I wish I had the time and talent (are they connected?) to write like Paul Graham. His latest essay, on — of all things — the “The Age of the Essay,” collects historical tidbits, personal vignettes, meta-moments about writing, and a few otherwise unrelated threads into a meditation on how to share your thinking.
I also noted the following quote, which described my soon-to-be-4-year-old son’s defining attitude quite clearly:
Collecting surprises is a similar process. The more anomalies you’ve seen, the more easily you’ll notice new ones. Which means, oddly enough, that as you grow older, life should become more and more surprising. When I was a kid, I used to think adults had it all figured out. I had it backwards. Kids are the ones who have it all figured out. They’re just mistaken. [emphasis added]
When it comes to surprises, the rich get richer. But (as with wealth) there may be habits of mind that will help the process along. It’s good to have a habit of asking questions, especially questions beginning with Why. But not in the random way that three year olds ask why. There are an infinite number of questions. How do you find the fruitful ones? …
For different reasons, I nodded in agreement at this:
I write down things that surprise me in notebooks. I never actually get around to reading them and using what I’ve written, but I do tend to reproduce the same thoughts later. So the main value of notebooks may be what writing things down leaves in your head.
At work, I jot down tasks and things to remember, less surprises, but it’s true that the mechanical act of writing reinforces the mental chemistry of memory.
And one more quote, again unrelated:
Anyone can publish an essay on the Web, and it gets judged, as any writing should, by what it says, not who wrote it. Who are you to write about x? You are whatever you wrote.
I equate this phenomenon with the “nets” in Ender’s Game, where two pre-teens command worldwide political power, anonymously, via the power of their ideas, communicated solely by their writing. Democracy of ideas, taken to an extreme… either wonderful or scary or both, but I choose to be amazed and hopeful that words can move people so much.
The hardest part is just sitting down and getting the words out. Commenting on others’ thoughts and references is easier than the alternative, because commenting is reacting, rather than creating. But you have to jump in the water somewhere.