Stuart on writing advice

STUART EMPHASIZES, and I would completely agree, that you have to find what works for you. It will be different in each individual case. If you read through various biographies of people who did great work, you’re going to find highly individual paths to that result in each case. The strategies that work usually have a long personal history behind them.

For example, another technique I’ve always used that works very well for me, but which some people would never be able to do with a straight face, is my use of “lucky places.” If I do a piece of work somewhere and it works out extremely well for me, I often return to that place when in need of a lucky break. In one sense I don’t literally believe in luck. But in another sense, good anti-reductionist that I am, I think we know so little about the causal connections between things that we shouldn’t be so dismissive of the possible mysterious resonances between people and places. In short, I believe in these things just enough that I’m able to treat them seriously and attempt to capitalize on them.

In Chicago there were two cafés in Lincoln Park and one in Evanston where good ideas always seemed to rain down on me, and thus I would visit them often. In Cairo I don’t really have lucky places, though in Alexandria I do. In Paris I definitely do. This is a perfect example of a technique that some people would never be able to use, but for me it’s essential.

I also have a superstition about the first day of every month being crucial. They’re almost like religious holidays for me, since they seem to have the chance to set the tone for a not inconsiderable period of time: after all, most people do not live as long as 1,000 months (83 years, 4 months); you really don’t have too many of them. And a lot can change in your life in one month. That’s 30 or 31 nights filled with dreams, to cite just one example.

Anyway, the point of the advice posts is not that you’re supposed to follow exactly what I do, so I agree with Stuart on that topic. However, if we don’t all end up with the same solutions, in many respects we do all face the same problems, with procrastination being near the top of the list for most humans. I’m simply trying to provide one extended example for graduate students of how I managed to overcome these sorts of problems. There are plenty of other ways to do it.