Don't Write the Tedious Thing An Article by Maud Newton maudnewton.medium.com Ugh, now I have to write this boring part, I would think. I would spend a few days in active rebellion against this directive that I imagined the book was imposing. Then I would realize: this is my book! There are no rules! I can write it however I want! Also, I would think, if I’m bored by something that I believe I need to write, the reader undoubtedly will be too, if not because the subject is inherently boring, then because I myself find it so unbearably tedious to imagine discussing it for five pages. Often as not, I would remember some aspect of the subject that deeply interested me, something a little outside the way it’s usually perceived or written about. Then I would meditate on that, and soon I would be scribbling notes from an increasingly excited place until I found a way forward. A form of beginner’s mind. Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind boredomwritinginterest
Having quite lost sight of the principle But the coppersmiths themselves, in their desire to do better or otherwise than their predecessors, soon quit the line of truth and propriety. There comes then a second coppersmith, who proposes to modify the form of the primitive vase in order to seduce the purchaser with the attraction of novelty...and it becomes fashionable, and everybody in town must have one of the vases made by the second coppersmith. A third, seeing the success of this expedient, goes still further, and makes a third vase, with rounder outlines, for anybody who will buy it. Having quite lost sight of the principle, he becomes capricious and fanciful...yet everyone applauds the new vase, and the third coppersmith is regarded as having singularly perfected his art, while in fact he has only robbed the original work of all its style, and produced an object which is really ugly and comparatively inconvenient. Eugène Viollet-le-Duc, Discourses on Architecture CamelsStyle consists in distinction of form fashionnovelty