[original thread<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first rule of smart writing is you must recognise what smart writing is.<\/strong> Sounds simple enough but most people fail at this. Lots of smart writers get their good quotes ignored and their tepid quotes celebrated. This lowers everybody\u2019s standards. Orwell warned about this<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you want to write well, I think you may need to spend more time identifying good writing than actually writing.<\/strong> At least at the start, but IMO, *always*. You need to develop your aesthetic taste re: what good *is*. No one else can do this for you. [link to thread about Steve Jobs quotes<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now – the next thing you need to know is that *trying* to make smart writing is often counter-productive. <\/strong>There\u2019s probably a simple reason for this. Smart writing often happens by accident when you accidentally take clever shortcuts when you\u2019re focused on getting from A to B. [list of examples<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once you know what smart writing looks like, forget about it<\/strong>. Forget about trying to look or sound smart. It rarely happens when you want to. It happens peripherally when you\u2019re trying very hard to communicate something else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Which brings us to dumb tweeting! All you have to do is to follow your nose (which hopefully has been honed over time from evaluating everything that comes your way). There\u2019s almost always something interesting about everything if you find the right angle on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The cool thing is, you don\u2019t actually need to find the smart angle! <\/strong>Writing is cheap, basically free. Write all the angles. Whatever comes to mind, whatever tickles your fancy. Write stupid, edit smart. By using your own taste <\/a>to retrospectively identify what\u2019s good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Crucially- your concept of smart is very much informed by everything you\u2019ve already read. <\/strong>If you\u2019re trying too hard to be smart, you will mostly just remix what you\u2019ve already read. You have to leave the comfort of smart & enter the frontiers of dumb to create *new* smart things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (I am deliberately using the words \u201csmart\u201d and \u201cdumb\u201d here slightly differently than in common parlance. \u201cDumb\u201d as in \u201cdumb question, but…\u201d, and \u201csmart\u201d as implied by \u201cprestigious\u201d. See Paul Graham’s essay How To Do What You Love<\/a>, which talks about prestige.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Everything we retroactively consider genius started out this way. (Richard Feynman had some thoughtful things to say about this.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n If subsequently you want to dress up your ideas in smart language, go ahead.<\/strong> Sometimes you need to use the king\u2019s language to argue with the king. But beware falling into the trap of thinking that it\u2019s the king\u2019s language that makes him smart, or that he\u2019s smart because he\u2019s king.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019re moderately intelligent and have moderately decent taste, producing a stupidly large quantity of work and applying a modicum of taste when reviewing and editing it will precipitate smart writing. Because you are smarter than you know, or even dare to believe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can end up producing smart work *entirely* by accident, and still own it because you recognized it.<\/strong> It\u2019s yours! That\u2019s the gift that the creative process just gives you sometimes. You can then study and reverse-engineer this, and wow, you just got smarter as a result.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The public is generally really bad at dealing with people who make good work. <\/strong>They pedestalize them, worship them, or demonize them – everything short of engaging thoughtfully with the work. Which brings us back to… the public is insufficiently educated on how to be a good public.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Don\u2019t worship people.<\/strong> You\u2019re doing them a disservice, and you\u2019re insulting + hamstringing the process that makes good work. If you *have* to worship something, worship the process. [eg of good process<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n When you worship your heroes, you distract them from the process that enables them to make great work. Encourage the process, participate in the process. They\u2019re people too. Every creative mind is always yearning for more good minds to play with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow do I develop taste?\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Well it shouldn\u2019t be something you force yourself to do. What do you already like? What are you already interested in? Explore that with a playful curiosity and ask yourself what\u2019s good, what\u2019s not good. Have fun!<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHow do I produce a large body of work?\u201d<\/strong> \u201cI want to produce work but something is stopping me.\u201d<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s usually some form of fear or perfectionism. Your technical skill is not yet good enough to gratify your taste. Let go of the expectation that you have to gratify your taste *today* (or *ever*). Make Crappy Stuff!!<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019ve made a bunch of stuff but I still suck.\u201d <\/strong> \u201cMy stuff has gotten predictable and formulaic and I hate it.\u201d <\/strong> \u201cMy friends laugh at me and insult my work.\u201d <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Fuck them. Find new friends. Life is too short to be around people who belittle you needlessly. You can find friends who will ofter thoughtful feedback instead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNothing I do is original.\u201d <\/strong> \u201cI\u2019m afraid of being judged.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Separate the creator-you from your personal identity. You are just the janitor, the custodian of the subconscious genie inside you. You deserve neither credit nor blame for the quality of the work. Your job is just to show up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “This isn’t fun.”<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Then ditch it! I feel like it bears repeating that at the heart of all of this is a sincere love for whatever you\u2019re playing with. If you don\u2019t love the work (movies, tweets, whatever) then everything downstream is going to seem off, and you might waste years trying to fix the wrong problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2013<\/p>\n\n\n\n So far I\u2019ve talked about all of this at the individual level. It gets cooler: A lot of the fun of making stuff is playing with other people. A lot of my personal favorite tweets were written in response to friends mucking around. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Nobody gives a shit about my best tweets except me and a small handful of close friends. But that\u2019s fine!! If I can only satisfy one person in the world with my work, it has to be me. Never be so busy trying to please other people that you forget to gratify yourself. You are the most important person to please with your own work. [Relevant Ray Bradbury quote<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I saw someone tweet \u201cI wish smart writing came to me as easily as dumb tweeting\u201d \u2014 and so I am here to share my strategy for using the latter to precipitate the former. [original thread] The first rule of smart writing is you must recognise what smart writing is.… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[577,584],"tags":[607],"class_list":["post-12997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-perception","category-writing","tag-bestof"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5gxNz-3nD","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12997\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.visakanv.com\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Let\u2019s circle back and address some FAQs. <\/h4>\n\n\n\n
A house is built one brick at a time. Make a brick. Then make another brick. Then another. The secret is that you forget worrying about the house and enjoy making bricks. It\u2019s fun because you get to exercise and develop your taste.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is a feature, not a bug. Welcome to the creative life! Everybody struggled with this. It\u2019s what made them good. Keep making more stuff. When in doubt, make more stuff.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Good! Discard it all! It\u2019s all tracings in the sand anyway. Find a new game! Watch different movies, travel somewhere different. Find new things and make new things. You have my permission to start all over again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nothing is! Renaissance paintings are bible fanart. The bible itself was probably compiled and remixed from existing stories. Everything has predecessors, everything is a remix. You can\u2019t make original things. But you can make interesting things. The iPhone was a remix<\/a> of the Walkman and the Polaroid. Everything is a remix of other things. Creativity is connecting dots. Find interesting dots and play around with interesting connections.<\/p>\n\n\n\n