1. First, care. →

    Merlin Mann on 43 Folders:

    Specifically, if you discover, in frustration, that you’re pathologically incapable of doing one thing at a time, consider the possibility that you’ve been unknowingly trying to “focus” on two, twenty, or twenty thousand disparate things that you don’t really care that much about. Just consider it. Because, in the absence of caring, nobody can focus on anything, apart from their own abject lack of focus. Think about it.

  2. Well, you may ask, what can you do about it? The subject is one on which you have few convictions and little information. Can you be expected to make a dull subject interesting? As a matter of fact, this is precisely what you are expected to do. This is the writer’s essential task. All subjects are dull until somebody makes them interesting. The writer’s job is to find the argument, the approach, the angle, the wording that will take the reader with him. This is seldom easy, and it is particularly hard in subjects that have been much discussed: College Football, Fraternities, Popular Music, Is Chivalry Dead?, and the like. You will feel that there is nothing you can do with such subjects except repeat the old bromides. But there are some things you can do which will make your papers, if not throbbingly alive, at least less insufferably tedious than they might otherwise be.

    — 

    Apostate Café’s “How to Say Nothing in 500 Words”

    Very interesting read for anyone who writes anything, which means everyone. You may think these tips are normal, and that you already know how to avoid them, but, in reality, no one can truly master them. I still struggle day-to-day with them.

  3. Oblique Chirps is a Twitter account (inspired by a deck of cards by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt) that does just what it sounds like it does: creates dilemmas/gives advice. You can choose from two accounts, one that tweets daily, and one that tweets hourly.

    Oblique Chirps is a Twitter account (inspired by a deck of cards by Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt) that does just what it sounds like it does: creates dilemmas/gives advice. You can choose from two accounts, one that tweets daily, and one that tweets hourly.