Novelty & Newness
The subtlest slightest kinds of differences
Having quite lost sight of the principle
Ending is better than mending
“We always throw away old clothes. Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending, ending is better…”
A fresh focus of power
The demand for “originality”—with the implication that the reminiscence of other writers is a sin against originality and a defect in the work—is a recent one and would have seemed quite ludicrous to poets of the Augustan Age, or of Shakespeare’s time. The traditional view is that each new work should be a fresh focus of power through which former streams of beauty, emotion, and reflection are directed. This view is adopted, and perhaps carried to excess, by writers like T. S. Eliot, some of whose poems are a close web of quotations and adaptations, chosen for their associative value, or like James Joyce, who makes great use of the associative value of sounds and syllables.
Over-imagination
An architect intent on being different may in the end prove as troubling as an over-imaginative pilot or doctor. However important originality may be in some fields, restraint and adherence to procedure emerge as the more significant virtues in a great many others.
We rarely wish to be surprised by novelty as we round street corners. We require consistency in our buildings, for we are ourselves frequently close to disorientation and frenzy.
The word invents itself
Posits certain neologisms as arising from their own cultural necessity—his words, I believe. Yes, he said. When the kind of experience that you're getting a man-sized taste of becomes possible, the word invents itself.
The Innovation Funnel
A Comic by Tom FishburneMost organizations use some version of an innovation funnel to bring ideas to life. It starts with lots of ideas at the front end and then launches whatever survives all the way to the back end.
Yet this Darwinian process of bringing ideas to life doesn’t necessarily lead to survival of the fittest ideas. If we’re not careful, the innovation funnel leads to survival of the safest ideas.
Organizations are good at spotting risks. In an effort to improve success rates, organizations tend to put sharper teeth in the funnel.
As ideas run the organizational gauntlet, they can get pruned, sheared, shaped, and watered down beyond recognition. On the way, they can lose the essence of the idea. They may lose their point of difference and reason for being.
Stepping stones in possibility space
An Article by Gordon BranderIf we try to cross this lake by following only the stepping stones that lead toward our objective, we’ll soon get stuck. But what if we let go of our objectives? What if we focused on trying to find new stepping stones instead? This is novelty search. Instead of looking for something specific, you look for something new.
Novelty search isn’t just random, it’s chance plus memory. Together, these ingredients do something interesting.
...Stepping stones are also combinatorial. Each new stepping stone we discover expands our potential to find even more stepping stones. Collecting stepping stones is a luck maximization algorithm. By collecting and combining stepping stones, we might arrive at our destination by accident, or somewhere more interesting!
Don’t Play It Like the Flute
An Article by Matthias OttDon’t play it like the flute. Play it as if it was the wind whistling through the desert dunes.
No matter what you love to create, there is something to be learned from the way Hans Zimmer approached the Dune score. We are all striving to create work that is novel, innovative, memorable, and inspiring. To get there, however, we tend to focus on getting things right, on avoiding mistakes, on “being professional”. Yes, it is important to have the commitment, dedication, and attention to detail of a professional. But being right? That will only take you so far. What is much more important is to approach the problem in front of you with curiosity and an open mind. With an urge to explore what can be found beyond the ordinary, beyond the right way of doing things. If you want to create something that nobody has come up with yet, it is important that you try out all the crazy ideas others are afraid to try, that you build prototypes, improvise, and freely play with the materials and the technologies you have at hand.
The Web is Industrialized and I Helped Industrialize It
An Article by Dave RupertIn our cultural obsession with billionaire entrepreneurs we laud new features more than the maintenance and incrementalism work of making old features better and more accessible. Maintenance looks like red minus signs in the spreadsheet. New features look like green plus signs. New features look better on our LinkedIn profiles. New features have that pizzazz, baby.
When gardening, the building of planters and initial planting is a very short process. The majority of your time is spent nurturing and monitoring growth. I personally feel the struggle between maintainer work and new shiny feature work. I enjoy that new feature smell but I know that my day-to-day is more like a janitor on a boat mopping up someone else’s barf. In terms of metaphors, the gardening metaphor is certainly better, and it acknowledges that design and development still tend to be more creative endeavors.
Several Short Sentences About Writing
Here, in short, is what I want to tell you.
Know what each sentence says,
What it doesn't say,
And what it implies.
Of these, the hardest is knowing what each sentence actually says.
Sonorisms V
Leave space between them for the things that words can't really say.
To suggest more than the words seem to allow.
Perhaps it renames the world.
The Anxiety of Sequence.
It was all change until the very last second.
The debris of someone else's thinking.
You'll never run out of noticings.
Names that announce the whatness of the world.
What were you trying to protect?
You were protecting the memory.
The tyranny of what exists.
Do any of them sound first?
It sets an echo in motion.
Try writing for the reader in yourself.
So call it "perfection enough".
Toward the name of the world—yours to discover.Both models are completely useless
In your head, you'll probably find two models for writing.
One is the familiar model taught in high school and college—a matter of outlines and drafts and transitions and topic sentences and argument.The other model is its antithesis—the way poets and novelists are often thought to write.
Words used to describe this second model include "genius", "inspiration", "flow", and "natural", sometimes even "organic".Both models are useless.
I should qualify that sentence.
Both models are completely useless.The shape of the sentence
You've been taught to overlook the character of the prose in front of you in order to get at its meaning.
You overlook the shape of the sentence itself for the meaning it contains,
Which means that while you were reading,
All those millions of words passed by
Without teaching you how to make sentences.The Anxiety of Sequence
Much of what's taught under the name of expository writing could be called "The Anxiety of Sequence."
Its premise is this:
To get where you're going, you have to begin in just the right place
And take the proper path,
Which depends on knowing where you plan to conclude.You can get anywhere from anywhere
And if you can get anywhere from anywhere,
You can start anywhere
And end anywhere.
There is no single necessary order.Significant everywhere
Writing isn't a conveyor belt bearing the reader to "the point" at the end of the piece, where the meaning will be revealed.
Good writing is significant everywhere,
Delightful everywhere.It was all change until the very last second
Every work of literature is the result of thousands and thousands of decisions.
Intricate, minute decisions—this word or that, here or where, now or later, again and again.
It's the living tissue of a writer's choices,
Not the fossil record of an ancient, inspired race.Attention requires a cunning passivity.
A renaming of the already named
A true metaphor is a swift and violent twisting of language,
A renaming of the already named.
It's meant to expire in a sudden flash of light
And to reveal—in that burst of illumination—
A correspondence that must be literally accurate.The debris of someone else's thinking
A cliché isn't just a familiar, overused saying.
It's the debris of someone else's thinking.How each sentence got that way
When the work is really complete, the writer knows how each sentence got that way.
This small internal quaver
Pay attention now:
No matter how much you know or learn about syntax, grammar, or rhetoric,
This small internal quaver, this inner disturbance,
Is the most useful evidence you'll ever get.
Someday, you'll be able to articulate what causes it.
But for now, what's important is to notice it.
Noticing is always the goal....the faint vertigo caused by an ambiguity you can't quite detect.
What matter is what it points to.
Find out what's causing it and fix it
Even if you're not sure how.The urge to be done
"Flow" is often a synonym for ignorance and laziness.
It's also a sign of haste, the urge to be done.Talking and writing
Talking is natural.
Writing is not.It may seem strange that the manual dexterity needed to hold a pencil—or use a keyboard—comes later than the lingual and mental dexterity needed to speak.
But it does.What were you trying to protect?
As the piece evolves, you try to protect those original, effusive sentences.
Only to realize, at last, that what you're writing won't come together until they've been removed or revised.What were you trying to protect?
The memory of the excitement you felt when those words "came to you."
(Where did they "come" from?)
You were protecting the memory
of the excitement of really concentrating,
of paying close attention to your thoughts and, perhaps, your sentences,
the excitement of feeling the galvanic link between language and thought.The discoveries you make in the making
Style is an expression of the interest you take in the making of every sentence.
It emerges, almost without intent, from your engagement with each sentence.
It's the discoveries you make in the making of the prose itself.Where ambiguity rules, there is no "style"—or anything else worth having.
Pursue clarity instead.
In the pursuit of clarity, style reveals itself.The virtue of already existing
It can be overwhelming—the inertia of the paragraphs and pages you've already composed, the sentences you've already written,
No matter how rough they are.Whether you love what you've written or not,
Those sentences have the virtue of already existing,
Which makes them better than sentences that don't exist.
Or so it seems.Composition and revision
Revise at the point of composition.
Compose at the point of revision.
Think of composition and revision as the same thing.Squander your material
Squander your material.
Don't ration it, saving the best for last.
You don't know what the best is.
Or the last.Do any of them sound first?
Just try out some sentences.
Lots of them.
See how they sound.
Do any of them sound first?You're holding an audition.
Many sentences will try out.
One gets the part.We have testimony
Proof is for mathematicians.
Logic is for philosophers.
We have testimony.When you're interested in what you're working on
It's never hard to work when you're interested in what you're working on.
But what if you hate what you're working on?
It helps to examine the content of your loathing.
What is it you hate?The work selects its audience
Imagine a cellist playing one of Bach's solo suites.
Does he consider his audience?
(Did Bach, for that matter?)
Does he play the suit differently to audiences
Of different incomes and educations and social backgrounds?
No. The work selects its audience.