3 ms·

Seth Godin tells something similar about writing of Issac Asimov[0] " Isaac worked with me when I was 24 years old. He wrote and published 400 books. I was sit

Seth Godin tells something similar about writing of Issac Asimov[0] " Isaac worked with me when I was 24 years old. He wrote and published 400 books. I was sitting in his living room in Lincoln Center in New York City, and I said, “Isaac” — being presumptuous — “how do you go about writing 400 books?” He said, “Here’s the secret.” He pointed to this old manual typewriter. He said, “Every morning, I sit in front of this typewriter at 7:00 am, and I type until noon. It doesn’t have to be good, but I have to keep typing.” [0] https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/seth-godin/ https://conversationswithtyler.com/episodes/seth-godin/

gwd 3y ago
In "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish", there's a forward Douglas Adams wrote for a book by another author which was unfinished. He related two stories: the first about an ancient Greek poet who would spend the morning reciting verse, which one of his disciples would write down; then he'd spend the afternoon throwing the vast majority of it away. The second was about another author who'd type out a page of a novel and stick it on his wall near the bottom; every so often he'd page off the wall, type in an improved version, and put it on the wall a little higher, until all the pages were at the top. His point (speaking about the other author) was that the book was "unfinished" both in the sense of incomplete, but also "unfinished" in the sense of unpolished; it was a warning that the quality of the writing would not be the quality the readers were used to from that author. (Which was apropos to include in "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish", since it was also a novel started by Adams and not "finished", in either sense.) It's a hard thing to do, to just sit and write something you feel is garbage. I think I've mostly managed to get to the point where I can do it for coding, but not really for text yet.

gwd 3y ago

In "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish", there's a forward Douglas Adams wrote for a book by another author which was unfinished. He related two stories: the first about an ancient Greek poet who would spend the morning reciting verse, which one of his disciples would write down; then he'd spend the afternoon throwing the vast majority of it away. The second was about another author who'd type out a page of a novel and stick it on his wall near the bottom; every so often he'd page off the wall, type in an improved version, and put it on the wall a little higher, until all the pages were at the top. His point (speaking about the other author) was that the book was "unfinished" both in the sense of incomplete, but also "unfinished" in the sense of unpolished; it was a warning that the quality of the writing would not be the quality the readers were used to from that author. (Which was apropos to include in "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish", since it was also a novel started by Adams and not "finished", in either sense.) It's a hard thing to do, to just sit and write something you feel is garbage. I think I've mostly managed to get to the point where I can do it for coding, but not really for text yet.