartment so disheveled that he allows only close friends inside. There is no bed (he sleeps on a pallet), no bookshelves, no couch, nor much to sit on other than a kitchen chair. He does not have a car, a driver’s license or any mechanized means of transport, not even a bicycle. He has no cellphone, no DVD player, and his Internet connection is sporadic. Though he loves movies and trash daytime television — in particular, those judge shows — he has only a 10-year-old, 13-inch TV and has never had cable. He has never been to a sporting event. He has no deep romantic attachments. He says his closest friend has been Lil Coyne, an elderly woman who for 20 years lived down the hall from him in an apartment building in Alexandria. She died this summer at age 90.”

(Via.)

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Posted in TV, writing

Editing

Posted on November 10, 2009 | Leave a comment

2009starmemo
“Disgruntled Star Editor Takes Constructive Revenge” (Torontoist)

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Posted in writing

Hotel Stationery

Posted on November 6, 2009 | 2 Comments

Recently, I’ve developed a weakness for hotel stationery. It’s rare enough to receive an honest to goodness letter in the mail these days. Getting one on hotel letterhead just adds to the romance. If you believe my stationery, I’m at the Hotel Ritz one day, Fontainebleau the next. And while a box of Crane’s correspondence cards will run you north of $100, hotel stationery is complementary, so I try to go home with a stack every time I’m on the road. (Some of the classiest joints like the Chateau Marmont will even print you up personalized stationery.) And if it’s a vintage find off eBay, all the better. I just got a box of stationery from the long defunct Eastern Steam Lines. Along the bottom of the paper it says, “Onboard Steamship.” That’ll keep ‘em guessing.

—Walker Lamond

(Via.)

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Posted in quotes, style, writing

Best. Footer. Ever.

Posted on November 5, 2009 | 1 Comment

This page’s footer made me smile:

Hi, if you are coming to this site via Internet Explorer 6, you might not be getting the best experience possible. Honestly, I can’t even begin to think about what your entire experience on the internet must be like? (…probably like riding a bike on the highway while cars blow by you on their way to Costco to get gallons of mayonnaise and 60-inch plasma TV’s). How will you ever be able to use this website?????? You wont. You’re an asshole and your browser is an asshole. So look, I’m going to be honest: I kind of hate you. BUT we c-a-n make this work. Here is what I am going to need you to do: fire up your Toshiba ShitBook© that weighs about 45 pounds, wipe the Cheeto dust off the screen, download Safari, delete Internet Explorer from your computer, punch yourself in the face, and get me a pulled pork sandwich.

(Via.)

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Posted in Links, technology, writing

Before > Prior To

Posted on October 27, 2009 | Leave a comment

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Posted in video, writing

Tagged

I Lie in the Dark and I Brood

Posted on September 29, 2009 | 1 Comment

I don’t have a cellphone. I have never used a computer, and I’m not lying to you – I have an assistant. I’m computer-illiterate. I’ve never been on the internet…. I don’t have a television set…. I ignore the world. I live in a vacuum. I don’t watch TV. I don’t read the newspapers. I don’t go to movies. I lie in the dark and I brood. I think about deep, dark torture, historical shit. I think of the holy conjunction of men and women, and I put all this stuff together in my head.

—James Ellroy

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Posted in quotes, work, writing