5 ms·
The article is not talking about how to write better though, it's about why people have trouble starting to write in the first place. From the article: "By con
by cyber_kinetist 5y ago
The article is not talking about how to write better though, it's about why people have trouble starting to write in the first place. From the article:
"By contrast, when you’re in touch with your honest aesthetic/spiritual/material/intellectual priorities, writing is pretty easy. I don’t mean, like, that it’s easy to write immortal masterpieces—there are heights of aesthetic perfection that can only be reached when the right material meets a well-trained set of hands. But writing a decent enough first draft—something to fuck around with until it’s readable—should be fairly simple. Sure, it takes discipline to open the document and begin typing rather than continuing to scroll Twitter. But once you begin, it shouldn’t feel like trying to squeeze champagne out of wrought iron. It should feel like opening a floodgate—whether that results in a furious swell or an amiable trickle."
- kayodelycaon 5y agoIt isn’t that simple. The blog presents what the author thinks everyone’s problem is. The problem they present is one facet of a much larger topic.
- Apocryphon 5y agoIt is a major facet, though. And the article is kind, because it encourages people to be true to themselves and not feel externally pressured (both from other people and from their less than authentic selves) to write on things they don't care about.
- intrepidhero 5y agoThere is probably a grain of truth in there but if a lot of people think a thing (ex. writing) is hard and someone is saying, "Actually it's easy if you do this one thing", I feel pretty confident they're selling something.
- kayodelycaon 5y agoI’m going to be a little more charitable and assume that the author found writing easy once they got over their roadblocks. Assuming everyone faces the problems the same way you did is a common failing of humanity. This is why most advice fails to work. The advice was right for a specific person at a specific time when they where ready to hear it and able to understand it.
- zopa 5y agoThere's a lot to be said for a grain of truth and a magnifying glass. Mostly I don't want the whole beach all at once. Yes, of course, not all writer's block and it's not the whole picture and it won't work for everyone, and on and on. Everything is always more complicated; we knew that going in, that's a given. It's a ~1000-word article; it can't be the whole truth of anything. But I'd rather read one clear insightful treatment of some of the truth than a mess of qualifiers.