Writing, Briefly (2005)
paulgraham.com
paulgraham.com
He also says something along the lines of "if you look back on something you wrote a year later, and you don't feel compelled to change it, you haven't learned/thought/grown enough".
“There is no such thing as good writing,
only good rewriting.”
— Robert Graves
- Write a bad version 1 as fast as you can
- rewrite it over and over
- cut out everything unnecessary
- write in a conversational tone
- develop a nose for bad writing, so you can see and fix it in yours
- imitate writers you like
- if you can't get started, tell someone what you plan to write about, then write down what you said
- expect 80% of the ideas in an essay to happen after you start writing it, and 50% of those you start with to be wrong
- be confident enough to cut
- have friends you trust read your stuff and tell you which bits are confusing or drag
- don't (always) make detailed outlines
- mull ideas over for a few days before writing
- carry a small notebook or scrap paper with you
- start writing when you think of the first sentence
- if a deadline forces you to start before that, just say the most important sentence first
- write about stuff you like
- don't try to sound impressive
- don't hesitate to change the topic on the fly
- use footnotes to contain digressions
- use anaphora to knit sentences together
- read your essays out loud to see (a) where you stumble over awkward phrases and (b) which bits are boring (the paragraphs you dread reading)
- try to tell the reader something new and useful
- work in fairly big quanta of time
- when you restart, begin by rereading what you have so far
- when you finish, leave yourself something easy to start with
- accumulate notes for topics you plan to cover at the bottom of the file
- don't feel obliged to cover any of them
- write for a reader who won't read the essay as carefully as you do, just as pop songs are designed to sound ok on crappy car radios
- if you say anything mistaken, fix it immediately
- ask friends which sentence you'll regret most
- go back and tone down harsh remarks
- publish stuff online, because an audience makes you write more, and thus generate more ideas
- print out drafts instead of just looking at them on the screen
- use simple, germanic words
- learn to distinguish surprises from digressions
- learn to recognize the approach of an ending, and when one appears, grab it.
https://www.amazon.com/Writing-10th-Anniversary-Memoir-Craft...
e.g. https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=15509
> Strunk's dreadful little book of drivel.
> Virtually nothing useful about English grammar can be learned from Strunk.
> the grammatical claims Strunk makes are foolish assertions
You can find many more examples with a quick search.
I don't say that S&W is or should be the end-all-be-all of English; by all means, pick and choose.
Personally, I think I'm OK with this use, as it's supposed to be a kind of list after the colon. Isn't the proper use of semicolons somewhat subjective, anyways?
Abusing semicolons in this way is, in the most strictly pedantic sense, not syntactically incorrect inasmuch as a semicolon joins independent clauses. But that's like saying you can use a flathead screwdriver in place of a cold chisel. Sure, if you hammer on it hard enough for long enough, you can eventually muddle through, as long as you don't mind making an unserviceable mess of the work. But it's still the wrong tool - just as are thirty-five semicolons here.
Syntactically permissible or not, this usage is nonetheless an error, not because it is stylistically grotesque - although it is also that - but because it actively impairs legibility rather than promoting it.
It’s way worse to write like you do than to list stuff out with semicolons,
HOWEVER I also strongly maintain that if something can be best expressed in a bullet list, do that. I feel that would have made reading this essay easier.