How do you become a better writer? by Craig Mod
Highlights
Write and read a lot. And do it regularly.
Read a ton of people and take note of whose voice resonates. Consume more of that stuff.
Perhaps you like poets who write fiction or nonfiction?
Get off the Internet.
Getting off the Internet is easier if you remove the option of being in it.
-
Freedom (10 pm to 10 am)
-
No social media and news
Don’t start your day looking at your phone.
Writing is a series of problems that need to be solved. When we have a problem, we reach for something.
Options to do it:
-
Write in a typewriter.
-
Write in an analog journal.
Block out the distractions but keep using your computer to organize writing and knowledge.
Writing is facing friction after friction after friction. You don’t want to add more to that.
Find a community of writers.
Explore writing fellowships and apply to experience a residency.
-
Morning we do each other’s work.
-
Evening talk to each other about what they’re doing.
Apply every year to a bunch of residencies.
-
Applying to them forces you to get clear about what projects you want to work on.
-
Consolidate and articulate what you are working on as a writer.
Aim to be rejected by 10-20 fellowships a year. You will get accepted at around 1-2.
Fellowships and residencies served as an ambient deadline for one’s writing goals.
You can use workshops to force yourself to look into writings that you won’t otherwise look into.
All of these make you a better reader, which improves how you edit your own work.
Submit to agents so people could read your work with fresh eyes.
Writers that inspire Craig Mod
Annie Dillard
-
She is an essay master
-
Check her book on writing, The Writing Life
-
Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Dennis Johnson
- Train Dreams, fiction
Lynn Tillman
-
Playful, plays with forms and pushes them
-
American Genuis Comedy, fiction
Lily Davis, fiction
Samuel Johnson (collection of stories)
- Poet + essayist
Anne Carson
Sam Anderson
-
NYT Magazine essayist
-
moves Craig deeply
-
Anne Carson fan
Writer Poets who became novelists
Michael Ondaatje
- Coming through Slaughter, weird book
John Jeremiah Sullivan
-
Essayist
-
Pulsing humor
Ottessa Moshfegh
-
My Year of Rest and Relaxation, novel
-
Homesick for Another World
-
Voice is strong and confident
Bruce Chautwin
-
The Songlines
-
In Patagonia
-
Travel writing done interestingly
Laurie Lee (incredible travel writer, 50% fictive)
Helen MacDonald
- H is for Hawk
HS Frocke
- nonfiction, extremely personal, autobiography but written with pulsing brilliance and curiosity
Nicholson Baker
- Funny
W.G. Sebald
-
Austerlitz, novel
-
Rings of Saturn - travel and walking book, tough at first but blown away
Don DeLillo
-
White Noise, novel
-
Zero Cake (not perfect, flawed)
-
sentence by sentence goodness
Philip Roth
-
Every Man, novel
-
American Pastoral (moving), novel
Pico Iyer
William T. Vollman
- Riding to Everywhere (writes like a beast)
Joan Didion (essay)
Jenny Oddell
-
How to Do Nothing
-
Playful academic nonfiction
James Clear
Robert Carl
-
Working About Writing (super inspiring)
-
Tough projects
Jeff Dyer
- Pulsing, intelligent non-fiction
Kazuo Ishiguro
- The Remains of the Day, novel
Anna Burns
- Milkman, novel
Nan Shepherd
-
The Living Mountain, nature writing done interestingly
-
If you pick up a book and it feels like it was done many times, throw it.
John McPhee
-
The Pine Barrens
-
Takes boring subjects interesting and exciting
Lesley Jamison
- killer essayist, nonfiction, alcoholism
Jadie Daniels
-
The Correspondence
-
Super short collection of essays
Garth Greenwell
-
The most literary pornographer
-
Dirty beautiful sentences
-
Simultaneous kick in the testicles and heart
-
Cleanness, you will not be able to unsee things from that book
Maggie Nelson
-
The Argonauts
-
Department of Speculation style, writing in discreet chunks
Allen Hilcock
- Vault, stories
Alex Cheek
-
Tinhouse workshop
-
Edinborough, tough book
-
Sentences that you don’t expect to succeed
-
You want to feel “Gosh, you did that?”
-
Read it first in Kindle, if you like the book, buy the physical copy.
Cormic McCarthy
-
Blood Meridian
-
He worked in silence
James Baldwin
Ocean Vong
-
On Earth, novel memoir
-
poets writing novel
George Saunders
- Lincoln in the Bardot, sustaining a tone that you don’t usually encounter
Peggy rnstein
- essayist, nonfiction
Nothing Matters
Teju Cole
- essays on photography, required for photographers
James Salter
- minimalist fiction writer
Norman Maclean
- A River Runs Through It, short story or novella
Italo Calvino
Per Petterson
- Out Stealing Horses, novel, amazing tone
Write a lot.
Read a lot.
Do it the right way.
Set a schedule.
Read books by authors whose voice speak to you.
You find these authors by reading a lot.
Disconnect from the internet.
10 pm to 12 nn
Instead of returning to school, apply to writing workshops or residencies.
He learned a lot about writing from Alexander Chee than by years writing by himself.
Quotes
- species:
- themes:
Notes
Collations
Annotations
References
Mod, Craig. How Do You Become a Better Writer? 3, https://feeds.simplecast.com/DzfO4qjQ.