10 ms·

An interview with Paul Graham on writing

187 points by razin 7y ago

IAmEveryone 7y ago
Only Paul Graham and the more fanatic acolytes believe Paul Graham is a good writer ("...and Paul Graham is having second thoughts", the joke usually goes on. But PG has only ever had one thought, and LISP isn't that great). Seriously: in comparison to, say, Scott Alexander, I don't see a single novel idea in Graham's Oeuvre. Mix any current text generator with the opinions of some 1980s teen just discovering Ayn Rand-style libertarianism, and it will fill as many pages as you want with the expected drivel, only in superior prose.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  Scott Alexander is the best writer (in this "field", whatever you'd call it) in his generation. So if that's how far you have to reach to find someone better, he may be pretty decent :) I'm also open to be told what other great such writers I've missed out on, Cunningham's Law stye :)
- woozyolliew 7y ago
  Someone had a similar thought https://twitter.com/real_human_vc?s=20 https://twitter.com/real_human_vc?s=20
  - gexla 7y ago
    Seems relevant to the discussion... > There is no bigger achievement than waking up before 6PM every day. That's why it's important that we get up early & get things done earlier than 6PM, otherwise we'll fall into routines that make us miserable & unhappy. https://twitter.com/real_human_vc/status/1231451118430904320 https://twitter.com/real_human_vc/status/1231451118430904320
- mdonahoe 7y ago
  Who is Scott Alexander?
  - Carpetsmoker 7y ago
    He writes the "Star Slate Codex": https://slatestarcodex.com/ https://slatestarcodex.com/ Personally, I've never been a fan. His writings are far too verbose for my liking. He uses 6 paragraphs for what could be one sentence, and I don't think that most of the content is that insightful either. But some people really like him shrug.
    - jcims 7y ago
      All you have to do is look at the verbosity of some of the comments in here to understand why.
      - Carpetsmoker 7y ago
        I have no idea what you mean with that?
        pyb 7y ago
        He probably marvels (so do I) at the ability of some commenters on here to write walls of text. I presume that these reach only a very narrow audience. I wonder how many people actually, properly read those long comments.
        ryanmercer 7y ago
        Not verbose: "The guy uses lots of words to sound smart" Verbose: "In an egregious attempt to elevate his self-worth, he injects his exchanges with an innumerable avalanche of superfluous idioms and turns of phrase to explain what otherwise would be simple statements capable of understanding by even groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise."
        Carpetsmoker 7y ago
        Oh yeah, sometimes people confuse length with ... all sorts of things. Actually, I used to think that in order for a weblog post to be worth it, it has to be "of substance", and thus "of length". Clearly those are not the same, but luckily I have corrected my thinking in this regard :-)
- sjg007 7y ago
  Maybe some more substance would help your argument. You could post a series of critiques to PG's essays for example. I am sure they would be read. I understand that substantive comments on hacker news get lost in the noise so hearing some actual criticisms in essay form would be interesting!
  - pgsbathhouse2 7y ago
    >Maybe some more substance would help your argument. What is it called when someone demands evidence for a counter position when the original position has never been supported?
    - sjg007 7y ago
      You should write an essay substantiating your claims. I would read it.
      - lidHanteyk 7y ago
        It's called "Newton's flaming laser sword" [0]. You should try harder to support the claims of others on this site; it's in the rules [1]. Here's some classic critique of PG's buffoonery [2]. It's simple: When anybody puts words to the page, they are trying to tell you something. All PG seems to be trying to communicate is how deep and thoughtful he is; I certainly don't feel like I'm drawing any other lessons from his writing, and it seems like I'm not alone. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Alder#Newton's_flaming_laser_sword https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Alder#Newton's_flaming_la... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html [2] https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm
      - pgsbathhouse2 7y ago
        >You should write an essay substantiating your claims. What claims? Why is such a basic deflection on this site so readily accepted by supposedly intelligent and inquisitive people? This type of discourse and rhetoric is pretty shameful and embarrassing. What claims do I have that I need to support?
- leftyted 7y ago
  His writing is fine. It ain't Speak, Memory but it's pleasantly spare and there's no awkwardness. I don't see Paul Graham or SSC expounding novel ideas. I enjoy SSC more too, mainly because it's funnier and I'm interested in the same kind of stuff as Scott whereas I don't find business, startups, and programming that interesting.
- claudiawerner 7y ago
  >Seriously: in comparison to, say, Scott Alexander, I don't see a single novel idea in Graham's Oeuvre. The irony to me is that a lot of Scott Alexander's writing seems to build on singular concepts that have been around for a while in sociology or philosphy, or studied, just not by exactly that name. Other times, the concepts aren't novel at all, but there's a fun AI/tech spin to the story which doesn't really add much. A continuing ignorance of established work in the field (particularly when the Internet lets you get away with it, in "soft subjects" like philosophy, sociology, political theory and critical theory[3]) is par for the course in both PG and Scott's writings. If it's not published in a blog post or a trendy book written within the past 15 years, chances are that they'll think the concept is novel. Sometimes reading Scott's articles I feel a strong sense of the Gell-Mann amnesia effect: an article I know a little something on, and he's only done minimal background reading, to the point where any serious scholar would laugh at his authoritative tone. In another comment, continuing in the Scott-PG-rationalsphere tradition, I invented a term of my own, "the hacker blogger mindset"[0]. Valuable work to introduce people to an opinionated version of one concept or another (without any pointers so you can learn more about similar work)? Sure. Valuable work for someone willing to spend twenty minutes on Google Scholar or having already read primary literature? Not really. A recent example, from one of Scott's posts on meritocracy[1]: >The intuition behind meritocracy is this: if your life depends on a difficult surgery, would you prefer the hospital hire a surgeon who aced medical school, or a surgeon who had to complete remedial training to barely scrape by with a C-? If you prefer the former, you’re a meritocrat with respect to surgeons. Generalize a little, and you have the argument for being a meritocrat everywhere else. It's amazing how much this misses the point of the conversation on meritocracy - that critics of meritocracy do not have a problem with merit itself, but rather (1) how merit can be measured in more abstract ways, (2) the degree to which meritocracy can exist with current social relations, (3) the degree to which meritocracy really does exist, with respect to claims that it does (in a just-world hypothesis kind of way). A similar problem was pointed out in the comments[2]. And yet... in support of the position Scott is attacking, he cites one recent pop-phil book, and two blog posts. Where are the published journals? Where are the essays? What have domain experts (i.e. philosophers, political theorists, economists, and sociologists) said about meritocracy? Who knows. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22101989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22101989 [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/07/24/targeting-meritocracy/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/07/24/targeting-meritocracy/ [2] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/07/24/targeting-meritocracy/#comment-526449 https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/07/24/targeting-meritocracy/... [3] The fact is that when you state a technically incorrect opinion relating to computer science, engineering, physics, biology, etc. you'll have a hundred Internet users responding with citations and research. When you do the same with the other subjects, usually the people who would prove you wrong are either disinterested in another silly Interent debate that will hinge on ideological terms, or they think they can ignore it because it's not published in a popular journal. Whether that's wise or not remains to be seen.
cairo_x 7y ago
https://www.writingroutines.com/routines/ https://www.writingroutines.com/routines/ Had a scroll through those interviews. Lord, what a hack fest. A conga line of cringe, meh, and OKAY.
- subpixel 7y ago
  I suspect the aim here is to sell aspiring writers some info product. Such is the web today.
keiferski 7y ago
If you are interested in the routines of writers, I can't recommend Daily Rituals by Mason Curry enough. Kierkegaard's method of preparing coffee is probably my favorite: “The Danish philosopher’s day was dominated by two pursuits: writing and walking. Typically, he wrote in the morning, set off on a long walk through Copenhagen at noon, and then returned to his writing for the rest of the day and into the evening. The walks were where he had his best ideas, and sometimes he would be in such a hurry to get them down that, returning home, he would write standing up before his desk, still wearing his hat and gripping his walking stick or umbrella. Kierkegaard kept up his energy with coffee, usually taken after supper and a glass of sherry. Israel Levin, his secretary from 1844 until 1850, recalled that Kierkegaard owned “at least fifty sets of cups and saucers, but only one of each sort”—and that, before coffee could be served, Levin had to select which cup and saucer he preferred that day, and then, bizarrely, justify his choice to Kierkegaard. And this was not the end of the strange ritual. The biographer Joakim Garff writes: “Kierkegaard had his own quite peculiar way of having coffee: Delightedly he seized hold of the bag containing the sugar and poured sugar into the coffee cup until it was piled up above the rim. Next came the incredibly strong, black coffee, which slowly dissolved the white pyramid. The process was scarcely finished before the syrupy stimulant disappeared into the magister’s stomach, where it mingled with the sherry to produce additional energy that percolated up into his seething and bubbling brain—which in any case had already been so productive all day that in the half-light Levin could still notice the tingling and throbbing in the overworked fingers when they grasped the slender handle of the cup.” https://www.amazon.com/Daily-Rituals-How-Artists-Work/dp/0307273601 https://www.amazon.com/Daily-Rituals-How-Artists-Work/dp/030... https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/05/daily-rituals-creative-minds-mason-currey https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/05/daily-ritual...
- freepor 7y ago
  Whatever Kierkegaard was drinking, calling it coffee would only dignify it.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  No wonder he only lived to 42.
cambalache 7y ago
From what I have read from several sources --especially from the Paris Review interviews- the routines for many good writers share the following traits: - Most productive time is in the morning, right after waking up + optional coffee/breakfast. - The time slot dedicated to writing lasts 4-6 continuous hours and that's it for the day, as far as for the pure creative process goes. - No distraction when writing, so it is not weird to see people writing by hand or typewriter. - Same starting/finishing time every day. - Many writers like to go for a walk or nap after finishing the main daily task. All those things are pretty much aligned what the current research says about productivity so I dont think is just a coincidence.
- onion2k 7y ago
  It might be true, but it also might just tell you about the sort of writers the Paris Review chooses to interview.
  - WA 7y ago
    Yeah, reminds me of the (good) advice: make writing and editing two separate processes. But yet, some writers need to fiddle with their sentences until these are perfect before they can continue writing. There are certainly approaches the majority follows. But doesn’t mean you can’t deviate from that.
    - convery 7y ago
      Ye, I often rewrite the same sentence to make it flow well or just get a nice line-ending. Found that Hemmingways motto of "write drunk, edit sober" worked well but maybe not the healthiest way =P
  - gwern 7y ago
    As it happens, I've read most of the TPR interviews (and extracted ~187 preferred writing times so far), as well as a parallel interview series run by GoodReads, and looked at/run various polls: https://www.gwern.net/Morning-writing https://www.gwern.net/Morning-writing TPR interviews some rather strange and obscure writers, and overall they don't seem to be particularly anomalous. The overwhelming majority of writers, whether fiction or nonfiction, do seem to write in the morning, although it seems that younger and nonfiction types may be somewhat more likely to prefer later starts or writing in the evening. (Samuel R. Delany, for example, whose interview I read the day before yesterday, reported in 2011 that he always gets up at 5AM to do his writing now, but as a young man he started later in the morning - similar to other reports by elderly writers contrasting their youthful later-timed writing to their present early-morning writing, describing themselves as no longer having the energy to write all day, which makes sense given the lifetime shifts in chronotypes from owl to lark and the difficulty of the elderly in sleep. And shades of OP, a decent number of afternoon/evening writers say something along the lines of 'I would write in the morning-afternoon while the kids were at school, but now that they're grown, I can write later in the day.')
greendestiny_re 7y ago
Can we go deeper? I'd like someone to do an interview with PG on Hacker News comments.
- ryanmercer 7y ago
  You can always try emailing him and cross your fingers. http://www.paulgraham.com/info.html http://www.paulgraham.com/info.html
dangus 7y ago
Paul Graham, on the front page for more unsubstantial Paul Graham content. I mean, his essays are decent but this was a snooze-fest of an interview. And recent Paul Graham blog posts that have shown up here have been obvious nonsense. I think we need to stop encouraging personality cults. This is a guy who’s a decent writer and also happened to ride the dot com boom to wealth. There’s nothing really admirable about it. You can’t gain any magical advice from someone like this because they stumbled into success. All the self-help style advice offered is basically either already obvious or impossible to replicate. All you gotta do is make a product that Yahoo! will buy off you for millions of dollars and you too can spend most of your time writing essays and starting venture capital funds. If I ran my own venture that had a community forum I’d probably be creeped out by people talking about me like I’m a savant of advice all the time...
- wittyusername 7y ago
  I was sitting at my cubicle not sure what to do in 2005 and read his essays and it crystallized some vague feeling I'd had. I am not completely sure it made the difference, but it definitely helped me get going. I quit my good job, started a company and now over a decade later I have a lot to show for it. Maybe he isn't the best writer, I dunno. I have no one to compare it to really. But I read his stuff and got tremendous value from it. I feel lucky to have read his stuff when I did and I recommend it to people at least as a first step.
- frogpelt 7y ago
  I guess what you mean is, after we have liked someone's work for a while we should stop. Because I tend to think he has a lot of great ideas. Is that the beginning of a personality cult? This new psychology of thinking that someone who is successful is nothing but lucky is very dangerous. Obviously the opposite is dangerous too--that luck plays no part. If that's "all you gotta do" what are you waiting for?
  - dangus 7y ago
    He worked on writing a programming language, of course he’s not just lucky. But I bet his net worth is at least 10 times higher than the authors of Go and we hear from him 100 times more often.
seanhunter 7y ago
Whenever anyone wants to talk to Paul Graham about writing I always wonder whether they've read any of his works, because since writing "On Lisp" (which I think is great) he's been in a death spiral of self-importance. Let's take a recent example (from [1]): > Though no doubt correct, such statements tell the reader > nothing. Useful writing makes claims that are as strong as > they can be made without becoming false. > For example, it's more useful to say that Pike's Peak is > near the middle of Colorado than merely somewhere in > Colorado. But if I say it's in the exact middle of > Colorado, I've now gone too far, because it's a bit east > of the middle. This is deeply pedestrian writing you could be proud of if English was your second language and writing was not any sort of job but as written it reads like that boring father-in-law who collars you at a family picnic and insists on telling you (even though you know) about what a frequent flyer programme is and about that time 15 years ago when they hit silver status. It's a very unfair comparison, but if you want to read amazing technical writing, try reading "Everything and more: A compact history of Infinity" by David Foster Wallace. Or contrast PG's essay with Umberto Eco's "How to write a Thesis"[2]. It's hard to escape the conclusion that PG's writing would not survive a double-blind test where someone didn't see his name attached. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/useful.html http://www.paulgraham.com/useful.html [2] It's a whole book but is excerpted here in a format that bears comparison to PG's essay https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/umberto-eco-how-to-write-a-thesis/ https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/umberto-eco-how-to-write-...
- bachmeier 7y ago
  I think your problem is in this statement > if you want to read amazing technical writing I haven't been reading PG's recent writing (only so much time in the day) but the quote you gave is a good example of how to teach a concept. It's dead simple, even obvious, when you read it. The key is that you know exactly what his point was when he wrote that. The quote you provided is not technical writing in the sense of On Lisp. If you look at the popular blog posts that make the front page of HN, many of them are at this same level - and that's okay, because it's apparently what many people want to read these days.
  - alexpetralia 7y ago

187 points by razin 7y ago

Only Paul Graham and the more fanatic acolytes believe Paul Graham is a good writer ("...and Paul Graham is having second thoughts", the joke usually goes on. But PG has only ever had one thought, and LISP isn't that great). Seriously: in comparison to, say, Scott Alexander, I don't see a single novel idea in Graham's Oeuvre. Mix any current text generator with the opinions of some 1980s teen just discovering Ayn Rand-style libertarianism, and it will fill as many pages as you want with the expected drivel, only in superior prose.

BurningFrog 7y ago
Scott Alexander is the best writer (in this "field", whatever you'd call it) in his generation. So if that's how far you have to reach to find someone better, he may be pretty decent :) I'm also open to be told what other great such writers I've missed out on, Cunningham's Law stye :)
woozyolliew 7y ago
Someone had a similar thought https://twitter.com/real_human_vc?s=20 https://twitter.com/real_human_vc?s=20
- gexla 7y ago
  Seems relevant to the discussion... > There is no bigger achievement than waking up before 6PM every day. That's why it's important that we get up early & get things done earlier than 6PM, otherwise we'll fall into routines that make us miserable & unhappy. https://twitter.com/real_human_vc/status/1231451118430904320 https://twitter.com/real_human_vc/status/1231451118430904320
mdonahoe 7y ago
Who is Scott Alexander?
- Carpetsmoker 7y ago
  He writes the "Star Slate Codex": https://slatestarcodex.com/ https://slatestarcodex.com/ Personally, I've never been a fan. His writings are far too verbose for my liking. He uses 6 paragraphs for what could be one sentence, and I don't think that most of the content is that insightful either. But some people really like him shrug.
  - jcims 7y ago
    All you have to do is look at the verbosity of some of the comments in here to understand why.
    - Carpetsmoker 7y ago
      I have no idea what you mean with that?
      - pyb 7y ago
        He probably marvels (so do I) at the ability of some commenters on here to write walls of text. I presume that these reach only a very narrow audience. I wonder how many people actually, properly read those long comments.
      - ryanmercer 7y ago
        Not verbose: "The guy uses lots of words to sound smart" Verbose: "In an egregious attempt to elevate his self-worth, he injects his exchanges with an innumerable avalanche of superfluous idioms and turns of phrase to explain what otherwise would be simple statements capable of understanding by even groundlings, who for the most part are capable of nothing but inexplicable dumb-shows and noise."
        Carpetsmoker 7y ago
        Oh yeah, sometimes people confuse length with ... all sorts of things. Actually, I used to think that in order for a weblog post to be worth it, it has to be "of substance", and thus "of length". Clearly those are not the same, but luckily I have corrected my thinking in this regard :-)
sjg007 7y ago
Maybe some more substance would help your argument. You could post a series of critiques to PG's essays for example. I am sure they would be read. I understand that substantive comments on hacker news get lost in the noise so hearing some actual criticisms in essay form would be interesting!
- pgsbathhouse2 7y ago
  >Maybe some more substance would help your argument. What is it called when someone demands evidence for a counter position when the original position has never been supported?
  - sjg007 7y ago
    You should write an essay substantiating your claims. I would read it.
    - lidHanteyk 7y ago
      It's called "Newton's flaming laser sword" [0]. You should try harder to support the claims of others on this site; it's in the rules [1]. Here's some classic critique of PG's buffoonery [2]. It's simple: When anybody puts words to the page, they are trying to tell you something. All PG seems to be trying to communicate is how deep and thoughtful he is; I certainly don't feel like I'm drawing any other lessons from his writing, and it seems like I'm not alone. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Alder#Newton's_flaming_laser_sword https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Alder#Newton's_flaming_la... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html [2] https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm https://idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm
    - pgsbathhouse2 7y ago
      >You should write an essay substantiating your claims. What claims? Why is such a basic deflection on this site so readily accepted by supposedly intelligent and inquisitive people? This type of discourse and rhetoric is pretty shameful and embarrassing. What claims do I have that I need to support?
leftyted 7y ago
His writing is fine. It ain't Speak, Memory but it's pleasantly spare and there's no awkwardness. I don't see Paul Graham or SSC expounding novel ideas. I enjoy SSC more too, mainly because it's funnier and I'm interested in the same kind of stuff as Scott whereas I don't find business, startups, and programming that interesting.
claudiawerner 7y ago
>Seriously: in comparison to, say, Scott Alexander, I don't see a single novel idea in Graham's Oeuvre. The irony to me is that a lot of Scott Alexander's writing seems to build on singular concepts that have been around for a while in sociology or philosphy, or studied, just not by exactly that name. Other times, the concepts aren't novel at all, but there's a fun AI/tech spin to the story which doesn't really add much. A continuing ignorance of established work in the field (particularly when the Internet lets you get away with it, in "soft subjects" like philosophy, sociology, political theory and critical theory[3]) is par for the course in both PG and Scott's writings. If it's not published in a blog post or a trendy book written within the past 15 years, chances are that they'll think the concept is novel. Sometimes reading Scott's articles I feel a strong sense of the Gell-Mann amnesia effect: an article I know a little something on, and he's only done minimal background reading, to the point where any serious scholar would laugh at his authoritative tone. In another comment, continuing in the Scott-PG-rationalsphere tradition, I invented a term of my own, "the hacker blogger mindset"[0]. Valuable work to introduce people to an opinionated version of one concept or another (without any pointers so you can learn more about similar work)? Sure. Valuable work for someone willing to spend twenty minutes on Google Scholar or having already read primary literature? Not really. A recent example, from one of Scott's posts on meritocracy[1]: >The intuition behind meritocracy is this: if your life depends on a difficult surgery, would you prefer the hospital hire a surgeon who aced medical school, or a surgeon who had to complete remedial training to barely scrape by with a C-? If you prefer the former, you’re a meritocrat with respect to surgeons. Generalize a little, and you have the argument for being a meritocrat everywhere else. It's amazing how much this misses the point of the conversation on meritocracy - that critics of meritocracy do not have a problem with merit itself, but rather (1) how merit can be measured in more abstract ways, (2) the degree to which meritocracy can exist with current social relations, (3) the degree to which meritocracy really does exist, with respect to claims that it does (in a just-world hypothesis kind of way). A similar problem was pointed out in the comments[2]. And yet... in support of the position Scott is attacking, he cites one recent pop-phil book, and two blog posts. Where are the published journals? Where are the essays? What have domain experts (i.e. philosophers, political theorists, economists, and sociologists) said about meritocracy? Who knows. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22101989 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22101989 [1] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/07/24/targeting-meritocracy/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/07/24/targeting-meritocracy/ [2] https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/07/24/targeting-meritocracy/#comment-526449 https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/07/24/targeting-meritocracy/... [3] The fact is that when you state a technically incorrect opinion relating to computer science, engineering, physics, biology, etc. you'll have a hundred Internet users responding with citations and research. When you do the same with the other subjects, usually the people who would prove you wrong are either disinterested in another silly Interent debate that will hinge on ideological terms, or they think they can ignore it because it's not published in a popular journal. Whether that's wise or not remains to be seen.

cairo_x 7y ago

https://www.writingroutines.com/routines/ https://www.writingroutines.com/routines/ Had a scroll through those interviews. Lord, what a hack fest. A conga line of cringe, meh, and OKAY.

subpixel 7y ago
I suspect the aim here is to sell aspiring writers some info product. Such is the web today.

keiferski 7y ago

If you are interested in the routines of writers, I can't recommend Daily Rituals by Mason Curry enough. Kierkegaard's method of preparing coffee is probably my favorite: “The Danish philosopher’s day was dominated by two pursuits: writing and walking. Typically, he wrote in the morning, set off on a long walk through Copenhagen at noon, and then returned to his writing for the rest of the day and into the evening. The walks were where he had his best ideas, and sometimes he would be in such a hurry to get them down that, returning home, he would write standing up before his desk, still wearing his hat and gripping his walking stick or umbrella. Kierkegaard kept up his energy with coffee, usually taken after supper and a glass of sherry. Israel Levin, his secretary from 1844 until 1850, recalled that Kierkegaard owned “at least fifty sets of cups and saucers, but only one of each sort”—and that, before coffee could be served, Levin had to select which cup and saucer he preferred that day, and then, bizarrely, justify his choice to Kierkegaard. And this was not the end of the strange ritual. The biographer Joakim Garff writes: “Kierkegaard had his own quite peculiar way of having coffee: Delightedly he seized hold of the bag containing the sugar and poured sugar into the coffee cup until it was piled up above the rim. Next came the incredibly strong, black coffee, which slowly dissolved the white pyramid. The process was scarcely finished before the syrupy stimulant disappeared into the magister’s stomach, where it mingled with the sherry to produce additional energy that percolated up into his seething and bubbling brain—which in any case had already been so productive all day that in the half-light Levin could still notice the tingling and throbbing in the overworked fingers when they grasped the slender handle of the cup.” https://www.amazon.com/Daily-Rituals-How-Artists-Work/dp/0307273601 https://www.amazon.com/Daily-Rituals-How-Artists-Work/dp/030... https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/05/daily-rituals-creative-minds-mason-currey https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/05/daily-ritual...

freepor 7y ago
Whatever Kierkegaard was drinking, calling it coffee would only dignify it.
tonyedgecombe 7y ago
No wonder he only lived to 42.

cambalache 7y ago

From what I have read from several sources --especially from the Paris Review interviews- the routines for many good writers share the following traits: - Most productive time is in the morning, right after waking up + optional coffee/breakfast. - The time slot dedicated to writing lasts 4-6 continuous hours and that's it for the day, as far as for the pure creative process goes. - No distraction when writing, so it is not weird to see people writing by hand or typewriter. - Same starting/finishing time every day. - Many writers like to go for a walk or nap after finishing the main daily task. All those things are pretty much aligned what the current research says about productivity so I dont think is just a coincidence.

onion2k 7y ago
It might be true, but it also might just tell you about the sort of writers the Paris Review chooses to interview.
- WA 7y ago
  Yeah, reminds me of the (good) advice: make writing and editing two separate processes. But yet, some writers need to fiddle with their sentences until these are perfect before they can continue writing. There are certainly approaches the majority follows. But doesn’t mean you can’t deviate from that.
  - convery 7y ago
    Ye, I often rewrite the same sentence to make it flow well or just get a nice line-ending. Found that Hemmingways motto of "write drunk, edit sober" worked well but maybe not the healthiest way =P
- gwern 7y ago
  As it happens, I've read most of the TPR interviews (and extracted ~187 preferred writing times so far), as well as a parallel interview series run by GoodReads, and looked at/run various polls: https://www.gwern.net/Morning-writing https://www.gwern.net/Morning-writing TPR interviews some rather strange and obscure writers, and overall they don't seem to be particularly anomalous. The overwhelming majority of writers, whether fiction or nonfiction, do seem to write in the morning, although it seems that younger and nonfiction types may be somewhat more likely to prefer later starts or writing in the evening. (Samuel R. Delany, for example, whose interview I read the day before yesterday, reported in 2011 that he always gets up at 5AM to do his writing now, but as a young man he started later in the morning - similar to other reports by elderly writers contrasting their youthful later-timed writing to their present early-morning writing, describing themselves as no longer having the energy to write all day, which makes sense given the lifetime shifts in chronotypes from owl to lark and the difficulty of the elderly in sleep. And shades of OP, a decent number of afternoon/evening writers say something along the lines of 'I would write in the morning-afternoon while the kids were at school, but now that they're grown, I can write later in the day.')

greendestiny_re 7y ago

Can we go deeper? I'd like someone to do an interview with PG on Hacker News comments.

ryanmercer 7y ago
You can always try emailing him and cross your fingers. http://www.paulgraham.com/info.html http://www.paulgraham.com/info.html

dangus 7y ago

Paul Graham, on the front page for more unsubstantial Paul Graham content. I mean, his essays are decent but this was a snooze-fest of an interview. And recent Paul Graham blog posts that have shown up here have been obvious nonsense. I think we need to stop encouraging personality cults. This is a guy who’s a decent writer and also happened to ride the dot com boom to wealth. There’s nothing really admirable about it. You can’t gain any magical advice from someone like this because they stumbled into success. All the self-help style advice offered is basically either already obvious or impossible to replicate. All you gotta do is make a product that Yahoo! will buy off you for millions of dollars and you too can spend most of your time writing essays and starting venture capital funds. If I ran my own venture that had a community forum I’d probably be creeped out by people talking about me like I’m a savant of advice all the time...

wittyusername 7y ago
I was sitting at my cubicle not sure what to do in 2005 and read his essays and it crystallized some vague feeling I'd had. I am not completely sure it made the difference, but it definitely helped me get going. I quit my good job, started a company and now over a decade later I have a lot to show for it. Maybe he isn't the best writer, I dunno. I have no one to compare it to really. But I read his stuff and got tremendous value from it. I feel lucky to have read his stuff when I did and I recommend it to people at least as a first step.
frogpelt 7y ago
I guess what you mean is, after we have liked someone's work for a while we should stop. Because I tend to think he has a lot of great ideas. Is that the beginning of a personality cult? This new psychology of thinking that someone who is successful is nothing but lucky is very dangerous. Obviously the opposite is dangerous too--that luck plays no part. If that's "all you gotta do" what are you waiting for?
- dangus 7y ago
  He worked on writing a programming language, of course he’s not just lucky. But I bet his net worth is at least 10 times higher than the authors of Go and we hear from him 100 times more often.

seanhunter 7y ago

Whenever anyone wants to talk to Paul Graham about writing I always wonder whether they've read any of his works, because since writing "On Lisp" (which I think is great) he's been in a death spiral of self-importance. Let's take a recent example (from [1]): > Though no doubt correct, such statements tell the reader > nothing. Useful writing makes claims that are as strong as > they can be made without becoming false. > For example, it's more useful to say that Pike's Peak is > near the middle of Colorado than merely somewhere in > Colorado. But if I say it's in the exact middle of > Colorado, I've now gone too far, because it's a bit east > of the middle. This is deeply pedestrian writing you could be proud of if English was your second language and writing was not any sort of job but as written it reads like that boring father-in-law who collars you at a family picnic and insists on telling you (even though you know) about what a frequent flyer programme is and about that time 15 years ago when they hit silver status. It's a very unfair comparison, but if you want to read amazing technical writing, try reading "Everything and more: A compact history of Infinity" by David Foster Wallace. Or contrast PG's essay with Umberto Eco's "How to write a Thesis"[2]. It's hard to escape the conclusion that PG's writing would not survive a double-blind test where someone didn't see his name attached. [1] http://www.paulgraham.com/useful.html http://www.paulgraham.com/useful.html [2] It's a whole book but is excerpted here in a format that bears comparison to PG's essay https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/umberto-eco-how-to-write-a-thesis/ https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/umberto-eco-how-to-write-...

bachmeier 7y ago
I think your problem is in this statement > if you want to read amazing technical writing I haven't been reading PG's recent writing (only so much time in the day) but the quote you gave is a good example of how to teach a concept. It's dead simple, even obvious, when you read it. The key is that you know exactly what his point was when he wrote that. The quote you provided is not technical writing in the sense of On Lisp. If you look at the popular blog posts that make the front page of HN, many of them are at this same level - and that's okay, because it's apparently what many people want to read these days.
- alexpetralia 7y ago