Don’t fall prey to the belief that it’s magic. It’s just a craft.
TED-Ed Blog. (2019). Neal Stephenson’s writing advice for students (and everyone else). [online] Available at: http://blog.ed.ted.com/2015/06/04/neal-stephensons-writing-advice-for-students-and-everyone-else/ [Accessed 31 Oct. 2019].
Sometimes people are led to believe that writing is a kind of fine art, where some mysterious inspiration strikes and magic happens. I think it’s more like cabinet making or soccer playing, where if you do it a whole lot you get good at it, and if you stop doing it you either stop getting good at it or you actually lose ability.
TED-Ed Blog. (2019). Neal Stephenson’s writing advice for students (and everyone else). [online] Available at: http://blog.ed.ted.com/2015/06/04/neal-stephensons-writing-advice-for-students-and-everyone-else/ [Accessed 31 Oct. 2019].
A classic mistake that I see people making is that they’ll put a lot of effort into writing their first book — and then they’ll stop and spend two years trying to sell their book, or trying to improve their book by tiny little increments, or both. And the whole time that they’re doing that, they’re wasting time that they could be spending writing their second book. What they should do is write their second book, and when they finish their second book, write their third book. One does actually get better, and I think the improvement is noticeable. Eventually, it pays off.
TED-Ed Blog. (2019). Neal Stephenson’s writing advice for students (and everyone else). [online] Available at: http://blog.ed.ted.com/2015/06/04/neal-stephensons-writing-advice-for-students-and-everyone-else/ [Accessed 31 Oct. 2019].
Most of the brain’s work is done while the brain’s owner is ostensibly thinking about something else, so sometimes you have to deliberately find something else to think and talk about.
Goodreads.com. (2019). Neal Stephenson Quotes (Author of Snow Crash). [online] Available at: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/545.Neal_Stephenson [Accessed 31 Oct. 2019].
What’s hard, in hacking as in fiction, is not writing, it’s deciding what to write.
Goodreads.com. (2019). Neal Stephenson Quotes (Author of Snow Crash). [online] Available at: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/545.Neal_Stephenson [Accessed 31 Oct. 2019].
Poetry is a sort of inspired mathematics, which gives us equations, not for abstract figures, triangles, squares, and the like, but for the human emotions. If one has a mind which inclines to magic rather than science, one will prefer to speak of these equations as spells or incantations; it sounds more arcane, mysterious, recondite.
Goodreads.com. (2019). Ezra Pound Quotes (Author of Selected Poems of Ezra Pound). [online] Available at: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/30055.Ezra_Pound [Accessed 30 Oct. 2019].
No man understands a deep book until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents.
Goodreads.com. (2019). Ezra Pound Quotes (Author of Selected Poems of Ezra Pound). [online] Available at: https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/30055.Ezra_Pound [Accessed 30 Oct. 2019].
