If there is a Now page, I read it. If there is an About page, I read it. If there is a Start Here page, I read it. After that I visit the homepage. What I’m looking for is someone who looks to be publishing interesting things. If I find a couple articles that look promising, I’ll save them to read later. If those articles prove to be interesting, I’ll add the site to my RSS reader.
An example from a recent sleuthing: Gergely Orosz has written a blog since 2015; he’s authored three books; he started a newsletter in 2021. I wanted to find if Gergely had written anything about the publishing of his books. I started with this google search site:blog.pragmaticengineer.com writing books. That lead me to his article called Undervalued Software Engineering Skills: Writing Well. In that article he linked to a tweet where he listed a few authors talking about writing.
I didn’t find what I was looking for on Gergely’s site, but I did find three new blogs to read.
I want to be a better storyteller. It’s hard. Storytelling in general is hard, but ending a story, that seems almost impossible to do well. And it’s not only me; I do a good bit of reading and most people seem unable to end a story with any kind of conclusion or punch line. Most just stop, like the author ran out of words or couldn’t be bothered to continue. I’m not sure if this is an editing problem or perhaps a psychological problem and ending a story is really that difficult and those who do it well are just better writers than the rest of us. I decided to read some books on the craft and see if I could learn a few tricks, a better way to think about storytelling in general.
The first book I picked up was Long Story Short by Margot Leitman. In the opening chapter, Leitman is describing how she got into storytelling and how she was having a discussion with her agent: “What about David Sedaris? He sells books, and does live tours where he just reads his true stories, and he’s a household name. I’d like to be the next David Sedaris.”
David Sedaris isn’t a good storyteller. Wikipedia says he’s “an American humorist,” but he’s not funny. And he can’t end a story better than anyone else. I’ve read pieces of many of his books; pieces because I can’t get through them, they’re uninteresting. How is David Sedaris famous? This is not a rhetorical question. If you like him, please email me and explain yourself.
There's a longing, a craving to know more than we get to know. [Y]ou want a lot of interesting things to occur before you die; and it strikes you that rather than wait around for them to occur, you're going to have to arrange most of them.
The problem with ideas is that you can't decide to have them. Certain kinds of nonfiction can be made to happen. The writer who is diligent, observant, and inquisitive enough can always find a story: you read the paper, you watch the world, you ask enough questions, and sooner or later, there it is. You have to write it, of course, but it exists with or without you. There are decisions to be made—how best to unfurl the information, what to prioritize, whose perspective to privilege. But you do not have to invent the story, you just have to tell it. I'm not saying it's easy. I'm just saying it can be done.
—Ariel Levy, The Best American Essays 2015
There is a documentary called The Secret Life of Lance Letscher. Letscher is an artist. He keeps boxes of source material but purposely doesn’t organize it. He does this so he can find unexpected things when he goes back through it. This is the same reason I don’t make notes in the margins of books. It’s difficult to find new things or be surprised by something if your notes keep dragging you to previous thoughts.
How do you find interesting things on the web?
If you are old enough to remember the web before Google, you may remember how people used to run their own websites. They might publish interesting articles themselves, but they’d also include links to things they found and often would keep a blogroll. The good stuff would bubble to the top.
Three things have happened in the meanwhile:
Google weaponized links.
Content farms have been busy filling the web with spam.
Big Social and everything that comes with that.
In light of this, I’d like to propose three things. First, create a blogroll and/or a canon on your personal site. Next, delete your social profiles. Don’t worry, you won’t become friendless and estranged from your family. Then, to fill the void, set up a feed reader with sites you actually like. If you are unfamiliar with feed readers, checkout youneedfeeds.com for more information.
You’re welcome.
The secret of theft, which is also called "creativity," is you have to steal a bit from a lot of different places. You can't go to the same 7/11 every time because they'll catch you. So you go to the photo shop, and you go to the gas station, and you go to that little hot dog stand that nobody goes to and by the end you've stolen enough stuff from enough places that people think its yours.
If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.
—Haruki Murakami
I’ve just stumbled on a book that made $64,000 on Kickstarter. How is this even possible? I’m not suggesting that it is not a fine book. I’m more curious if it’s something repeatable.
Frank Abagnale, the “Catch Me If You Can” guy, talks at Google:
Working ten hour days allows you to fall behind twice as fast as you could working five hour days.
—Issac Assimov
Early automobiles caused as much controversy as driverless cars do today.
I don’t think Americans have any idea how much they really pay in taxes, how that compares to other countries, or what we get versus what they get for those taxes.
Joe Rogan on getting stuck in life:
If the wind will not serve, take to the oars.
—Latin Proverb
Building something interesting requires a surplus of time and money. Salaried jobs provide neither.
Remember, Mondays are fine. It's your life that sucks.
—Ricky Gervais
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.
—Cicero
93-year-old man lives in a cabin he built by himself, 5 miles from the nearest road.
Solar Freakin’ Roadways!
The richest people in the world look for and build networks, everyone else looks for work.
—Robert Kiyosaki
Asking questions is embarrassing for a moment, but not asking is embarrassing for a lifetime.
—Haruki Murakami
Neil Gaiman addresses the University of the Arts class of 2012.
In Memory of Hollis Hudetz
An Ode To Chicken Legs By Hollis Hudetz
Dainty little chicken legs
pokin’ out like wooden pegs
get me where I want to go
through the hills and creeks and snow.
Should I e’er get in a fight
my enemy will see my might
does not reside down there below
and so that’s where he’ll aim his blows.
But verily to his surprise
my bony knees will WHACK his thighs!
And ever will he curse the day
that chicken legs came out to play.
And too it’s better there’s no meat-
it gives the beasts nothing to eat!
So they will let me pass on by
and never once I’ll catch their eye.
So better off I think you’ll be
if you have chicken legs, like me.
