Writer’s block is simply a failure of ego

I am reading Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion and she wrote that “All writing is generated by a certain minimum of ego: you must assume a position of authority in saying that the way I’m writing it is …

A way of looking but not joining

I am reading Let Me Tell You What I Mean by Joan Didion and in this essay titled Last Words, she has written about Hemingway: The very grammar of a Hemingway sentence dictated, or was dictated by, a certain way of …

Writing is the act of saying I

I am reading Joan Didion’s book Let Me Tell You What I Mean, and in the essay I particularly bought the book for, titled Why I Write, Didion writes: In many ways, writing is the act of saying I, of imposing …

Writing is like painting, and some more

I watched an Orhan Pamuk interview on YouTube where he explains his “painterly practice” and how writing and painting are similar to him. Pamuk explains: I think writing novels is also like painting—visual …

I, you, and we

I have been noticing for a long time now that using “I” or “you” while writing about ideas makes a big difference. If I use “you” when writing, it sounds like I am positioning the reader in the situation I am …

Thought associations and drifting memories

I'm listening to Kazuo Ishiguro's Nobel Prize lecture (2017), where he shares a realization he had after writing a screenplay and a novel only a year apart: My first novel and my first TV screenplay were too …