unprompted/Notes/how-to-write.md

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title	date	layout	tags	permalink
How To Write	2026-04-06	column.njk	column	/columns/2026/how-to-write/

Prompt

• The kernel of an idea
• It's generally recommended to plant a seed first
  • something you can return to over time
  • reference other ideas you come across
  • develop and refine

Questions

• Questions give structure to your work
• Even implicit ones - the unsaid queries that motivate the composition of the piece
  • what's included, and when?
  • as important: what's left out?
  • make everything a deliberate choice
• Why write, if not to test an idea against your own specific qualities? To see if there's a reaction, some expansiveness or contraction.
• They provide the substrate to thought, and the nourishment, encouraging the frontier to expand

Rough Notes

• The heap
• The outlet for stream of consciousness thinking
  • See what associations bubble up to the surface
  • See what resonates, what clusters, the affinities that form
• The warmup

Quotes

• For the sake of having an opinion, I say it's better to rearticulate someone's idea in your own words, to digest it with your own acuity, than to simply reexpress the idea as a quote.
• Other than stating something factually: at such a time, such a thing was said
• Refernce it, so motivated readers can connect with more writing that may expand on the idea.
• But don't just repeat the statement verbatim. Connect with the idea, exppress it in your own way for your own audience. Make it available.