Essay Architecture
April 18, 2025 • #A framework for thinking about writing
Topic / writing
62 posts✦
Dana Gioia on Writing
March 3, 2025 • #An extended interview with Dana Gioia on poetry, opera, writing, and his creative process.
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Materials and Mastery
February 17, 2025 • #How masters build expertise through deep understanding of their medium
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January 29, 2025 • #
Sometimes in a journaling session it’s hard to get yourself writing. You need a kickstart, an idea to latch onto and get your brain moving. I know I do when it’s 5:30am and I sit down to write.
So I built a simple tool for displaying journaling prompts called Muse. It’s open source on GitHub. You can run it yourself and edit a single file to add or modify the prompts it uses.
This is the first entry in my mission to ship at least one small tool or product each month this year.
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Muse, a tool for journaling prompts
January 29, 2025 • #A simple tool for generating journaling prompts.
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August 22, 2024 • #
Low-tech dictation is a new technique I’ve adopted for creativity.
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Walking and Talking
August 1, 2024 • #Thinking through dictating your ideas.
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March 29, 2024 • #
My most interesting links from March.
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March 18, 2024 • #
My latest essay. Comparing the notion of “pattern languages” across domains, like writing and architecture:
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Screenshot Essays
February 14, 2024 • #Writing short form essays to fit in a screenshot.
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Eliot Peper on Foundry
October 24, 2023 • #Eliot Peper's behind-the-scenes look at writing a novel.
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Areopagus
August 23, 2023 • #A newsletter on culture, art, music, and history.
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Explorations of Style Archives
April 17, 2023 • #An archive of great resources for writers.
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Substack Notes and Long vs. Short Form
April 11, 2023 • #Substack adds a short form feed for discovery alongside its long form core product.
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Unbundling Tools for Thought
January 11, 2023 • #Some hard truths about note-taking apps.
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Daily Journaling with Morning Pages
September 6, 2022 • #My process of forming a daily journaling habit.
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Scenes, Pattern Languages,and Nested Systems
August 22, 2022 • #Similarities between systems for writing, pattern languages, design tools, and other networked
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Reboot
June 17, 2021 • #Coming back online with regular writing.
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Two Years of Everyday Writing
October 19, 2020 • #Developing a writing habit that led to a 2-year blogging streak.
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Phase Transitions
October 8, 2020 • #David Perell on intellectual phase transitions.
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Plus Minus Next Journaling
October 4, 2020 • #A simple journaling format idea from Anne-Laure Le Cunff.
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Res Extensa
September 29, 2020 • #Launching a newsletter.
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The Idea-to-Reality Production Stack
August 16, 2020 • #Kahlil Corazo reviews a plethora of techniques and thinking frameworks for going from ideas to reality with your work.
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Newsletters, Bundles, and Indie Publishing
August 14, 2020 • #What happens in the future when we unbundle media institutions into a network of decentralized, independent writers?
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A Blog that Changes Your Life
July 21, 2020 • #Interesting and transparent post from Nat Eliason on how he built his web presence.
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Library Notes
July 20, 2020 • #Publishing book summaries and notes in the Library.
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Literature Notes for the Library
July 17, 2020 • #On writing literature notes for books and coming up with a method for publishing them.
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Multilayered Content
July 13, 2020 • #On publishing content across media: from podcasts, to blogs, to newsletters, and how to maximize content reach.
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Mermaid Diagrams
July 12, 2020 • #Mermaid is a markdown add-on for rendering diagrams with markup.
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Digital Gardeners
July 8, 2020 • #Maggie Appleton's resources for digital gardens.
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Strategy Writing
June 23, 2020 • #Sriram Krishnan's collection of strategy writing.
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Owning Your Internet Property
June 8, 2020 • #Ben Thompson on owning your corner of the internet.
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A System for Publishing Evergreen Notes
May 28, 2020 • #Thinking about a 'digital garden' for evergreen notes.
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Roam Tools
May 17, 2020 • #Tools for improving Roam Research.
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Live Writing with Jason Fried
May 8, 2020 • #An interesting experiment where Jason Fried of Basecamp shows his writing process.
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Knowledge Synthesis in Roam
May 6, 2020 • #Roam as a tool for knowledge synthesis.
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Sönke Ahrens on How to Take Smart Notes
May 3, 2020 • #Presentation from Sönke Ahrens on his book 'How to Take Smart Notes'.
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6am Writing
April 28, 2020 • #Shawn Blanc on his morning writing routine.
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awesome-roam
April 10, 2020 • #Curated list of resources for Roam.
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Weekend Reading: Readwise with Roam, WWI Naval Intelligence, and Interaction Density
April 4, 2020 • #Sync Readwise to Roam, naval intel in World War I, and interaction density between desktop and mobile.
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How to Make a Memex
March 27, 2020 • #Sarah Constantin compares Roam to Vannevar Bush's memex.
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Roam: A Tool for Metacognition
March 23, 2020 • #Roam Research as a tool for networked thought.
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Weekend Reading: Chess, COVID Tracking, and Note Types
March 21, 2020 • #✦
A Text Renaissance
February 28, 2020 • #✦
Tyler Cowen on Practice
February 24, 2020 • #How Tyler Cowen does what he does.
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Weekend Reading: Enemies of Writing, Wealth, and the Superhuman Inbox
January 25, 2020 • #George Packer on writing, wealth, and Superhuman as a nexus for productivity services.
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William Gibson on Agency
January 14, 2020 • #William Gibson discusses his latest work and writing speculative fiction in the modern era.
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Weekend Reading: Soleimani, Prosperous Universe, and Roam
January 11, 2020 • #Iran's 'shadow commander', economic simulations in space, and Roam for interlinked note taking.
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Weekend Reading: Tradeoffs, the Margins, and PR FAQs
December 21, 2019 • #Ubiquity of tradeoffs, outsiders vs. insiders, and FAQs as a tool for goal setting.
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Weekend Reading: Blot, Hand-Drawn Visualizations, and Megafire Detection
November 9, 2019 • #A new blogging tool, the complexity of hand-drawn visualizations, and detecting wildfires from satellites.
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The Every Day Blog
October 29, 2019 • #A year into the every-day blogging experience.
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Dictating Notes with Siri
October 9, 2019 • #Using Siri Shortcuts, dictation, and Zapier for keeping a notes scratchpad.
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Bezos: A CEO Who Can Write
October 3, 2019 • #On Jeff Bezos, shareholder letters, and long-form writing for communicating ideas.
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Day One Templates
September 30, 2019 • #A new templating feature for regular journaling in Day One.
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Writing Shape Up
August 25, 2019 • #✦
Weekend Reading: nvUltra, Progress, and Comma.ai
August 10, 2019 • #nvULTRA notes editor, creating a science of progress, and George Hotz on Comma.ai.
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Writing Docs at Amazon
April 4, 2019 • #On writing memos for meetings at Amazon.
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The Reunion
January 11, 2019 • #✦
A Post Each Day
October 23, 2018 • #I've started a new effort to post each day for a month, trying to build writing into a habit.
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Writing on the iPad
October 21, 2018 • #How I've got my publishing setup working on the iPad for writing and publishing with Jekyll.
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A Week with the iPad
October 11, 2018 • #Notes on 7 days of working on the iPad as a replacement for the Mac.
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Writing Workflow
December 13, 2015 • #✦