READING:
ADMIRING:
“Emerge” (2020)
Detail of “Emerge”
“Hidden Gold” (2023)
Detail of “Hidden Gold”
Favorite reads from Q1:
Something I’ve started doing lately is after I’ve finished a book, I’ll upload my favorite highlights and excerpts to Claude or Gemini and ask, “What’s going on in this writing?”
I know what I like. I trust my taste. But I don’t have the right language to articulate it.
This is where LLMs come in handy.
For example, this passage from Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson spoke to me. I wanted to understand why. So I pasted the text into Gemini and asked it to explain the writing mechanics and literary devices. Then I asked it to generate a concise ‘writing rule’ referencing the example:
“Show, Don’t Tell”
This is a classic writing rule, and this excerpt is a masterclass in it.
Example:
I was hanging out in the E.R. with fat, quivering Nurse. One of the Family Service doctors that nobody liked came in looking for George to wipe up after him. “Where’s Georgie?” this guy asked.
“Georgie’s in O.R.,” Nurse said.
“Again?”
“No,” Nurse said. “Still.”
“Still? Doing what?”
“Cleaning the floor.”
“Again?”
“No,” Nurse said again. “Still.”
The author does not write: “George had been cleaning the O.R. floor for a very, very long time, and everyone was getting annoyed.”
The Effect: Instead, the writer shows us how long George has been cleaning through the doctor’s disbelief (“Still? Doing what?”) and the nurse’s flat correction. It forces the reader to put the pieces together, making the writing much more engaging.
I have a file in my Obsidian vault that’s full of these little ‘writing rules.’
The thinking is, rather than simply having taste, knowing what I do and don’t like, I want to reverse-engineer my taste and apply it to creative projects.
“Once we develop good taste, we can apply it to our own work.” - Ira Glass.
At first, what we create will pale in comparison to influences we are so beholden to but over time we can close the gap between where we are and where we want to be.
That is because our good taste will forever be the lens of the level of quality that we strive to meet or exceed.
It is a kind of sober self-awareness, the ultimate absence of self-delusion that forbids us to settle and keeps us exploring our craft until one day that craft becomes our art.