💬“If something happened that struck me, I would write a note — sometimes just on a little scrap of paper — and would slip these pieces of paper into a folder… Especially if I got stuck, I would take another piece of paper and say, ‘You’re stuck on this damn paper, so write about why you got stuck.’” — Peter Elbow, author of Writing with Power, 1935-2025.
(HT: Chris Aldridge)
”Just as no one can be Charles Dickens these days, very soon, no one will be able to market anything that looks like what AI could produce.”
I’ve found writing on Wordpress a bit of a chore. Plenty of features when all I wanted to do was post a little article. These days micro.blog suits me very well.
If you use Wordpress but would enjoy a simpler editing interface here are two newish options:
HT: John Jonston
What comes after content?
The decline of Hollywood has been attributed to the rise of AI-generated ‘content’, leading to a potential cultural shift towards more authentic human creativity. This article explores what comes next and points out the radically new may not be quite as new as it appears.
The Lost Medieval Library Found in a Romanian Church medievalists.net
Old news, but new to me. I’d love to find a lost medieval library in a tower somewhere, but I might be on the wrong continent for that kind of discovery.
HT: @glynmoody@mastodon.social
Image: Ropemaker’s Tower, Mediaș, Romania (Source. CCby SA4.0)
My notes were full but my heart was empty. Doug Toft travels beyond progressive summarization
Doug Toft explores his journey to making better notes on his reading. He found trying to summarize what he’d just read was heavy work. And Tiago Forte’s approach of ‘progressive summarization’ wasn’t really helping him.
Perhaps there’s a better way. He quotes Peter Elbow’s great book, Writing With Power. The author says:
“If you want to digest and remember what you are reading, try writing about it instead of taking notes… Perfectly organized notes that cover everything are beautiful, but they live on paper, not in your mind.”
Elsewhere (maybe I’ll find where) I’ve written about how a good way to summarize or paraphrase, to ‘write in your own words’, is to imagine discussing your reading with a friend. You might say: “I read this great book. It was all about…”.
We can easily do this kind of summary in everyday social life, so why not try it with our notes?
Image: Detail of a relief from Ostia showing writers at desks. (Source)
If you want to read the Writing Slowly weekly digest, you know what to do:
Well the book arrived this morning. Now I really am publishing slowly!
Finished reading: Nothing Left to Fear from Hell by Alan Warner. 📚
This was so piteously moving. The lost cause, the delusional hopes, the petty snobbery, the misplaced loyalties, the few quiet voices of reason, and oh, that startling, poignant ending. The Young Pretender like you never knew.
Publishing slowly
I’m writing so slowly that you might be wondering if I’m ever going to get anything published.
Well wonder no more. I’m happy to say extracts of my memoir, ‘The Green Island Notebook’ are published in the anthology Destinations & Detours: New Australian Writing.
Published by Detour Editions, the collection launches here in Sydney on Sunday 2nd March 2025, and if you happen to be in the vicinity, I’d be delighted to meet you in person.
Book Launch 2pm, Sunday 2nd March, at Randwick Literary Institute, 60 Clovelly Road, Randwick NSW
Watch out too for news of how you can get your hands on a copy, wherever in the world you find yourself.
And this isn’t the only news on the publishing front. I’ll be sharing details of some further publishing adventures very soon.
But don’t worry, whatever happens, I’ll still be writing slowly.
Randwick Literary Institute, the venue for our book launch, celebrates its 100th anniversary in 2025. Here it is in 1957, and it hasn’t changed much since then:
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To care is to disobey
The book Pirate Care discusses how the act of caring for others has been criminalized, and it advocates for a grassroots political practice of solidarity against oppressive legal measures.
I’ve found Natalie Goldberg’s writing prompts to be especially helpful. Maybe it’s the pleasure of a deck of cards I can shuffle and deal.
A great strength of youth is to be able to say, with naive but powerful conviction: “How hard could it be?”
I wrote comics as a child and as a teenager I wrote poetry and plays. It wasn’t hard, I just did it.
What did you achieve then that you doubt now?
It’s worth leaning into that.
💬 “We live in a warehouse of casts that have lost their moulds,” - Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony (1988).
Making meaning where there is none
💬 “We live in a warehouse of casts that have lost their moulds,” - Roberto Calasso, The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony (1988).
This quote, from the author, editor and translator Roberto Calasso, reminds me of the mysterious novel Piranesi by Susannah Clarke.
The huge ‘House’ in which Piranesi, the main character, finds himself is filled with giant statues of no known provenance. It is quite literally a warehouse of casts.
Because he is familiar with the statue of a gardener, he believes, he understands what a garden would be. The statues point enigmatically to a reality beyond his experience - or at least beyond his memory. Piranesi makes meaning where there otherwise is none.
And so do we.
More:
Roberto Calasso’s obituary
Susannah Clarke discusses her novel Piranesi on BBC Radio.
A photo of a toy train set from @manton brought back a fond memory: The first time I ever used eBay I was clueless and accidentally won three auctions. The result was enough wooden tracks to cross the whole continent.
My kids were delighted. Now In their mid-twenties, they still have some of that haul.
Old trains.
Currently reading: Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit 📚
I like walking because it is slow, and I suspect that the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour. If this is so, then modern life is moving faster than the speed of thought, or thoughtfulness.
-Rebecca Solnit; Wanderlust: A History of Walking
Useful Australian software? You’re probably thinking of Canva or Atlassian. And who even knows WiFi is Australian? But my favourite Aussie tool by far is Sublime Text, also made… here in Sydney.
I use it to write my #zettelkasten notes.
James Doyle is a fan too: ohdoylerules.com, and there’s a great discussion on Hacker News.
Torches against pitchforks
There’s a great Dave Coverly cartoon of a worried king looking down from the battlements of his castle at an angry crowd massed just below. His relaxed advisor says, “Oh, you don’t need to fight them - you just need to convince the pitchfork people that the torch people want to take away their pitchforks.”
While the people who always use the correct words in just the right tone use up their wrath on the people who sometimes, in their estimation, don’t quite manage to, the real evil stays focused on growing stronger each day.
PS. a lot of conflict online could be addressed with a simple phone call. Yes, we still have that.
PPS. Did I say torches against pitchforks? Maybe I meant OMG.lol against micro.blog
“Libraries will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no libraries.” - Anne Herbert, The Next Whole Earth Catalog (1980), p 331.
Indeed, what’s more punk than the public library? Flaming Hydra