“But have you gotten a rocket to Mars?”
Walter Isaacson’s response to a woman criticizing the subject of his new biography reminds me of Gareth’s defense of Chris Finch in “The Quiz,” my favorite episode of The Office.
“He’s thrown a kettle over a pub! What have you done?”
Here’s the writer Alan Moore on why writers should read terrible books, too:
As a prospective writer, I would urge you to not only read good books. Read terrible books as well, because they can be more inspiring than the good books.
If you are inspired by a good book, there’s always the danger of plagiarism, of doing something that is too much like that good book. Whereas, a genuinely helpful reaction to a piece of work that you’re reading is, ‘Jesus Christ, I could write this shit!’ That is immensely liberating — to find somebody who is published who is doing much much worse than you.
And by analyzing why they are doing so badly, this will immensely help your own style. You’ll find out all of the mistakes not to make. ‘Why did this story offend me so much?’ Analyze that. Find out why you didn’t like it. Find out all of the examples of clumsiness or bad thinking that spoiled the story for you.
That will probably be a lot more helpful to your career as a writer.
Yes! Reading bad writing not only boosts one’s confidence, it can be very instructive.
What you want to avoid, I think, is mediocre writing, which neither thrills nor instructs.
This is what Nassim Taleb calls a “barbell strategy” in Skin in the Game: Read the best and read the worst, but skip everything in the middle…
Thanks to @__mariamuller__ on Twitter.
Related reading: Make Bad Art, Too
Today’s newsletter is about this recently-rediscovered list of notes to myself I wrote in 2014:
11. “If you don’t go to work, you never leave work.”
Wise words from my brilliant editor, Meghan Kleon.12. Death + deadlines.
The little deadlines keep you fed and the big deadline keeps you pushing towards finding meaningful work.
Read the rest here.
“Make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: You should mind your own business and work with your hands.”
—1 Thessalonians 4:11“I’m not trying to be aloof. My superpower is that I mind my own business… And I actually think that helps my productivity more than anything.”
—Hanif Abdurraqib
I would very much like to exclude myself from most narratives and become a congregant in “The Church Of Minding One’s Own Business,” which the writer Hanif Abdurraqib has explained on Twitter:
truly cannot stress how enthusiastically I’ve tried to convert my pals to The Church Of Minding One’s Own Business — has served me on every level imaginable over the past several years.
not even as a “no thoughts, head empty” thing, but my commitment to minding my own business sharply clarifies what I consider my business and what I absolutely do not, and so it realigns my focus, my depth of care for the things I DO care about, my actual & literal energy, etc
like, quite plainly, I think I love the ppl/things I love much better (& am more open/available/curious to love NEW ppl/things!) because of the space I save simply by understanding what I don’t have interest in knowing any more about
I think because we get tangible windows into the lives of others all day, it can be easy to be convinced that the window entitles one to a depth of knowing, but I have to resist that because I can turn back to the concrete/real knowing, the potential for new knowing, etc
all that said I do sometimes like to spy on a lil bit of mess from afar while doing a bit of procrastinating or whatnot, I treat it like a small television episode that I watch for a bit & then tap out of & mostly forget about
Amen!
Here is the opening page of The Steal Like An Artist Journal painted by Heather Champ.
I wanted to start the journal with Mary Oliver’s quote because I felt that it summed up the whole project. It’s taken from her On Being interview:
I think we’re creative all day long. We have to have an appointment, to have that work out on the page, because the creative part of us gets tired of waiting, or just gets tired. And it’s helped a lot of students, young poets, doing that — to have that meeting with that part of oneself…
The quote took on greater meaning for me recently when I came across these words from James Hollis:
“We each have an appointment with ourselves, though most of us never show up for it.”
The way I show up for myself, the way I discover who I really am, is to make an appointment every day to show up to the page. If I show up to the page, I show up to myself.
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