Writing, Briefly An Article by Paul Graham www.paulgraham.com As for how to write well, here's the short version: Write a bad version 1 as fast as you can; rewrite it over and over; 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; start writing when you think of the first sentence; write about stuff you like; learn to recognize the approach of an ending, and when one appears, grab it. v0.crapThe situation talks back writing
Writing and Speaking An Essay by Paul Graham paulgraham.com Being a really good speaker is not merely orthogonal to having good ideas, but in many ways pushes you in the opposite direction...there's a tradeoff between smoothness and ideas. All the time you spend practicing a talk, you could instead spend making it better. writingspeechcommunicationpractice
Write Simply An Essay by Paul Graham www.paulgraham.com I try to write using ordinary words and simple sentences. That kind of writing is easier to read, and the easier something is to read, the more deeply readers will engage with it. The less energy they expend on your prose, the more they'll have left for your ideas. Several Short Sentences About Writing writing
The Age of the Essay An Essay by Paul Graham www.paulgraham.com EssayerExpressing ideas helps to form themFlow interesting (The Meander) Follow the brushThe Anxiety of Sequence writing
Early work An Essay by Paul Graham www.paulgraham.com Imagine if we could turn off the fear of making something lame. Imagine how much more we'd do. The right way to deal with new ideasFocus on the rate of change creativityskillideas
What doesn't seem like work? An Essay by Paul Graham paulgraham.com The stranger your tastes seem to other people, the stronger evidence they probably are of what you should do. So I bet it would help a lot of people to ask themselves about this explicitly. What seems like work to other people that doesn't seem like work to you? workinterestlife
The Top Idea in Your Mind An Essay by Paul Graham paulgraham.com I think most people have one top idea in their mind at any given time. That's the idea their thoughts will drift toward when they're allowed to drift freely. And this idea will thus tend to get all the benefit of that type of thinking, while others are starved of it. Which means it's a disaster to let the wrong idea become the top one in your mind. ideas
Cities and Ambition An Essay by Paul Graham paulgraham.com Boston says you should be smarterFlorence and MilanA city speaks to you mostly by accidentCity messages citiesambition
Taste for Makers An Essay by Paul Graham paulgraham.com If there is such a thing as beauty, we need to be able to recognize it. We need good taste to make good things. Instead of treating beauty as an airy abstraction, to be either blathered about or avoided depending on how one feels about airy abstractions, let's try considering it as a practical question: how do you make good stuff? You feel this when you start to design thingsGood design is simpleGood design is timelessGood design is often slightly funnyGood design is hard, but looks easy+3 More Beauty in flight beautytastedesign
Good and bad procrastination An Essay by Paul Graham paulgraham.com The absent-minded professorYou can't look a big problem too directly in the eye
The still life effect A Fragment by Paul Graham paulgraham.com If you're going to spend years working on something, you'd think it might be wise to spend at least a couple days considering different ideas, instead of going with the first that comes into your head. You'd think. But people don't. In fact, this is a constant problem when you're painting still lifes. You plonk down a bunch of stuff on a table, and maybe spend five or ten minutes rearranging it to look interesting. But you're so impatient to get started painting that ten minutes of rearranging feels very long. So you start painting. Three days later, having spent twenty hours staring at it, you're kicking yourself for having set up such an awkward and boring composition, but by then it's too late. ideasart
How to do what you love An Essay by Paul Graham paulgraham.com To do something well you have to like itWow, that's pretty coolPrestige is just fossilized inspirationAlways produce worklife
Hackers and Painters An Essay by Paul Graham www.paulgraham.com A great painting has to be better than it has to be
The Image of the City A Book by Kevin Lynch mitpress.mit.edu To become completely lostApparencyOn the edge of something elseNothing there, after allPaths, edges, districts, nodes, landmarks+6 More 125 Best Architecture BooksScenes of thoroughgoing samenessClues for software design in how we sketch maps of cities urbanismplacecities
To become completely lost To become completely lost is perhaps a rather rare experience for most people in the modern city. We are supported by the presence of others and by special way-finding devices: maps, street numbers, route signs, bus placards. But let the mishap of disorientation once occur, and the sense of anxiety and even terror that accompanies it reveals to us how closely it is linked to our sense of balance and well-being. The very word "lost" in our language means much more than simple geographical uncertainty; it carries overtones of utter disaster. Disorientation citiesplacegeographywayfinding
Apparency Half a century ago, Stern discussed this attribute of an artistic object and called it apparency. While art is not limited to this single end, he felt that one of its two basic functions was "to create images which by clarity and harmony of form fulfill the need for vividly comprehensible appearance." In his mind, this was an essential first step toward the expression of inner meaning. artmeaningimagesharmonyform
On the edge of something else The most common response to the question of symbolism was nothing in the city at all, but rather the sight of the New York City skyline across the river. Much of the characteristic feeling for Jersey City seemed to be that it was a place on the edge of something else. placeidentity
Nothing there, after all When asked to describe or symbolize the city as a whole, the subjects used certain standard words: "spread out", "spacious", "formless", "without centers". Los Angeles seemed to be hard to envision or conceptualize as a whole. Said one subject: It's as if you were going somewhere for a long time, and when you got there you discovered there was nothing there, after all.
Paths, edges, districts, nodes, landmarks The contents of the city's images which are referable to physical forms can conveniently be classified into five types of elements: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks. Paths are the channels along which the observer customarily, occasionally, or potentially moved. Edges are the linear elements not used or considered as paths by the observer. They are the boundaries. Districts are the medium-to-large sections of the city, conceived of as having two-dimensional extent. Nodes are points, the strategic spots in a city into which an observer can enter, and which are the intensive foci to and from which they are traveling. Landmarks are another type of point-reference, but in this case the observer does not enter within them, they are external. They are usually a rather simply defined physical object: building, sign, store, or mountain. City districtsAs a kind of gateway cities
A directional quality Paths may not only be identifiable and continuous, but have directional quality as well: one direction along the line can easily be distinguished from the reverse. This can be done by a gradient, a regular change in some quality which is cumulative in one direction. changewayfinding
Introverts and extroverts Some regions are introvert, turned in upon themselves with little reference to the city outside them, such as Boston's North End or Chinatown. Others may be extrovert, turned outward and connected to surrounding elements. The common visibly touches neighboring regions, despite its inner path confusions. place
Junctions The junction, or place of a break in transportation, has compelling importance for the city observer. Because decisions must be made at junctions, people heighten their attention at such place and perceive elements with more than normal clarity. This tendency was confirmed so repeatedly that elements located at junctions may automatically be assumed to derive special prominence from their location. citieswayfindingchoice
What we are accustomed to call beautiful Most objects which we are accustomed to call beautiful, such as a painting or a tree, are single-purpose things, in which, through long development or the impress of one will, there is an intimate, visible linkage from fine detail to total structure. beautyobjectsstructure
A certain plasticity There are dangers in a highly specialized visible form; there is a need for a certain plasticity in the perceptual environment. If there is only one dominant path to a destination, a few sacred focal points, or an ironclad set of rigidly separated regions, then there is only one way to image the city without considerable strain. This one may suit neither the needs of all people, nor even the needs of one person as they vary from time to time. An unusual trip becomes awkward or dangerous; interpersonal relations may tend to compartmentalize themselves; the scene becomes monotonous or restrictive. citiesform
As plain as day The personal experience of most of us will testify to this persistence of an illusory image long after its inadequacy is conceptually realized. We stare into the jungle and see only the sunlight on the green leaves, but a warning noise tells us that an animal is hidden there. The observer then learns to interpret the scene by singling out "give-away" clues and by reweighting previous signals. The camouflaged animal may now be picked up by the reflection of its eyes. Finally by repeated experience the entire pattern of perception is changed, and the observer need no longer consciously search for give-aways, or add new data to an old framework. They have achieved an image which will operate successfully in the new situation, seeming natural and right. Quite suddenly the hidden animal appears among the leaves, "as plain as day." natureperceptionimages