Category: creativity

• Narrative as Crowbar

  Over in Future, I wrote about unlocking expertise through storytelling: People have wandered the intellectual garden of forking paths for thousands of generations, but the internet is a profound accelerant for such cultural exploration. It is a shadow city with billions of residents. Everyone has a voice, even if nobody listens. Yes, there are assholes…

• A Swing, a Miss, and a Burrito

  To whomever needs to hear this: I just took a big swing, gave it my all, and missed. I’m not gonna lie, it sucks. The details don’t matter, but this does: If I had known it would work at the outset, it wouldn’t have been worth doing. Making art requires taking real risks. Courage isn’t…

• Ten popular Bandwidth highlights, annotated

  A while back, Goodreads asked me to annotate ten of the most popular Kindle highlights in Bandwidth. I love snatching glimpses into other people’s creative processes, and these notes give you a sneak peek into mine. Let’s dive right in. The highlights from the novel are indented and my notes follow. There was a deeper…

• Loosen the straps

  When water leaks into your SCUBA mask, beginners tighten the straps. But this warps the seal, letting in more water. Experienced divers loosen the straps because they know that the ocean provides all the pressure you need and the straps are just there to keep the mask in place. The same principle applies to creative…

• Brad Feld on Nietzsche for creators

  “One man had great works, but his comrade had great faith in these works. They were inseparable, but obviously the former was dependent upon the latter.” -Nietzsche I didn’t write my first novel to fulfill a lifelong dream of becoming a writer. I wrote my first novel because I was a voracious reader, and there…

• Ideas aren’t unique, execution is

  In his seminal book What Technology Wants, Kevin Kelly notes that while we celebrate Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace independently came up with the same theory of evolution around the same time, both of them inspired by Thomas Malthus’s ideas about population growth. Likewise, Albert Einstein is history’s archetypal genius, yet the same year he…

• Literary leverage

  As a writer, it’s important to remember that only a tiny percentage of people read, far fewer read full articles instead of just headlines, fewer still read books, and—even if it’s a massive hit—only a minuscule fraction of those rarified few will read your book. Knowing that you will never reach everyone frees you to…

• Strange and incongruous relation

  My bookshelves are overflowing, and always have been. And it’s not just the shelves. As I write this, there are three separate piles of books on my desk. I’ve read many of these books. They are old friends. Seeing their spines reminds me why I love them, what I learned from them. I have yet…

• Reassurance

  When I ask for advice, often what I’m really looking for is reassurance. But the work I’m most proud of requires taking real risks with no possible guarantee of success, so seeking reassurance that things will turn out okay is a trap. Trust yourself. Trust the process. * Complement with Most successful people have no…

• Be Bold

  Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion, 1812, John Martin Many eschew grand ambitions for fear of falling short, so the higher you aim, the thinner the competition. Plus, because nothing is truly easy, you might as well attempt something truly hard. Who knows? You might even succeed, surprising everyone, yourself most of all.…