I decided it was time to improve my writing. It felt both forced and stifled: artless, lifeless, joyless and uninteresting. And my reading was falling off too, both in quantity and quality. The two problems — with writing and reading — seemed connected. I hoped reading more (and more importantly, reading better) would help me write [...]
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books,
borges,
chekov,
david foster wallace,
discipline,
fiction,
geoff dyer,
learning,
literature,
pessoa,
practice,
reading,
self-improvement,
writing
I’ve heard great things about Zadie Smith’s work as a writer, but I had a hard time bringing myself to click on this link. The essay is about Facebook, and the generation that made it, and the movie that everyone’s talking about. It also references Jaron Lanier’s critique of the internet and adds to a growing [...]
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change,
evolution,
facebook,
future,
generativity,
meaning,
philosophy,
progress,
social media,
society,
technology,
twitter
I just had a crazy thought about The Social Network. It turns on this controversial and often-repeated remark (found here) by screenwriter Aaron Sorkin: I don’t want my fidelity to be to the truth; I want it to be to storytelling. I’m #TeamInternet all the way but I appreciate where Sorkin is coming from. I’m sort [...]
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cultural evolution,
facebook,
fiction,
film,
generativity,
internet,
movies,
narrative,
stories,
storytelling,
truth,
web,
writing
“Books are being replaced by reading,“ to borrow a phrase from Jack Shafer. Digital technology “distances us from the old magic conjured by books” by giving us better ways to get what’s inside them. Of course the tactile experience is lost, but that’s only a sentimental attachment — not without genuine value, but not without considerable influence from purely [...]
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blogging,
bookfuturism,
books,
future,
information,
publishing,
reading,
writing
Bob Lefsetz wonders whether Cee-Lo’s “F**k You” is going to be another here-today-gone-tomorrow novelty. He uses the song as a jump-off to appeal for music with more staying-power and quality. His point of comparison is the popular series of TED talks: These TED talkers didn’t start yesterday, most have spent years dedicated to their field, to [...]
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cee-lo green,
community,
hype,
internet,
memes,
music,
popularity,
quality,
relationships,
reputation,
ted
Lately I’ve been scouring the nets and local book-lenders for guidance and inspiration on writing. I stumbled on this at Nieman Storyboard [recommended, and the source of this post's title]: Now, just as I don’t know what a story is going to be when I start out working on it, I have no idea how to [...]
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beginners,
david foster wallace,
discipline,
disciplines,
discovery,
entrepreneurship,
history,
hunter s thompson,
journalism,
learning,
outsiders,
reporting,
work,
writing
I’m not joking: when I was a kid I went through a phase of wanting to grow up to be someone who wrote “famous quotes.” From time to time I’d think of something that sounded profound and I’d think, “that isn’t so hard!” But then I wondered, “So now… how does this clever quote become [...]
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rhetoric,
writing
How much do I love Jacques Barzun? The exemplary historian and teacher, proponent of the Great Books tradition, Dean of Faculties and Provost at Columbia University for over a decade, who also graced the cover of Time magazine for a feature on American intellectuals, etc, etc, etc… wrote this about amateurs: A world of professionals [...]
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expertise,
higher education,
history,
jacques barzun,
learning,
professionalism,
professions,
universities
Reality Hunger: A Manifesto by David Shields One of 2010′s most talked written-about books. For anyone interested in writing and storytelling this might be worth owning and occasionally flipping through for inspiration. A lot of great insights about truth and fiction — and whether either can really exist in pure form — much of which [...]
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anthropology,
books,
clay shirky,
evolution,
fiction,
history,
literature,
nicholas carr,
non-fiction,
reading,
richard florida,
sociology
I worry I enjoy ambiguity, irony, “meta” and satire a little too much. I’m worried my last post about copyright laws might seem too resentful (it is somewhat resentful — regretfully) because I genuinely sympathize with all sides. In the case of copyright, I appreciate the economic [and social!] stability it enables, and I want [...]
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ambiguity,
conflict,
criticism,
humour,
irony,
laughter,
meta,
perceptions,
satire,
writing
» … besides news about Haiti, Google, #teamconan (awesome!), prorogation… » How Fiction Works, James Wood — not so much a how-to as a brilliantly curated conversation across time between some of the greatest authors about subtleties I’d never noticed, e.g. how characters are efficiently “got in,” etc. » The Design of Business, Roger Martin … who has [...]
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books,
design thinking,
geoff dyer,
james wood,
jonathan zittrain,
nietzsche,
roger martin,
vampire weekend
With me it varies a lot. Sometimes I’ll write a blog post about it. Depends though. For the last couple of fiction books I wrote little reviews immediately after I finished them. I think I was trying to articulate “what they were about,” or something. Sometimes I’ll write a post that isn’t exactly about the [...]
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books,
personal,
reading,
writing