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.

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:

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.

Apply every year to a bunch of residencies.

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

Dennis Johnson

Lynn Tillman

Lily Davis, fiction

Samuel Johnson (collection of stories)

Anne Carson

Sam Anderson

Writer Poets who became novelists

Michael Ondaatje

John Jeremiah Sullivan

Ottessa Moshfegh

Bruce Chautwin

Laurie Lee (incredible travel writer, 50% fictive)

Helen MacDonald

HS Frocke

Nicholson Baker

W.G. Sebald

Don DeLillo

Philip Roth

Pico Iyer

William T. Vollman

Joan Didion (essay)

Jenny Oddell

James Clear

Robert Carl

Jeff Dyer

Kazuo Ishiguro

Anna Burns

Nan Shepherd

John McPhee

Lesley Jamison

Jadie Daniels

Garth Greenwell

Maggie Nelson

Allen Hilcock

Alex Cheek

Cormic McCarthy

James Baldwin

Ocean Vong

George Saunders

Peggy rnstein

Nothing Matters

Teju Cole

James Salter

Norman Maclean

Italo Calvino

Per Petterson


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

Notes

Collations

Annotations

References

Mod, Craig. How Do You Become a Better Writer? 3, https://feeds.simplecast.com/DzfO4qjQ.