Steven Pressfield shares some advice for young writers who are struggling to find their voice in his book Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t: I was trying to find a voice. Trying to find my voice. Was I really a “writer?” No. Was what I was doing “writing.” No. I was trying to save my … Read more
How do you become a good writer? There are many paths, but there’s an interesting section in Steven Pressfield’s memoir Govt Cheese. He tells tales from his time in Hollywood, when he still had no wins under his belt and was working under Ronald Shusett. Officially they worked as a team of writers, but Pressfield … Read more
There’s that famous statistic by Albert Mehrabian that’s gotten quoted probably a million times that communication is 55% nonverbal, 38% vocal, and 7% words only. This is only true in the specific context in which Mehrabian conducted his research, but it’s universally true that the words we use are only a small part of how … Read more
Sometimes the best thing you can do when you suffer from writer’s block is to procrastinate more productively; like watching movies about writing. I don’t know why, but there’s something to losing yourself in a well-written story about writers that somehow unclogs my creative pipes, and I hope it does the same for you too. … Read more
Morning pages have been a creative game changer for me. It’s a simple practice of writing out whatever is on your mind first thing in the morning, with pen on paper. There’s much more to it, but essentially it’s as simple as that. You can literally start writing morning pages with just that information. If … Read more
Here’s a simple, but powerful writing exercise that’s helped me tremendously with my daily writing habit. Pick one of your favorite passages from one of your favorite books. Read it. And then rewrite it; try to make it better than the original. You will fail. That’s ok. An exercise is not about the end result. … Read more
If you study the writing habits of famous authors, you’ll find that they differ substantially, often even contradict each other. But the one thing they all had in common? They did have a daily writing habit. And if you’re serious about writing, then you need one too. But developing your own writing habit is no … Read more
It’s hard to be successful at writing even if you’re a talented writer. It’s much harder when don’t even have talent. Here’s a passage by Haruki Murakami, one of the most successful Japanese writers of our times for all the talentless writers: […] writers who aren’t blessed with much talent — those who barely make the grade — need … Read more
Sometimes life takes a turn for the worse. Sometimes an indisputably ugly reality punches you in the face and breaks your bloody nose. Your first instinct might be to break down, to give in to all those intense emotions that flash over you. To just shout fuck all this, and get fucked up. Flush out … Read more
I’m always fascinated by the interplay of reality and fiction, and how the best fiction sometimes seems more real than reality. Reading these words by Ernest Hemingway on the subject were fascinating to me: When you first start writing stories in the first person if the stories are made so real that people believe them … Read more