How to be a better writer (the long way)

The best thing about writing is that you can always get better at it.

Yes, there are those among us born with the Muse singing in their hearts. But most of us, me very much included, have to toil merrily at the grist mill to only occasionally (or maybe never) touch the sublime.

Here are mostly analog ways of becoming a better writer that have nothing to do with generative AI, automation, and optimization, and all those fun things.

Because the slow, careful, tender quest is often a kinder path to follow.

1. Read anything you want and a lot of it. Whenever I'm stuck on a writing project, I'll turn off my technology and fire up my book (I use a Kindle... sorry) or open a paper book. I'm partial to Philip K. Dick, Margaret Atwood, and Kazuo Ishiguro. A pro tip is to read something that has nothing to do with your project or current discipline. Are you a content marketer? Avoid copywriting manuals for a hot second and pick up a dark graphic novel.

2. Find a passage in your favorite piece of literature and write it down word for word. Then rewrite it a bit. Then rewrite it a lot.

3. Read poetry aloud while standing upright with good posture. Try orating from your diaphragm. My favorite poem in the whole entire world is Kaddish by Allen Ginsberg. My second favorite is The Bells by Edgar Allen Poe. If you really want to write with effervescence, poetry is just about the best place to lurk around in.

4. Write the moment you wake up. 750 words. On the page! Blammo! And not using a computer or tablet. I'm talking paper and pen/pencil. The real trick, though, is to never stop writing. These words may be brilliant, but most likely, they will be neon garbage nonsense. And that's okay! The literal hardest thing about writing is... writing! Editing and rewriting are much easier than filling a nightmarishly blank page with words. And if you do it every day (or most days), then you'll build up your scribe's muscle.

5. Also, print out your work and edit it with a colorful pen. Pretend you're a teacher grading your work - that's the level of annotation I'm talking about here. The interstitial narratives you discover in that mode will inform how you think and write and you'll have a blast doing it.

6. Snuffle out another creative or non-creative discipline of any kind to try out. There's a limit to what you can write about when all you do is write about your experience and your experience is limited to... writing. So, get out there! Go on walks without those pesky AirPods. Leave your phone in Faraday cage. And experience being in the world. Your future words will be richer for the added influence.

7. On that note, pick up a musical instrument. I've been playing the drums for more than twenty years and there's nothing better for defeating the madness of figuring what to write and how and what it all means anyhow than leaving words behind for a completely different method of composing and performing the experience of being a finite speck in a vast, hysterical universe. Other instruments also work. Bonus points if you enjoy the process of sucking, because at the beginning you totally will, and there's joy and humility in jamming with a beginner's mind.

8. Take an improv class. One of my favorite improv teachers once said that the world would be a better place if everyone took an improv 101 course, and I wholeheartedly agree with him. Improv is the art of saying "yes, and" to ideas, discoveries, emotions, single lines of dialogue, slight movements, intentions, really everything (within reason). Learning improv gives you so much appreciation for the creative minds all around you, and teaches you how to listen to others and yourself so much better. And champion the weird, wild stuff that goes on in your head that you most likely shut down on a routine basis. It's also wicked fun. The only risk is that you may want to take 201 and then 301 (or however it's classified) and then you'll be part of the global community of improvisers forever. We do a lot of bits.

9. Any acting or theater class counts. Anything that gets you out of your head and into your body in an expressive, potentially narrative way.

10. Write outside of your comfort zone. One way to get better at improv is to "be interested, not interesting," and that applies to writing just as much or more. And what better way to practice that than finding a topic or style or discipline that you absolutely suck at (or fear) and invest interest in it. I've never written a play, but I recently directed a one-act by a local stand-up who'd also never written a play. It was tremendous, and now I'm going to write a one-act. The goal will be to tackle a story or set of characters that are outside of my knowledge realm (no dystopian goofballs for me!) and really get into the corresponding emotional truth.

11. In case "be interested, not interesting" didn't make sense, here's an example from theater: say you have two people who come onstage with no solid ideas but they're very interested in one another. The result will be two characters who care and an unfurling story that resonates universally. Now say you have to actors who come on and one has this wild idea, but neither performer really cares about the other person. The idea, no matter how good, will fall apart, and we as an audience will probably stop caring. If you as a performer or writer are interested in a topic or artistic discipline or really anything, it'll seep lovingly into your writing.

12. Take an example of writing that was written with the mantra of "keep it simple, stupid," and rewrite it with as much pomp and lyrical nonsense as possible. Then ask whether that sounds more or less like you. The void will answer back in the voice you love or fear the most.

13. Take time off writing! You get a lot out of writing every day, but you get just as much from preserving your wit and spirit. The world around us grinds forward with nightmare speed and a torrential wake. We feel embattled - I definitely do. You deserve the kindness of time spent doing nothing at all. Especially when you feel you don't deserve it (I never feel that I do, so this is just as much for me). You are the only person who writes like you, at the pace that suits you, in the voice that's so gorgeously yours. Resting your instrument still means that you play. And the experience of nothingness, or whatever it is you kindly give yourself, will flow back into the practice of writing. And I know this is a privileged way of thinking. Work is essential and time off is sometimes literally impossible for so many reasons. Time off can be five minutes. It can be 45 seconds. Or years. You're still a writer. You'll always be a writer. And you'll never stop becoming a better writer, even if you put down the pen for however long you need.

    
    

And now we return to work, I wager. I hope you know how talented you are. I can see it from all the way over here! May there be wind in your sails, fellow scribblers.

Machines can't experience

There's a painting hanging in my parents' condo that I never noticed until generative AI became the hottest of topics. One evening, I was complaining about the existential crisis new technologies posed to writers and artists, and my father, who is an inventor, artist, and longtime Shambhala meditation practitioner, turned my attention to the painting.

In his Bronx-tinged baritone, he spoke the words, "machines can't experience."

This seemed logical enough. It was an idea that I already felt with much vigor. But why the painting?

Let me take you to your most recent trip to a museum. Or the last time you stared at a work of art and felt something bubble up inside you. Emotions that you couldn't quite place. A nostalgia for an experience that may never have happened. Wind in your hair, warmth on your skin. Goosebumps dancing gently across your bone marrow. Remember now? Good!

That's what I felt when I looked at this painting. Specifically, the undeniable sensation of late summer sun and a soft breeze. This painting in particular depicts a pastoral scene, with a field of wheat in the foreground overlooking a gurgling stream and sturdy farmhouse. Sunlight streams into the scenery, giving the sky a clementine tinge and the entire rendering a tender quietude.

My father and I gazed at the painting for many minutes. I could hear the near silence of the scene, the chirp of unseen birds, the crunch of earth under my feet, the hush of wind caressing the stalks of wheat. I knew what temperature it must be there. I'd been there before, even though I'd never been there before.

Art (and all creative endeavors, really) comes from experience. Whether it bursts forth from our need to express that which can only be felt but but needs some form of physical, auditory, or imagined manifestation, or seeps from the boring, idle mind, it's not a quantifiable or logical thing. It's what sprouts from our ineffable anxiety of being in time and space for a ghastly short period (and knowing it).

It's wonder and dread and curiosity all translated into stories, paintings, sculptures, plays, songs, sonnets, poems, epics, websites, products, footwear, drum sets, guitar solos, gastronomy, vegetable arrangements, novels, webisodes, etc., ad infinitum.

So it's no wonder that writers like me or artists like my father look at the onslaught of generative AI tools, and the frothing hype around them, with heartbreak.

No matter how powerful these models get, they'll never replace experience. I've no doubt that they'll come close, and eerily so. I'm wise enough to know that my days may be numbered and I must embrace this alarming new form of work.

But I'm also confident in my assertion that these tools won't replace an artist's ability to pour the warmth of a summer day onto a canvas so that two curmudgeonly fellows in a condo in Massachusetts may also revel in that momentous, small moment in a field.

And I hope that this gorgeous pursuit is not lost when optimization becomes more and more seductive.

On the other hand, machines may be able to experience sooner than we think. They'll probably have far more empathy than we as a species tend to have now. It's the logical thing.

I hereby begin writing a blog

Greetings, dear reader.

I assume you've stumbled upon my site looking for an experienced writer, editor, or, dare I say, content marketer. Perhaps you're looking for someone to lead a team building workshop using the core tenets of improv theatre.

Whatever the reason may be, I welcome you to pull up your sitting apparatus of choice, make a fresh mug of coffee, nestle in a blanket, and take a gander at the thoughts that swirl about my mind.

This blog will contain a myriad of different topics, from art to generative AI to the current state of the universe as glimpsed by a scholar of dystopian literature. Also, a bunch of thoughts on marketing, content strategy, applied improvisation, the culture of work and play, and the maillard reaction.

Thank you for stopping by. I hope you enjoy the words.