Category: Creativity
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Authors write
If you set out to be an author, the key part of your job is to write your own opinions, referencing others for confirmation. If you want to write books, the key part of your job is to research and write books. Here are other parts of the job: While the other parts of the…
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When prestige narrows horizons
Patrick Bringley writes about his time working at The New Yorker in All the Beauty in the World: It took me almost three years to grasp an unwelcome paradox. If I were working a less “impressive” job, I would be scribbling my thoughts down in obscurity, free to take big swings at whatever topic inspired…
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Writing is transference of energy
When you’re editing, consider how the order of information can shift the energy of the work. You can do this starting at the most zoomed out: at a section level, then paragraph level, then sentence level, then individual word level. Some sections will need more love than others. You’ll need to cut some turns of…
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Finding echoes of other people in yourself
So I’d say, to the extent I can, that the image came in parts, and congealed when I started writing. For me, creating a character is like acting. I have to imagine being them. Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself. And when I imagined being the boy in this story, these…
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Process leads to purpose
A couple of days ago, Creative Doing was featured in Readwise’s newsletter, Wisereads. It excerpts a passage from the introduction: Finding my creative purpose involved letting go of every impulse and habit that made me successful at my work projects, and shifting my focus away from results into the process. Process is about consistently making…
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It’s just business
A little over a year ago, I wrote a guest post for Dan Runcie at Trapital unpacking how Pusha T positioned his career for longevity (and I wrote about it again here). The early years of Push’s career had high highs and low lows, particularly when he and his brother No Malice were stuck in…
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Make a map of memories
Kai Brach writes in the 267th issue of Dense Discovery: When I receive a kind, heartfelt email from a reader, I add it to a folder titled ‘Confidence Boost’. So whenever self-doubt strikes or I’m in a creative rut I consult that folder to be reminded of what really matters: connection. A memory pays dividends…
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Your creative work’s right size
In 1971, an English teacher, a writer, and a history teacher—all in their 20s—borrowed $5,000 from a bank and invested $1,350 each to start a coffee shop in Seattle. They named it Starbucks. 16 years later, an entrepreneur named Howard Schultz acquired Starbucks. The company had opened 16 more stores, on average around one per…
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The alchemy of scarcity
A good chef can make a feast out of scarce ingredients. A good athlete can make a performance out of sparse energy and health. A good artist can make art out of scarce material and time. None of them would prefer to, of course. But they can if they must.
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Choose the action, choose the consequence
“When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. When you desire a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.” Lois McMaster Bujold, Memory