one – It’s 426pm. I have a thing at 7pm. And I might be interrupted sooner than that. I want to try and do something here in the meantime. I want to get a glimpse of something that feels like magic. What do I have to do for that? One of the things I believe to be true is that you can start somewhere arbitrary, then try to go in a marginally interesting direction, and then repeat until you end up somewhere cool. I can feel some of the thoughts and ideas in my mind’s drawer rustling about a little bit, a little over-eager to contribute. I don’t want to make too much of an effort to suppress them, but I don’t want to introduce them either. I want to channel a spirit of irreverence that has felt like it’s eluded me for some time.
two – I’ve heard that the line “Where do we go now?” in Sweet Child O’ Mine emerged naturally in a jamming session– Axl Rose literally sang the question out loud when trying to figure out what lyrics to put in the bridge, and it seemed good enough, and so that’s what it is. Is it really the best possible line for that song? It’s hard to imagine it being anything else. But it’s the kind of move you can only really use once– if you repeat it in multiple songs you reveal that you don’t really have any ideas.
three – sometimes I like to use bullets or numbers as a kind of navigational aid when writing. It’s a way of creating some sense of structure, even if it’s completely arbitrary. You can always take them out later.
four – one of the weird things about writing is that you might write the first draft in a linear fashion, but then you travel ‘back in time’ by going back to the start of the piece and changing something about it. Sometimes this is visible to the reader, but usually it isn’t, and most readers probably don’t care. Yet it’s something I get somewhat self-conscious about, maybe because of my long habit of doing twitter threads, where each tweet cannot be edited. You can subsequently recontextualize it by quoting it in a new thread, or by adding more tweets at the end, but you can’t edit what you’ve already written. I wonder if it would be a good idea for me to continue with this arbitrary constraint when trying to write longform pieces, so that I don’t confuse myself with too many options.
five – I have always been someone who tries to do many different things simultaneously. Sometimes it’s lead to really interesting outcomes, but for the most part I don’t particularly recommend it. It feels more like an affliction than a blessing. Maybe it’s both. My first book Friendly Ambitious Nerd, for example, simply insisted on being about three different things at once. As a result each section is a little weaker than it could otherwise be, but I feel that the combination is important. I sometimes fantasize about writing an airport book titled ‘Reply Game’, but the idea of it kinda tires me out after a moment. The sensible thing to do would probably be to write an essay for starters, but I don’t even really feel like doing that, even though I imagine it would probably be worthwhile to do. Why not do it? I feel like I’m waiting for something, but I don’t know what exactly, until I encounter it. I already have the ‘primary frame’, but I think that’s not quite enough. There’s something like a ‘secondary frame’, or the stories you want to tell through the primary frame, etc.
six – maybe this is where we’re going: the big puzzle of my creative life is, how come I haven’t just already done all the things that I seem to want to do? How come, for example, my essay on wretchedness isn’t done yet? Okay, let’s say it’s a kind of perfectionism. How come I haven’t written a janky draft? Wait, I do have a janky draft. It’s just… disassembled. And here I went on a bit of a journey– I had searched “visakanv wretchedness”, found a podcast that I did with Jim O’Shaughnessy, and realized that I ought to tidy up the transcript (which I’m currently doing in another window via Claude.ai), and publish that, probably on my blog.
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(2025may27)
Interestingness unfolds when you just describe things. My son is in a Kobe Bryant jersey. I’m listening to Twisted Love by ATB / Christina Soto. I found this track in a compilation I found in 2013 searching for “trance” on youtube. I used to play it on the office speakers while we played poker after hours once a month or so. I had my first taste of Laphroiag whiskey at those sessions.