Skip to main content

Writing Hack

Our savvy reader

I don't make a living with my writing. Not financially, at least.

I do write on a regular basis, whether by journal (I'm partial to the Journey app on Android and Chrome OS), by blog, or by work deliverable. There's healing benefit to writing, many psychologists have asserted. Some do make a living with their writing, although it's not often a self-sustaining profession. Even famous authors have worked other jobs to ensure they live above the subsistence level while fueling their creative urge.

Like anything else, writing takes a lot of practice to become literate - like making it to Carnegie Hall. It's magical and painful, often at the same time, and it often requires tricks to get started (and keep going). Scott Berkun, who happens to be someone who makes a living at writing, describes a few tricks to get started here (he's also a good writer with some interesting books). In the end, it's just words on a page, coming out of your mind through your hands (sometimes voice) onto paper, screen, and sometimes napkin.

How do you write? Some people ask that. Well, one word at a time. How long does it take, they ask? As long as it takes until the words are done. That can be 20 minutes, like this post, or 4 hours. Or never, if the words don't come. Or a month. Or 5 years. You never know.

But when the words do come, it is magic. And remembering the magic is a simple writing hack that allows a writing hack to motivate himself to man the keyboard and start cranking out words. Or so I've been told.



Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Party Like It's 1999

A coworker sent me a meeting invitation to the end of the world.  Fitting.  I'm not sure if I should accept or not (suppose it depends on your views of the end of the Mayan calendar ), but somehow it reminded me of the Prince song on a related subject . Fitting as well that this coworker was not born when Prince extolled the virtues of partying like it's 1999 (side note: I did party like it's 1999 while studying abroad in Milan at that time, which was a heady experience with the coming of the Euro and all.  How times have changed, how the mighty have fallen...).  Time change, sometimes faster than we think, and our cultural references become dated.  Perhaps just like the Mayan calendar falling out of fashion over the last few centuries, until its end becomes a modern cultural phenomenon - or not, depending on your view of things. In either case, it's worth partying like it's 1999 regardless because hey, it will be Friday when this all goes down, and Fridays
Post a Comment
Read more

New York Pause

Heading to the Helmsley Sometimes I work in NYC, and this is my office.  More precisely, there is a desk in the upper floors of this distinctive building that has a major thoroughfare running through it that I inhabit while typing up documents and conducting meetings in the city.  It is nothing exceptional, usually the work and sometimes the desk at which I sit, but the surrounding city is commanding, ever-thriving, and never-still. If I pay close enough attention, I am reminded of the countless things that make this city unique among the many cities I have had the pleasure to live in and visit.  But on this brisk morning, when winter gusts barrel down Park Avenue as I hustle the blocks from Lex to the building entrance security guards, I pause long enough to snap this picture.  That pause is enough reminder that I am lucky to be here, and New York City is ready to give me its best shot (I'm still not sure if the city is better personified male or female).  But that is all t
2 comments
Read more

A Little Bit of Proust

Somehow I started to read Proust. The blame goes to Alain de Botton , a writer whose witticisms deconstruct modern thinking and make intellectualism seem but a trifle and a whim. He wrote a book in 1997 called "How Proust Can Change Your Life" which distills the enigmatic French novelist into a self-help dispenser of pithy ideas. How clever I found Mr. de Botton to be when I dipped my toe into the vagaries of Proust; I picked up volume one of "In Search of Lost Time" and instantly fell into the deep end. What author dares to run sentences onward into the stratosphere that sometimes seemingly mellows behind the stars of a bright night, but never so much as an introspective person that wretches for the meaning of a simple thought, sometimes stumbling, but always emerging strongly as that same night in starry sky, almost an homage back to Van Gogh, whose rich paintings greatly represented the mood of a generation - and generations often afford a few mis-steps in l
2 comments
Read more