Category: Creator Confidential
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The mythical secret sauce
“How on earth did they find the time to do that?” To learn the skill while they did their full-time job. To juggle the equivalent to two full-time jobs. To write a blog every day. I can tell you, having written at this blog for 150 days now, that it looks more like this: you…
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Quality control
When I started Wonder Shuttle, I was uncontrollably obsessive with quality control. I started out as a freelance writer, so the first thing I had to do was let go of control. Still, in my mind, every article had to run through me; I was the last line of defense, the buck stopped with me,…
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The elevators start at the tenth floor
I really like what recording artist Burna Boy says to GQ: Unlike a lot of other people, I’ve had to go through never-ending steps to get here, whereas other people have taken the elevator up. I’ve always been too heavy for that kind of elevator, so I had to take the stairs. Now I know…
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Don’t become a content machine
If you browse Twitter frequently, or even occasionally, you’ll probably have become very familiar with threads—when an author connects multiple tweets together by replying to himself or herself. (Old heads like me will still let the term “tweetstorms” slip out.) People write a lot of threads, because people believe that Twitter amplifies threads. And of…
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“As soon as they like you, make them unlike you…”
“A lot of people you see on the internet HAVE to be on the internet.” Donald Glover, Interview Magazine Recently, Rolling Loud festival announced that headliner artist Ye has dropped out of their festival. A lot of Ye fans are, rightfully, righteously indignant—this is the second time this year he has dropped out, last minute,…
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Bill Watterson, Picasso, and HN on self promotion
One of the most interesting pieces I’ve come across lately was Hugh Eakin’s piece on the backstory of one of Picasso’s most prominent works, Guernica. During the creative process for Guernica, Picasso created 45 different sketches before settling on the final direction of the painting: Guernica debuted in 1937 at the Paris Expo, which over…
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Most dreams stay dreams
I recently revisited a piece I wrote at the blog in March, “To all the dreams I dreamed before.” It’s a precious piece to me, because it was one of the blocks I’d experienced early in my life; I felt unqualified, unready, and undeserving to even aspire to do the things I wanted to do,…
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Reversing Medium’s brain drain problem
After 10 years of leading Medium, CEO Ev Williams is stepping down. Medium faces a lot of challenges—I am sure Williams will reflect on many—but to me the main one is basically a way worse version of the problem that Substack currently faces: brain drain, a term used to describe “the emigration of highly trained…
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Your work and your friends
A few days ago, Paul Graham tweeted, “Ron Conway just discovered my essays and stayed up late reading them. We’ve been friends for 15 years but apparently he’d never read one. Made my month.” It reminds me of a passage I’d read or heard somewhere (and can’t find) that as a creator, you shouldn’t expect…
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Quantity? Quality?
My latest at Medium. I never would’ve imagined I’d know so much about this topic. It all just kind of happened!