Writing refers to physical pictures which represent our spoken language. These pictures take the form of letters and numbers, and a combination of these form words, which combine to form sentences and paragraphs, all of which is called text.
Writing communicates thoughts in the form of written information to share ideas from brain to brain.
What does writing do?
A writer’s role can be understood in several ways, depending on the context and purpose of their work, but at the core, writers aim to communicate ideas, tell stories, and share information. Here’s a breakdown of what a writer does and the point of their work:
- Communication of Ideas: Writers take complex or abstract ideas and make them accessible to a broader audience. Whether through articles, stories, or essays, they clarify thoughts, provoke reflection, and facilitate understanding.
- Storytelling and Entertainment: In fiction, screenwriting, and creative non-fiction, the point of writing often lies in telling stories that captivate, entertain, or emotionally move the reader. Writers build worlds, create characters, and evoke emotions, making their audience see life from different perspectives.
- Empathy and Understanding: A good writer allows the reader to step into the shoes of someone else, fostering empathy. Writers often explore different viewpoints, helping readers gain a broader understanding of the world and its complexity.
- Persuasion and Influence: Writers in marketing, copywriting, journalism, and opinion pieces aim to persuade or influence their readers. This can mean encouraging them to buy a product, adopt a new idea, or change their behavior.
- Documentation and Record-Keeping: Writers serve as documentarians of human experience, recording facts, history, or personal reflections. Through journals, reports, historical accounts, and biographies, writers preserve knowledge for future generations.
- Education and Information: Many writers focus on educating readers by simplifying complex subjects (like science writing or technical writing) or by providing factual, accurate information in news reporting or academic texts.
- Building Connections: Writers connect people across time, space, and culture. Through their words, they can bridge gaps between different perspectives, offer shared experiences, or foster understanding across diverse groups.
- Creative Expression: Writing is also a form of self-expression. Writers explore and articulate their own thoughts, emotions, and experiences, making personal experiences resonate universally. Poetry, memoirs, and blogs often fall into this category.
In short, a writer’s purpose is both personal and communal: to inform, entertain, persuade, and connect people. They transform thoughts into words that have the power to influence how we think, feel, and perceive the world.
Quotes
“The magic you’re looking for, is in the work you’re avoiding.”
“Don’t try to be original. Be simple. Be good technically, and if there is something in you, it will come out” -Henri Matisse
“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something in your life.” -Winston Churchill
“Some people really benefit from hearing advice that everyone knows, for the same reason we keep schools open despite every subject in them having been taught before.” -Patrick McKenzie
Ernest Hemingway
“Go all the way with it. For once, do not back off, go all the goddamn way with what matters.” -Ernest Hemingway
When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again. You have started at six in the morning, say, and may go on until noon or be through before that. When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through. -Ernest Hemingway, Interview on his working habits
Tim Urban
- Just be yourself online. The core is me kind of hanging out with readers, talking to them.
- Say you research something for 6 months… basically your writing should squash that entire arc into the highlights, the dopamine producing parts.
- The craft with writing isn’t necessarily in the ideas, the craft of writing is in the storytelling, making the ideas fun and relatable. Keep it interesting.
- Don’t think like a scientist – you don’t need any novel ideas. Just a novel story. That’s it.
- Old ideas, new story.
Leo Babauta
I am not a blogger. I am no author. I am a simple man who enjoys a simple life with his family. I write to be able to afford living that simple life. -Leo Babauta, I am not a brewer
Andy Matuschak
- The high-order bit for my productivity is whether I complete a deeply-focused morning creative block.
- No distractions, no internet, just you, and some writing. Focus on whatever interests you that day.
- Get curious. Think about the big picture questions, and focus on why this work could possibly be important.
- Get playful. Don’t worry about doing it “right,” don’t worry about “how long it’s taking me,” don’t worry about “solving” the problem or doing something “important.” Just enjoy the interaction with the problem and the impulses you feel relative to it. Act on those impulses; watch what happens; act on the new impulses. Turn up the temperature on the distribution.
- Obsession. It seems obvious, but: amazing creative work tends to come from people who find creation or discovery in their domain to be among the most meaningful activities in their world. An almost spiritual devotion to seeking moments where one can see beyond the profane secular world and come into contact with something “higher”, eternal, a patterned view of reality itself—whatever that means for one’s particular domain.
“The longing to behold this pre-established harmony is the source of the inexhaustible patience and perseverance with which Planck has devoted himself, as we see, to the most general problems of our science, refusing to let himself be diverted to more grateful and more easily attained ends. I have often heard colleagues try to attribute this attitude of his to extraordinary will-power and discipline – wrongly, in my opinion. The state of mind which enables a man to do work of this kind is akin to that of the religious worshiper or the lover; the daily effort comes from no deliberate intention or program, but straight from the heart.”
Paul Graham
- How to work hard
- Do something that you want to spend all of your free time doing.
Seth Godin
The method isn’t to go out and find an agent. The method is to do work so impossibly magical that agents and producers come looking for you. You, the one who cared enough to put it all on the table, who fell in love with your viewers and your craft, and who made something that mattered.
Ship your work. It’s good enough. Then make it better.
I think it’s evil to persuade kids to start smoking, to cynically manipulate the electoral or political process, to lie to people in ways that cause disastrous side effects. I think it’s evil to sell an ineffective potion when an effective medicine is available. I think it’s evil to come up with new ways to make smoking acceptable so you can make a few more bucks.
Marketing is beautiful when it persuades people to get a polio vaccine or to wash their hands before performing surgery. Marketing is powerful when it sells a product to someone who discovers more joy or more productivity because he bought it. Marketing is magic when it elects someone who changes the community for the better. Ever since Josiah Wedgwood invented marketing a few centuries ago, it has been used to increase productivity and wealth.
Just like every powerful tool, the impact comes from the craftsman, not the tool. Marketing has more reach, with more speed, than it has ever had before. With less money, you can have more impact than anyone could ahve imagined just ten years ago. The question, one I hope you’ll ask yourself, is What are you going to do with that impact?
Jocko Willink
- The Four Laws of Combat
- Cover and Move: Teammates protect eachother, one moves while the other covers for them. Different factions need to coordinate, support each other, and avoid infighting. Literally, teamwork makes the dream work.
- Keep It Simple Stupid: Prevent confusion during the operation by keeping it as simple as possible.
- Prioritize and Execute: Stay calm and prioritize the actions in a simple step by step manner, then execute. Keep it orderly and methodical so that the stress doesn’t overwhelm you.
- Decentralized Command: Delegate decisions to subordinates so you can focus on the big picture. Deal with no more than 4-6 sub-leaders. Communication is absolutely critical here, instructions should be simple and questions should be cleared up.
- Planning: Needs to be clear, anticipate problems, delegate details to junior leaders, and focus the team on the end-state/goal/winning-condition, or Commander’s Intent.
- Lead up the chain: Provide more info than needed to senior members, do so in a clear, respectful manner.
Cal Newport
- The Deep Life: do less, do better, know why
- Simplify your interests to one point of major focus, to go all in on and make into your career. Everything else, create a baseline, a minimum, so it’s not forgotten.
3Blue1Brown
- Just get started. Begin iterating and receiving feedback before overthinking it.
- When explaining new topics, try putting concrete and specific ideas before general and abstract frameworks. This runs contrary to how most of us start explaining things that we already understand well.
- Topic choice matters way more than production quality.
- That said, get a good microphone and learn how to use it (an embarrassing number of 3blue1brown videos have terrible audio.)
- Embrace niche topics, especially when getting started, rather than trying to cast the widest net you can.
- Know your genre, and be wary of pattern matching from creators outside your genre. Some educational creators play the role of student documenting their own learning, others play the role of an expert conveying what they’ve spent years learning, others are teachers targeting students in school, others are journalists trying to summarize recent breakthroughs. All these (and more) have value, but they have different implications for pacing and style, so what works for one may not work for another.
- In math especially, topic definitions should not be seen as a starting point, but an ending point.
- Always ask what picture or visual you could use to elucidate a topic. It doesn’t have to be fancy, and sometimes topics don’t lend themselves to a visual, but it’s always worth asking.
- Using math animation software (like manim) can be useful when the topic at hand lends itself to a programmatic description, but I’ve seen many people overuse and abuse it, e.g. by just displaying a series of equations or text which are unnecessarily animated.
Steven Pressfield
- Resistance prevents us from achieving our higher self: writer, meditation, fitness, moral courage, etc.
- Resistance points to the action it most wants us to stop doing.
- Procrastination: I’ll start tomorrow
- Resistance feels like unhappiness. Bored, restless. Want to party. Then vice kicks in. Consumer culture tries to get you to buy shit to alleviate it. We will never cure our restlessness by buying shit.
“Well you think you’re so clever, and classless, and free / But you’re all fucking peasants, as far as I can see”
- Freedom only extends as far as our own self-mastery
- The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.
- Resistance presents a lot of true, legitimate rationalizations.
- The professional always takes the role he’s afraid of.
- The professional concentrates on work and lets the rewards come.
- The only good time is today. You have to play hurt.
“It is one thing to study war, and another to live the warriors life” -Telamon of Arcadia
- The professional loves it so much, he dedicates his life to it.
“Fortunately, inspiration strikes every morning at 9AM sharp.” -Somerset Maugham
- You must know the difference between urgent and important, and you must do what’s important.
- The man in the arena fails
- Pro loves the work, but too much love can make him choke, so he must have ice in his veins.
- Play for money, blue-collar mentality.
- Jobs: We show up everyday, no matter what, all day, for the long haul. Stakes are high & real, we get paid, we don’t overidentify, we master technique, we joke, we receive praise or blame.
- Be a mercenary, a gun for hire. Don’t turn down jobs.
- Pro must be persistent and patient and suffer through pain.
- It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
- Pro focuses on technique and leaves what and why to the gods
- Play it as it lays
- Be prepared to confront your own self-sabotage.
- The goal is not victory, take a beating when you have to, go for the throat when you have the opportunity
- Throw down a 360 tomahawk jam from time to time, just to let the boy’s know you’re still in business
- Don’t hesitate to ask for help.
- Pro doesn’t identify with their instrument.
- All you can do is leave it all on the field, the rest is up to fate.
- This is Stoicism applied to art.
- Treat yourself as a corporation – hire and fire yourself, corporate expenses and taxes, etc. I’m Me, Inc., I’m a pro
- The writer’s life is romantic because it’s the core struggle towards higher ideals.
“Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it. Begin it now” -J. Goethe
- Fear of poverty, throwing away your education, launching into the void, passing the point of no return.
- It’s our job to find out who we are and become it.
- The hack asks what the market is looking for, not what’s in his own heart. Truly, he’s scared of being authentic. He doesn’t ask himself “What do I think is important?”
- If I were the last person on Earth, would I still do it?
- Creative work is not selfish, it’s a gift. Give it all you’ve got.
Stephen King
From the book On Writing
- One would do well to get rid of their TV
- Writing is seduction, good talk is part of seduction.
- Write a lot, read a lot.
Albert Einstein
- “I can’t bear the thought of using my creative powers to create more refined techniques for capital gain.”
- Don’t let those academic fools in Zurich change you Albert, their knowledge is their weakness, whereas your imagination is your strength!
- All I did was ask questions
Pablo Picasso
- “I will be a great artist someday, but I will do it my own way.”
- “Find women that make you want to pick up a brush. Find things that make you want to create.”
- “The only way to be a true artist is to work day and night. Lose yourself in it.”
Vincent van Gogh
“In my unbelief I’m a believer, in a way, and though having changed I am the same, and my torment is none other than this, what could I be good for, couldn’t I serve and be useful in some way, how could I come to know more thoroughly, and go more deeply into this subject or that? Do you see, it continually torments me, and then you feel a prisoner in penury, excluded from participating in this work or that, and such and such necessary things are beyond your reach. Because of that, you’re not without melancholy, and you feel emptiness where there could be friendship and high and serious affections, and you feel a terrible discouragement gnawing at your psychic energy itself, and fate seems able to put a barrier against the instincts for affection, or a tide of revulsion that overcomes you. And then you say, How long, O Lord! Well, then, what can I say; does what goes on inside show on the outside? Someone has a great fire in his soul and nobody ever comes to warm themselves at it, and passers-by see nothing but a little smoke at the top of the chimney and then go on their way. So now what are we to do, keep this fire alive inside, have salt in ourselves, wait patiently, but with how much impatience, await the hour, I say, when whoever wants to, will come and sit down there, will stay there, for all I know?” -Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh
“There’s the one who’s an idler through laziness and weakness of character, through the baseness of his nature… Then there’s the other idler, the idler truly despite himself, who is gnawed inwardly by a great desire for action, who does nothing because he finds it impossible to do anything since he’s imprisoned in something, so to speak, because he doesn’t have what he would need to be productive, because the inevitability of circumstances is reducing him to this point. Such a person doesn’t always know himself what he could do, but he feels by instinct, I’m good for something, even so! I feel I have a raison d’être! I know that I could be a quite different man! For what then could I be of use, for what could I serve! There’s something within me, so what is it! That’s an entirely different idler.” -Vincent van Gogh, The Letters of Vincent van Gogh
Rick Rubin
- Creativity will benefit everything in your life.
- It’s a way of looking at the world – survival vs creation – wanting the world to be the best it can be, and doing what it takes to make it come true
- Nobody else knows the answer. They can’t tell you what to do.
- Do exactly what you love, screw the money.
- You won’t be great unless you think creatively, not survivally
- Be unique – show other people how you see the world
- When it’s good, it makes you laugh
- Pay deep attention to what’s around us
Austin Kleon
- Steal Like An Artist. “Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again.” Andre Gide. Nothing is original. Study and copy your masters.
- Don’t wait until you know who you are to get started. in the act of creating and doing our work we discover who we are. Do the work every day. Fake it ’til you make it.
- Write the book you want to read. Ask yourself “What would make this a better story?” What did you forget about your favorite work?
- Use Your Hands. Computer is good for editing, but not for generating ideas. Create a digital and an ANALOG space. Scribble, cut, collect. “Art that comes only from the mind is no good at all.”
- Side projects and hobbies are important. Practice PRODUCTIVE PROCRASTINATION. It’s the side projects that take off. That’s where it all happens. If you’re out of ideas, wash the dishes, take a walk.
- The secret: do good work and share it with people. 1) Pay attention to something. 2) Invite others to pay attention with you. “It’s not that people are mean or cruel. They’re just busy.” -Steven Pressfield.
- Geography is no longer our master. All you need is space and a little time, some self-imposed solitude, and temporary confinement.
- Be nice (the world is a small town). Make friends, ignore enemies. Write fan letters and keep an applause file. “The best way to get approval is not to need it.”
- Be boring (it’s the only way to get work done). It takes a lot of energy to be creative. 1) Take a nap 2) Stay out of debt 3) Keep a logbook 4) Take care of yourself.
- Creativity is subtraction. It is what the artist leaves out that makes art interesting. Choose wisely.
