The Marginalian
The Marginalian

Reads tagged with “writing”

Good Writing vs. Talented Writing
Good Writing vs. Talented Writing

“Talented writing makes things happen in the reader’s mind — vividly, forcefully — that good writing, which stops with clarity and logic, doesn’t.”

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Cats, Guns, and Books: William S. Burroughs’s Daily Routine
Cats, Guns, and Books: William S. Burroughs’s Daily Routine

For breakfast, “a salted soft-boiled egg with toast, or perhaps fresh-squeezed lemonade, and two cups of very sweet tea.”

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Who Invented Writing? An Animated Historical Detective Story
Who Invented Writing? An Animated Historical Detective Story

From Sumerian cuneiform to hieroglyphics to Chinese script, a tale of simultaneous invention.

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Hemingway on Writing, Knowledge, and the Dangers of Ego
Hemingway on Writing, Knowledge, and the Dangers of Ego

“All bad writers are in love with the epic.”

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The Writer’s Technique in Thirteen Theses: Walter Benjamin’s Timeless Advice on Writing
The Writer’s Technique in Thirteen Theses: Walter Benjamin’s Timeless Advice on Writing

“The more circumspectly you delay writing down an idea, the more maturely developed it will be on surrendering itself.”

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Raymond Chandler on Writing: A Lifetime of Wisdom on the Craft from His Private Letters
Raymond Chandler on Writing: A Lifetime of Wisdom on the Craft from His Private Letters

“Writers … have to fight the impulse to live up to someone else’s idea of what they are.”

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Timeless Advice on Writing: The Collected Wisdom of Great Writers
Timeless Advice on Writing: The Collected Wisdom of Great Writers

Hemingway, Didion, Baldwin, Fitzgerald, Sontag, Vonnegut, Bradbury, Morrison, Orwell, Le Guin, Woolf, and other titans of literature.

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Daily Rituals: A Guided Tour of Writers’ and Artists’ Creative Habits
Daily Rituals: A Guided Tour of Writers’ and Artists’ Creative Habits

Hemingway wrote standing, Nabokov on index cards, Twain while puffing cigars, and Sitwell in an open coffin.

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E.B. White on the Art of the Essay and Why Egotism Is Essential for the Essay Writer
E.B. White on the Art of the Essay and Why Egotism Is Essential for the Essay Writer

“Only a person who is congenitally self-centered has the effrontery and the stamina to write essays.”

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Malcolm Cowley on the Four Stages of Writing: Lessons from the First Five Years of The Paris Review
Malcolm Cowley on the Four Stages of Writing: Lessons from the First Five Years of The Paris Review

“The germ of a story is a new and simple element introduced into an existing situation or mood.”

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