4 ms·

This claim that the best writers write slowly is suspicious at best. Many of the best writers out there were prolific. And there are innumerable bad writers wh

This claim that the best writers write slowly is suspicious at best. Many of the best writers out there were prolific. And there are innumerable bad writers who barely write at all. Writing is an iterative process. I'm skeptical of advice about slowing down writing intentionally. I've found writing more and editing more improves my writing more than slower, more deliberate writing, particularly since it's less likely to happen.

inglor_cz 5y ago
This is suspicious to me as well. I write professionally and I know many others who do as well. My experience tells me that people have some sort of innate writing capacity to them - some are waterfalls, some are little trickles, but you cannot judge the quality of the water just by size of the stream.
- sturza 5y ago
  I think the main point was not about a mechanical process to write as little as possible. At least i did not understand it that way. I got that the "final" sentence or piece of text is hard to come by, and "good" writers iterate a lot, that's why their output comes so slow - one paragraph per month, for example. Another signal why i think this was the correct interpretation - throughout the article, they present slow thinking and not stopping to an impulsive idea, and considering it the input to the bigger text (that authors write).
abernard1 5y ago
> Writing is an iterative process. To take liberties with your statement, I'd paraphrase this as "writing is work." I too agree with your skepticism of the article, and I'd argue it's because the platonic ideal of thinking before acting isn't actually how humans think. Humans fundamentally do, and this action provides the ingredients from which to construct thought. Good writers produce lots of bad writing which allows them to reflect on their mistakes or identify the special subset of their writing that was good.
Archer6621 5y ago
I also don't believe in this claim, or at least in it being a generally applicable thing. There's a point at which slowing down gives diminishing returns in my experience. I'm a music composer and I had to learn that the hard way. Sometimes my first ideas end up being good enough already, or even better than previous/future ideas that I had iterated a lot on. I also found that working for too long on a piece can potentially make it worse than previous iterations eventually.
- SamPatt 5y ago
  I find the same with photography. I notice when editing that the first photo of a scene / subject is the best photo much more frequently than chance. Though it's also true that the last photo is also much more frequent. If I took 20 photos of something, I'd say I use either the first or last photo taken probably 1/3 of the time.
dunemaster 5y ago
Absolutely this. All great writers were extremely prolific and disciplined about their craft with no exception. This whole myth about some genius lying on the table and thinking about the order of arranging words is a myth that romanticizes the act of writing.

inglor_cz 5y ago

This is suspicious to me as well. I write professionally and I know many others who do as well. My experience tells me that people have some sort of innate writing capacity to them - some are waterfalls, some are little trickles, but you cannot judge the quality of the water just by size of the stream.

sturza 5y ago
I think the main point was not about a mechanical process to write as little as possible. At least i did not understand it that way. I got that the "final" sentence or piece of text is hard to come by, and "good" writers iterate a lot, that's why their output comes so slow - one paragraph per month, for example. Another signal why i think this was the correct interpretation - throughout the article, they present slow thinking and not stopping to an impulsive idea, and considering it the input to the bigger text (that authors write).

abernard1 5y ago

> Writing is an iterative process. To take liberties with your statement, I'd paraphrase this as "writing is work." I too agree with your skepticism of the article, and I'd argue it's because the platonic ideal of thinking before acting isn't actually how humans think. Humans fundamentally do, and this action provides the ingredients from which to construct thought. Good writers produce lots of bad writing which allows them to reflect on their mistakes or identify the special subset of their writing that was good.

Archer6621 5y ago

I also don't believe in this claim, or at least in it being a generally applicable thing. There's a point at which slowing down gives diminishing returns in my experience. I'm a music composer and I had to learn that the hard way. Sometimes my first ideas end up being good enough already, or even better than previous/future ideas that I had iterated a lot on. I also found that working for too long on a piece can potentially make it worse than previous iterations eventually.

SamPatt 5y ago
I find the same with photography. I notice when editing that the first photo of a scene / subject is the best photo much more frequently than chance. Though it's also true that the last photo is also much more frequent. If I took 20 photos of something, I'd say I use either the first or last photo taken probably 1/3 of the time.

dunemaster 5y ago

Absolutely this. All great writers were extremely prolific and disciplined about their craft with no exception. This whole myth about some genius lying on the table and thinking about the order of arranging words is a myth that romanticizes the act of writing.