I’m pretty good at public speaking, even extemporaneously. If we were at some event and the speaker was a no-show you could ask me to speak instead, and by the time I’d gone from my seat to the stage I’d have figured out something to say. I’ve gotten good at […]

I just heard an interview with Tim Ferriss where he was talking about writing the 4-hour Workweek and how, in order to find his voice, he had to pretend he was writing an email to friends. Before that he started off writing in a pompous “Princetonian” way. When he realized […]

One of my greatest struggles in writing is my battle with pomposity. When I sit down to write it’s usually just to convey some interesting idea in plain speech. But when I actually start writing something strange happens and what comes out is irritatingly grand, solemn, and self-important. What’s odd […]

Often I’ll finish writing something and be quite content with it only to feel a little while later that the whole thing is completely wrong — not logically wrong but wrong in how it sounds; wrong in what it’s even about. Conversely I have stumbled onto things that I had […]