How do you become a better writer? by Craig Mod

Highlights

Write and read a lot. And do it regularly.

Read a ton of people and take note of whose voice resonates. Consume more of that stuff.

Perhaps you like poets who write fiction or nonfiction?

Get off the Internet.

Getting off the Internet is easier if you remove the option of being in it.

  • Freedom (10 pm to 10 am)

  • No social media and news

Don’t start your day looking at your phone.

Writing is a series of problems that need to be solved. When we have a problem, we reach for something.

Options to do it:

  • Write in a typewriter.

  • Write in an analog journal.

Block out the distractions but keep using your computer to organize writing and knowledge.

Writing is facing friction after friction after friction. You don’t want to add more to that.

Find a community of writers.

Explore writing fellowships and apply to experience a residency.

  • Morning we do each other’s work.

  • Evening talk to each other about what they’re doing.

Apply every year to a bunch of residencies.

  • Applying to them forces you to get clear about what projects you want to work on.

  • Consolidate and articulate what you are working on as a writer.

Aim to be rejected by 10-20 fellowships a year. You will get accepted at around 1-2.

Fellowships and residencies served as an ambient deadline for one’s writing goals.

You can use workshops to force yourself to look into writings that you won’t otherwise look into.

All of these make you a better reader, which improves how you edit your own work.

Submit to agents so people could read your work with fresh eyes.

Writers that inspire Craig Mod

Annie Dillard

  • She is an essay master

  • Check her book on writing, The Writing Life

  • Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

Dennis Johnson

  • Train Dreams, fiction

Lynn Tillman

  • Playful, plays with forms and pushes them

  • American Genuis Comedy, fiction

Lily Davis, fiction

Samuel Johnson (collection of stories)

  • Poet + essayist

Anne Carson

Sam Anderson

  • NYT Magazine essayist

  • moves Craig deeply

  • Anne Carson fan

Writer Poets who became novelists

Michael Ondaatje

  • Coming through Slaughter, weird book

John Jeremiah Sullivan

  • Essayist

  • Pulsing humor

Ottessa Moshfegh

  • My Year of Rest and Relaxation, novel

  • Homesick for Another World

  • Voice is strong and confident

Bruce Chautwin

  • The Songlines

  • In Patagonia

  • Travel writing done interestingly

Laurie Lee (incredible travel writer, 50% fictive)

Helen MacDonald

  • H is for Hawk

HS Frocke

  • nonfiction, extremely personal, autobiography but written with pulsing brilliance and curiosity

Nicholson Baker

  • Funny

W.G. Sebald

  • Austerlitz, novel

  • Rings of Saturn - travel and walking book, tough at first but blown away

Don DeLillo

  • White Noise, novel

  • Zero Cake (not perfect, flawed)

  • sentence by sentence goodness

Philip Roth

  • Every Man, novel

  • American Pastoral (moving), novel

Pico Iyer

William T. Vollman

  • Riding to Everywhere (writes like a beast)

Joan Didion (essay)

Jenny Oddell

  • How to Do Nothing

  • Playful academic nonfiction

James Clear

Robert Carl

  • Working About Writing (super inspiring)

  • Tough projects

Jeff Dyer

  • Pulsing, intelligent non-fiction

Kazuo Ishiguro

  • The Remains of the Day, novel

Anna Burns

  • Milkman, novel

Nan Shepherd

  • The Living Mountain, nature writing done interestingly

  • If you pick up a book and it feels like it was done many times, throw it.

John McPhee

  • The Pine Barrens

  • Takes boring subjects interesting and exciting

Lesley Jamison

  • killer essayist, nonfiction, alcoholism

Jadie Daniels

  • The Correspondence

  • Super short collection of essays

Garth Greenwell

  • The most literary pornographer

  • Dirty beautiful sentences

  • Simultaneous kick in the testicles and heart

  • Cleanness, you will not be able to unsee things from that book

Maggie Nelson

  • The Argonauts

  • Department of Speculation style, writing in discreet chunks

Allen Hilcock

  • Vault, stories

Alex Cheek

  • Tinhouse workshop

  • Edinborough, tough book

  • Sentences that you don’t expect to succeed

  • You want to feel “Gosh, you did that?”

  • Read it first in Kindle, if you like the book, buy the physical copy.

Cormic McCarthy

  • Blood Meridian

  • He worked in silence

James Baldwin

Ocean Vong

  • On Earth, novel memoir

  • poets writing novel

George Saunders

  • Lincoln in the Bardot, sustaining a tone that you don’t usually encounter

Peggy rnstein

  • essayist, nonfiction

Nothing Matters

Teju Cole

  • essays on photography, required for photographers

James Salter

  • minimalist fiction writer

Norman Maclean

  • A River Runs Through It, short story or novella

Italo Calvino

Per Petterson

  • Out Stealing Horses, novel, amazing tone

Write a lot.
Read a lot.

Do it the right way.

Set a schedule.

Read books by authors whose voice speak to you.
You find these authors by reading a lot.

Disconnect from the internet.
10 pm to 12 nn

Instead of returning to school, apply to writing workshops or residencies.

He learned a lot about writing from Alexander Chee than by years writing by himself.

Quotes

  • species:
  • themes:

Notes

Collations

Annotations

References

Mod, Craig. How Do You Become a Better Writer? 3, https://feeds.simplecast.com/DzfO4qjQ.