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I was taught that writing and speaking are very different you tend to speak much differently than you'd write. Maybe that was bad advice.

pfortuny 5y ago
Indeed: it seems (according to TA Eliot) that Henry James dictated his latest novels to a typist (or something similar) and that accounts for the density and lack of freshness (also of his revises edition of his works, which he did in his old age).
- Wistar 5y ago
  Mark Twain dictated some 2,000 pages for his autobiography. "Twain first tried dictating into Thomas Edison's new recording machine but didn't like it -- he was a man who strutted stages all over the world, delivering extemporaneous spiels. Twain needed a live audience to speak to, not a bloodless machine. He eventually found that audience in stenographer Josephine Hobby and author Albert Bigelow Paine, his first biographer. Paine says Twain often dictated from his bed, clad in a handsome silk dressing gown of rich Persian pattern, propped against great snowy pillows. He also got up, paced the floor and waved his arms as he poured out nearly 2,000 pages of typescript over three years." https://www.npr.org/2010/12/01/131703237/on-publishing-mark-twain-s-autobiography https://www.npr.org/2010/12/01/131703237/on-publishing-mark-...
grayclhn 5y ago
You do, but the goal here isn't to write the way you speak, it's to force a different engagement with your own writing than you would get otherwise. This page from the UNC writing center gives a better explanation: https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/reading-aloud/ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/reading-aloud/ I try to follow this advice for important emails, and it helps a lot.
cf 5y ago
I'd say writing that's like your speech without filler words and backtracking to rephrase what you just said can make for remarkably great prose.
abdullahkhalids 5y ago
If you write on a computer, printing the essay in a different font/color/line spacing, and reading it, also works.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
nojs 5y ago
PG has some interesting thoughts about this: http://www.paulgraham.com/talk.html http://www.paulgraham.com/talk.html
permo-w 5y ago
I suspect that that may have been the case for people who grew up without and don’t primarily communicate with the internet, people whose writing style is mainly shaped by a school syllabus, but nowadays I’d guess that that’s falling away, to an extent

pfortuny 5y ago

Indeed: it seems (according to TA Eliot) that Henry James dictated his latest novels to a typist (or something similar) and that accounts for the density and lack of freshness (also of his revises edition of his works, which he did in his old age).

Wistar 5y ago
Mark Twain dictated some 2,000 pages for his autobiography. "Twain first tried dictating into Thomas Edison's new recording machine but didn't like it -- he was a man who strutted stages all over the world, delivering extemporaneous spiels. Twain needed a live audience to speak to, not a bloodless machine. He eventually found that audience in stenographer Josephine Hobby and author Albert Bigelow Paine, his first biographer. Paine says Twain often dictated from his bed, clad in a handsome silk dressing gown of rich Persian pattern, propped against great snowy pillows. He also got up, paced the floor and waved his arms as he poured out nearly 2,000 pages of typescript over three years." https://www.npr.org/2010/12/01/131703237/on-publishing-mark-twain-s-autobiography https://www.npr.org/2010/12/01/131703237/on-publishing-mark-...

grayclhn 5y ago

You do, but the goal here isn't to write the way you speak, it's to force a different engagement with your own writing than you would get otherwise. This page from the UNC writing center gives a better explanation: https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/reading-aloud/ https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/reading-aloud/ I try to follow this advice for important emails, and it helps a lot.

cf 5y ago

I'd say writing that's like your speech without filler words and backtracking to rephrase what you just said can make for remarkably great prose.

abdullahkhalids 5y ago

If you write on a computer, printing the essay in a different font/color/line spacing, and reading it, also works.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

nojs 5y ago

PG has some interesting thoughts about this: http://www.paulgraham.com/talk.html http://www.paulgraham.com/talk.html

permo-w 5y ago

I suspect that that may have been the case for people who grew up without and don’t primarily communicate with the internet, people whose writing style is mainly shaped by a school syllabus, but nowadays I’d guess that that’s falling away, to an extent