Advice from my editor
A sculptural representation of JS Bach’s Fugue in E Flat Minor by Henrik Neugeboren
“I can’t make myself finish this one,” Johanna said one night when we were reading together in bed. She was working her way through a 6021-word essay draft about identities as interfaces that I had written. “Why does this matter to you?”
I looked up from my book and gave her an explanation of the importance of the ideas in the essay.
“No,” she said. “I meant, why do you care?”
Thinking for a bit, I started over, giving a slightly less pompous answer.
When I was done, we sat silent for a while, our youngest daughter turning over in her sleep, making a short cry, then going silent again.
“So is that really why you care?” Johanna said.
I looked out at the trees, so rich with green in the last light. Then—answering her question a third time—my pulse quickened. The ideas suddenly seemed to open up like a cathedral carved at the bottom of a salt mine: I had reached down to the embarrassing, personal need that hid under the text.
Johanna said, “I think you should throw out the essay and write that instead.”
How I wrote "Looking for Alice"
Alexander Calder’s workshop Something I found frustrating when learning how to write was that writing advice tends to be very low resolution. You have someone looking back on their experience writing for decades and they sum it up by saying, oh, well, don’t use adverbs.
Love this.
Reminds me of something I learned from Paul Graham on clarity: when you're finished writing your piece, explain what you wrote to an interested friend. If your explanation is different from what you wrote, just write that instead.
I like it more and more, together with long analyses, to read these short issues that give out advice, ideas and suggestions. This is one of those, that is inspiring me more and more to want to try something similar. Thanks for sharing.