Looking Closely Is Everything

I feel like I say this to a lot of people, especially aspiring fiction writers. In my experience, it is really important to do two things.

One: You have to train yourself to notice things. It's not 100% natural at first – it certainly wasn’t for me – but raising those antennae is a very worthwhile thing to do. And it snowballs: once I got started ta... See more

But for me, as a person for whom narrow focus is against my instincts, the most remarkable thing about it is how rich it feels. My life these days is small and boring. I bicycle across the same fields every day, I notice how the wind turbines turn to face the wind, I rarely travel, and I spend my spare time staring at a Word document. Annie Dillard... See more

It turns out that reality has a surprising amount of detail, and those details can matter a lot to figuring out what the root problem or best solution is. So if I want to help, I can’t treat those details as a black box: I need to open it up and see the gears inside. Otherwise, anything I suggest will be wrong—or even if it’s right, I won’t have en... See more