🖊️ Greatest Writing Wisdom: Parts I-IV
Writing is an act of faith,
not a trick of grammar.
-E.B. White
It starts with a single letter, a curve of ink on a blank page. Then another, and another, until they catch fire and become a word. These words find each other in the dark, link arms and form sentences. And then, by some ancient and impossible magic, these sentences build a world.
Writing is a miracle. It is also a menace. It's the art form that gives us the power to conjure realities from thin air, and then turns around and humbles us with the starkness of a blinking cursor. It promises rules only to reveal they are merely suggestions, whispers in a language of infinite subjectivity, perspective, and incandescent light. It's a wonder any of us survive it, let alone fall in love with it. Of all the ways to build a life, writing is the one most likely to make you feel immortal one day and strangle you in your sleep the next.
This magnificent, maddening paradox is why I started this quest. For years, I've collected the deepest, sharpest writing wisdom I could find. I've scoured writing manuals and memoirs, interviews and essays, classroom syllabi and drunken barstool confessions.
I've read the canon: Dillard's The Writing Life, Lamott's Bird by Bird, Strunk and White's The Elements of Style, McPhee's Draft No. 4, Le Guin's Steering the Craft, Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing, Gornick's The Situation and the Story.
I've devoured the collection: Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews is arguably the richest trove of writing wisdom ever assembled, straight from the mouths of Didion and Baldwin, Márquez and Hemingway.
I've scribbled notes and dissents in the margins: Of Benjamin Dreyer's Dreyer's English. Of Francine Prose's Reading Like A Writer. Of Colum McCann's Letters to a Young Writer which I read so many times its spine finally fell to pieces right in my lap.
🖊️ Greatest Writing Wisdom: Parts I-IV
This series is a curated treasury of the greatest writing wisdom from those who mastered the craft and honored us by sharing what they learned. Each essay below explores a distinct facet of the writing craft, each shaped by a singular lens, theme, work, or voice.
The living heart of this project is the Writing Wisdom Notebook, where I've compiled thousands of pieces of writing advice from hundreds of sources spanning centuries into a single resource. I hope you use it and enjoy it as much as I do.
The shortest, strongest lightning bolts of writing advice ever given.
Strunk & White's timeless manifesto of clean prose and clean thinking.
Colum McCann’s urgent, elegant dispatches to writers who can’t not write.
Some of the most enduring "writing rules" ever shared. Bold, sharp, brilliant commandments from masters of the craft.