Showing posts tagged writing

The Attention Management Blog: Henry Miller’s 11 Commandments of Writing, via brainpickings:...

attnmgmtblog:

Henry Miller’s 11 Commandments of Writing, via brainpickings:

COMMANDMENTS

  1. Work on one thing at a time until finished.
  2. Start no more new books, add no more new material to ‘Black Spring.’
  3. Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.
  4. Work according to…
(Reblogged from attnmgmtblog)
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All translation is interpretation, since it is a choice among meanings; but translation is not the same activity as interpretation. A good translation of a troubling text will preserve the reason for the trouble, and thereby leave open the gates of interpretation. The great Thomist historian of philosophy Etienne Gilson, who served on the French delegation to the San Francisco Conference in 1945, rejected a French translation of the United Nations Charter because it erased certain cunning ambiguities in the original, observing that “il faut traduire le texte dans tout son obscurité.” One must translate the text in all its obscurity: The fidelity of the translator must include a commitment to honoring the density and the alienness of the original. The translator must not preempt the mental toil of the reader.

Leon Wieseltier, in a characteristically ill-tempered essay — but this is a vital, vital point.

I have to add one little comment, though. Wieseltier complains about a word being translated as “set apart” when, he thinks, it ought to be ” sanctified.” Apparently he doesn’t know that in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin alike the words for “sanctification” and “holiness” just mean “set apart.” To be holy, to be sanctified, is simply to be set apart for God’s purposes. But don’t let this point distract you from this excellent insight into the nature of good translation!

(via ayjay)

(Reblogged from ayjay)
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Bad spellers are a breed apart from good ones. A writer with a mind that doesn’t register how words are spelled tends to see through the words he encounters — straight to the things, characters, ideas, images and emotions they conjure. A good speller, by contrast — the kind who never fails to clock the idiosyncratic orthography of “algorithm” or “Albert Pujols” — tends to see language as a system. Good spellers are often drawn to poetry and wordplay, while bad spellers, for whom language is a conduit and not an end in itself, can excel at representation and reportage.
What Typos Mean to Book Publishing - NYTimes.com (via ayjay)
(Reblogged from ayjay)

The Attention Management Blog: Alan Jacobs, with a few thoughts on academic time management. There’s...

attnmgmtblog:

Alan Jacobs, with a few thoughts on academic time management. There’s more meat than in just the first two points, but I thought they were especially good:

  1. I know this is obvious, but I have to say it: you’re never going to write much if you don’t insulate yourself from distractions. I…
(Reblogged from attnmgmtblog)
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Interesting content creation (e.g. interesting writers) need to be interesting people first. You can’t just get drunk on your ‘inner geek’, watch anime all day, and expect to create quality content. Good writers (and I am using writers here for the term ‘content creators’) read all sorts of things and do not stay on one subject. Good writers also push themselves out of their comfort zone. They go to seedy areas, become friends with the drunks and prostitutes while simultaneously going to churches and ‘respectable institutions’, becoming friends with priests and community leaders. Just as a musician practices scales to nail the highs and lows of pitch, the writer needs to nail the highs and lows of the Human spirit.
Malstrom on Game Writing