Four thoughts about writing

by DRM

I

The world is so big, there is so much to com­pre­hend, that we are best start­ing with some­thing small, some­thing pre­cise — a sim­ple story, an image, an idea –and then writ­ing every­thing we can think about it, and let that writ­ing take us to places we hadn’t antic­i­pated going.

II

When you write, don’t write to make a point or to con­vince some­one else. Write to remind your­self, to edu­cate your­self, to sur­prise your­self. The one thing you can rely on is that you are your first reader, so the worst thing to do would be to bore yourself.

III

You can’t be another writer. You can’t even pre­tend to be another writer. You can only write what you can write, and you’ll only keep writ­ing if it is interesting.

IV

There’s a lot of dis­cus­sion about the ways that tech­nol­ogy and social media are trans­form­ing art, writ­ing and pub­lish­ing. Don’t be dis­tracted by most of what is non­sense. The peo­ple who are mak­ing the most noise are try­ing to pro­tect the ways that they make money or fig­ure out new ways to make money. You’re not con­cerned with those ques­tions. What social media does is let you share what you write. You can make an audi­ence. There is no excuse for hav­ing a novel or a batch of poems tucked away in a bot­tom drawer. You can put the things you write out into the world. You are a writer now, with read­ers who you don’t know assess­ing what you have writ­ten on the basis of what they see. It will be a sur­prise. Con­grat­u­la­tions.