27 Comments

Wow Adam, this is a very helpful and delightfully entertaining response to my question - and much more than I could have asked for or expected! I think you've done a far better job answering the question than you give yourself credit for. Thank you for this thoughtful and personal piece.

It's funny, I had a realization not too long ago that went something along the lines of "shit, being a good writer doesn't appear to have much to do with being a good writer." What you've written captures the essence of that idea. Good writing seems to be downstream of much more important stuff, like acknowledging and embracing our own versions of bow-leggedness and esoteric theater productions and improvisational saliva transfer.

I spent a lot of time trying to make my writing sound pretty, and I realized I was doing exactly what you mentioned: “doing an impression of another person, usually the person I think I should be” (which in my case was a Good Writer). But a lot of it was forced and devoid of any of my “doubloons”. Once I stopped trying to sound smart and actually shared some personally meaningful stories and ideas, the writing magically got better. Funny how that works.

All of this is to say: awesome piece, tremendously helpful, resonates in a major way. Thank you.

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I'm glad! Thanks for asking in the first place.

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That line from your clown friend was the darkest and funniest thing I’ve read in a while.

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My (forlorn) hope is that ChatGPT makes boring writing so commonplace that we have no choice but to write things that are unique and a bit weird. And, yes, improv is highly relevant here. My best writing is just me saying "yes and" to myself.

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Delightful, as always. Can’t believe you passed up “unschtick yourself,” though.

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'I was raised Catholic, so I know that it’s embarrassing to have a body, and you should do everything you can to pretend you don't...' - this is so good and helps me to make sense of so much.

Also - ' When you’re making something out of nothing, it’s easy to forget you can do anything.' I'm going to remind myself of this oftn!

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dear adam,

this is great. i like your writing a lot.

i particularly love this:

"Whenever I create something I don’t like, it’s always because I’m doing an impression of another person, usually the person I think I should be."

thank you for sharing of the person you ARE,

myq

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I haven't laughed out loud so much in a long time as I did reading the part about your Sociology of Science paper. Your teacher had either so little imagination that your paper didn't make them laugh, or so much imagination that the passage you read made sense!

Thank you so much for this post! As an aspiring writer, this was lol funny, and inspirational!

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This is delightful, Adam!

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> When you’re making something out of nothing, it’s easy to forget you can do anything.

This is ridiculously deep Adam. It's like the essence of the Tao Te Ching distilled into a sentence.

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I promise I would have given you an A for that paragraph alone.

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This is one of the most brilliant articles I've ever read about how to be a writer. I'm sending a link to the seven other women who have joined my writer's group, looking for support and guidance from me (what the eff do I know??) on freeing their own writerly voices. Yours is so clear, Adam. No one else I read sounds like you -- quirky and smart as hell, with a sweetness and a comedic edge that somehow never overpower the other. Thank you for your singular take on this wacko world of writing -- it's one for the ages.

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Thank you for saying what I've been saying to teachers of all kinds my whole life! To be awesome requires not that you do exactly what everyone else who's trying to be awesome does (i consider this the pathway to mediocre), but to do things differently, authentically and be unafraid. 🙏🙏

That bit about catholicism nailed it, i think i might have some unpacking to do there..

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Love this piece. As a longtime news reporter (print & TV), feature writer & PR content writer I consciously unlearned those techniques. I now write almost exactly as I speak. It saves thinking about everything twice.

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"All that is to say: if you want to get better at writing, maybe the best place to do it isn’t at the keyboard. You’ve gotta go find your mind-glutes." Fantastic.

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Well done. Glad I subscribed

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This was so good! Especially this: “ I don’t even like licking ice cream cones in public, because I believe the tongue is a private organ.” 🤣

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