# Draft No. 4 Author: [[John McPhee]] ## Review The book is a collection of essays on writing, the writing process and being a professional writer. The author was a staff writer at the New Yorker and a professor of writing at Princeton. He shares his thoughts through interesting memories and anecdotes of his career. Excerpts from his written pieces are interweaved with his commentary on writing. He references the excerpts and relates them to his anecdotes to deliver the lessons of writing clearly. There are a few concepts I picked up from the book that will tangibly improve the way I think about writing. 1. Create structure for your writing. The content and material for your story constrains your structure and how you present the information (e.g. is it thematic or chronological). Once you have the structure of your writing in place, knowing what should go where, you are free to write and find better ways to express yourself. 2. Make [[Incremental progress]]. At first you need to get words or snippets of thoughts on paper. Your expectations are probably too high if you can't write anything (out of fear it's not good enough). Write as if you are talking to someone to prime the mind for narrating. Then you can build on what you have, by editing and shaping the text, and finding better expressions. 3. Good writing is selection (less is more). It's what you choose to leave out, either left to the readers own creation or to strengthen the existing story. Something can always be cut from stories, whether words, sentences or entire paragraphs. It will improve the writing. 4. Write a strong lead, a promise to the reader about the content of the story. Don't let them feel misled by what comes after the intriguing beginning. 5. Have a strong [[basis of belief]] for your thoughts and perspectives. You should know why you have said something and how you could know or believe it. There are also great anecdotes on the extent fact checkers have gone to, to verify information. 6. Know the audience, their frame of reference and models of the world. This constrains how you present something. 7. As a developing writer, start by imitating other writers then find your voice and understand what good writing looks like through experience as it is discovered. While these are useful concepts they are surrounded by too many tangents and anecdotes that are not related to writing. He also often writes something in a clever or interesting way that can be totally confusing to read on a first pass. This is something I have found with others who consider themselves writers, like they have to prove they are great writers by writing 'skilfully'. ## Key Ideas ## Related - [[Resources/Kindle Quotes/Draft No. 4]] - [[Writing as externalized thinking]] - [[exploring my writing process]]