« Computers Controlling Us | Main | The Outsider »
April 22, 2005
Inspiration
Paul Graham writes essays - here's one he's done about writing that says some quite interesting and inciteful things. One I've picked out is:
"expect 80% of the ideas in an essay to happen after you start writing it"
I've been writing this blog for a while now, and usually I start with an idea, and just get typing. Even when I think it's going to be really short, somehow the flowing prose just streams out :-) Sometimes I reach conclusions I'd not really expected. Sometimes I write far too much and have to cut some off. But writing too much is better than too little, Paul's other comment about cutting out lots of things you write is also correct - I need to do more of that.
There is a huge amount of information like this on the interweb to help aspiring writers to write. Orson Scott Card, one of my favourite Science Fiction authors, teaches classes on writing and has some great help on his website Hatrack
Stephen King has written a book about it "On Writing", and also has these 10 Handy Tips.
Everyone seems to think that there are rules to follow. Perhaps there are a few; I'm not experienced or successful so it's not my place to say whether these are right or wrong. I do have one very obvious thing to say though. No one ever became a successful writer without actually making the effort and sitting down and churning the stuff out.
So if I haven't already mentioned it, that's why I'm here. I'm following the first and most important rule of writing. I'm actually doing it. Thanks to Paul Graham, one little iota of inspiration has led to a whole blog post.
Posted by se71 at April 22, 2005 09:11 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://se71.org/cgi-bin/suid/~shiels/mt-tb.cgi/42
Comments
Inciteful, eh? Freudian slip, perhaps? ;-)
Posted by: DJ at April 24, 2005 04:11 PM
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)