On Writing #3

Periodically I like to gather various observations about writing, and share my perspective. Last time was in honor of my trip to Inkhaven. This time will be in honor of the announcement of Inkhaven #3, which I encourage everyone to apply to. I doubt I will be able to usefully be an advisor, but you never know. This is not the ‘here is my core process’ post, although there are hints throughout as there always are. I’ll do that at some point. Previously in series: On Writing #1, On Writing #2. Table of Contents You Still Got It. How Scott Sumner Writes. How Scott Alexander Writes. How Jasmine Sun Writes. How Various Famous Writers Write. How Nabeel Qureshi Defines Great Writing. Quickly, There’s No Time. If At First. Writers Have A Harder Time Influencing, But It Can Still Be Done. It’s Not (Only) The Incentives, It’s (Also) You. Beware The Fetish of the Desk. How Orson Scott Card Writes. Doing The Math Is Fun And Supererogatory. Brevity is the Soul of Wit. You Still Got It I used to be like this more often, constantly doubting first if I had it at all, then later if I still got it, then finally if I’ll blow it. Hitting post used to be absolutely terrifying, every time. It’s no longer routine for me to freak out but I’m not zero percent like this now: Dean W. Ball: By the way if you are a young writer and not routinely freaking out about “whether you still got it” you aren’t doing it right. That anxiety is what drives you forward. Anton Leicht: i don’t know anyone whose writing I love whose work isn’t the product of defying ‘it’s so over, i’m washed, no one will ever read anything else i write again’ over and over again Dean W. Ball: yes, Beethoven spoke of this too Nathan Lambert (fixed it?): By the way if you are a writer and not routinely freaking out about “whether you still got it” you aren’t doing it right. That anxiety is what drives you forward. Dean W. Ball: Agreed! But I figure all the older writers know this :) Andy Masley: Literally every time I sit down with a new thing Dean W. Ball: Almost literally every week I wake up and say to myself “everything good you’ve ever written is behind you, and it wasn’t even ever that good and now you have no more juice” and then I sit down to write What about me? I worry that I’ve had or used all my good ideas, that I’ll be repeating myself. I worry that I won’t recapture the magic that goes into a really great post. I worry that I missed the key windows of time to say the important things. I worry I’m getting too old and my brain is slowly not working right anymore. I worry I’m going to start making big mistakes and look like an idiot. My real anxiety these days comes not from ‘I don’t got it’ but from ‘I could blow it.’ It stems from the opportunity, from the stakes of the games I’m trying to play. Whereas I guess if I ‘don’t have it’ then there’d really be nothing to sweat, you know? The worries mostly apply to me for my ‘effort posts,’ where I’m trying to assemble a clear thesis and create something that will last. For roundups and weeklies, I don’t much worry about it. Those are more like ‘clocking in.’ I notice that most of the time, when I do really have something, I stop worrying. I draw the parallel to being a competitor in Magic: The Gathering. I would worry I didn’t have it. When I was really clocked in I didn’t worry about not having it, I worried more about blowing the chance when I did have it. So it’s a similar pattern. Is the anxiety actually useful? Does it drive you forward? To some extent yes. In order to write well you have to reinvent, to do something you haven’t done before, and you have to struggle and push through bad ideas and false starts and so on, and be intolerant of things that aren’t good enough or could be better. But I don’t think it’s necessary, at least not for everyone. You just need something pushing you forward, some form of dread about not putting in every last bit of effort. You can be driven forward by opportunity or risk, rather than anxiety about ability, and I’m sure there are other similar tricks. How Scott Sumner Writes Scott Sumner looks at Virginia Woolf on writing advice, and offers a list of his own. Scott Sumner: Do a lot of reading—that’s where ideas come from. Read in all sorts of fields, even fields you might assume to be useless, such as philosophy. But also try to be an expert in at least one field. Do a lot of writing, as writing helps one to think. Think of blogging as a form of conversation. When you converse with people, you presumably are aware of your audience. That should also be true of blogging—think about who you are writing for. Even a great novel or painting is a form of conversation, Artists are reacting to what other artists have done. A blogger just starting out should probably not be presenting grand theories of everything, rather one should start by reacting to what others are discussing. People complained that I often “bury the lede”. So, I guess you shouldn’t do that. Give people