How to Write? Longhand on paper? Typewriter? Word Processor? Scrivener or Obsidian?
“Each tool creates a separate set of constraints on your creativity.”
Writing is power
Writing craft, persuasion, and the influence of prose.
38 records updated
Craft
8 RECORDS
You Have to Believe in the Gods
This Christopher Nolan guy—what does he actually like? What does he want to point his camera at? Most film directors are deeply horny and fucked up people, which is why they keep catching allegations. There is an erotics of the image. Not for this guy. His camera is never impolite enough to linger over anyone’s arse.
28 slightly rude notes on writing
“If you want that perfect brush stroke or that exquisite shot, then you have to squeeze your neurons until they scream.”
An analysis of 200,000 similes from popular fiction
“As dry as ... my humor?”
How I learned to just fucking write
“That pattern would follow me through my creative life until I found a way to write or make art that allowed me to bypass my inner critic.”
More links
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Everything You Know About Lorem Ipsum Is Wrong
YouTube
Sent
#184
“In which I accidentally become the world expert on the placeholder text Lorem Ipsum.”
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Why the best writing advice is often the weirdest
The New Yorker
Sent
#184
Everything about the book is mortifying, and it totally set me free.
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Why writing still wins
Medium
Sent
#179
“There's a referendum on the value of writing, and writing is winning.”
AI & voice
11 RECORDS
Please Use AI
“because no one wants to hear your words, the actual poorly written words of a parent (you) who changed hundreds of diapers for said child or fed them in the middle of the night from your actual body”
If you let AI do your writing, I will come to your house and kill you
“Nice little personal essay you’ve got there, lady, but I know what you really are; time to get my knife out, time to start digging around under your skin until I find the wires.”
After AI stole his clients, one Big Tech ghostwriter is using AI to get them back
“What can the future look like for me?”
AI learns language from skewed sources. That could change how we humans speak – and think
“Machine-generated text reads as smooth and polished, but it loses the meanders, interruptions and leaps of logic that communicate emotion.”
Using AI makes writing more bland, study finds
“The LLMs are pushing the essays away from anything that a human would have ever written”
Why wouldn't you use AI to publish a book ??
“What does it mean that to publish a book with as little labor as possible is the system working at its efficient best?”
AI Style Guides: How to Help AI Write Like You
“It takes what you know instinctively about your own writing and makes it legible for a machine to use.”
The Science of Why AI Still Can’t Write Like You
“Most people are wildly inconsistent writers.”
More links
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On the existential terror of AI-generated music
The Red Hand Files
Sent
#181
“What does this say about us, that we so passively acquiesce? Are we not the valiant knights, the truth-tellers, the beauty-makers, who journey to the dark side, slay the dragon, and bring back the dripping treasure? Are we not the guardians of the world’s soul?”
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Writers Are Going to Extremes to Prove They Didn’t Use AI
The Wall Street Journal
Sent
#181
I’ll use aggressively casual language, like, ‘hey yo, for real,’ or drop a bunch of exclamation point
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The Great Flattening: Corporate AI Language and Brand Voice Opportunity
The State of Brand
Sent
#178
“Corporate America is converging on a single voice. The brands that opt out will own the next decade.”
Publishing
2 RECORDS
The Profession That Does Not Exist
“Young man, you don't understand. You've chosen a profession that doesn't exist.”
Should you write a Substack instead of a book?
“For many authors, particularly those with a pre-existing platform to work from, hustling to convert a new newsletter subscriber is likely much more profitable (again, on a single-customer basis) than working on a new book.”
Persuasion
3 RECORDS
How to write an artist statement that doesn't suck
The point is not to sound smarter. The point is to say what you mean clearly enough that the work can arrive with its force intact.
Anti-Dystopia
“That is anti-dystopian action at its core: doing what makes the world more human, even when you cannot prove it matters in the grand scheme.”
The Narrative is the Business
A Substack post exploring how narrative and business strategy intersect in modern organizations
Creative identity
3 RECORDS
Strategy needs good words
“Strategy is the art of getting other people to do something. In the pursuit of that, narrative is the strategist's tool.”
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Developing creative identity
Michael's Notebook
Sent
#181
“A better question for any creative person is: what activities do you want to pursue? What kinds of understanding will that create?”
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We'll soon find out what is truly special about human writing
Psyche
Sent
#178
“a willingness to stand behind words, to mean them, and to accept the consequences of having claimed to have written them.”
Reading culture
6 RECORDS
How—and Why—to Cull Your Book Collection
“It's time to stop trying to impress some imaginary book critic who might one day look at my shelves.”
Why are you reading fewer books?
“This not because of “the phones.” It is because alternative sources of information have become more compelling.”
More links
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How to remember everything you read (stop trying)
X (Twitter)
Sent
#189
Step 1) Become obsessed with a meaningful goal.
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American Time Use Survey
iScience
Sent
#177
“Rates of daily reading for pleasure have declined over the past 20 years in the US”
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Your inability to focus isn’t a failing. It’s a design problem.
Aeon
Sent
#171
“As if the same device that delivers algorithmically curated rage-bait and also the complete works of Shakespeare is itself the problem rather than how we decide to use it.”
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Blind Date With a Book
x.com
Sent
#171
“Might be the coolest idea for a book store I’ve stumbled on.”
Not yet filed
5 RECORDS-
Email is a more important channel than any single social media company
Josh Nelson
Filed
#188
Gmail gets 11× more time than X (Twitter) (16.38% vs. 1.22%) and 12× more time than Reddit (16.38% vs. 1.33%).
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The End of Reading Is Here
The Atlantic
Sent
#187
“By asking them to read, professors are arbitrarily withholding information from students by forcing them to get it through this more difficult medium.”
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Uncovered
Uncovered
Sent
#186
Tinder for books. Read an endless stream of free book samples. Reveal and save the ones you like.
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The year literary publishing learned the power of fandom
Substack
Sent
#185
“The first public online community was created in Leopold’s Records, in Berkeley, California, in 1973.”
- https://resobscura.substack.com/p/what-is-happening-to-writing resobscura.substack.com Sent #171