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It's Not Ink That Produces Writing. It's Thinking.
🕑 Added 2025-01-07 09:45:19 +0000 UTCChristopher Hitchens used to say nobody could live a vibrant inner life without constantly inhaling books—a habit that he maintained his entire life. Writers must live vibrant inner lives if we’re to feel motivated to write. Hitchens wrote for four decades. In addition to his work for some of the best media companies in the world, he wrote around 30 exceptionally sharp books. Who better to go to for writing advice than him?
One of the things you’ll notice about Hitchens is that his opinions often changed. He was in a permanent state of learning, so while he may have turned out an abnormally long list of writings, his real career could be called “thinking.”
As writers, we’re in the business of thinking, too. Writing is just the consequence of that. If you try to put writing ahead of thinking on your schedule, you will turn out empty prose. Even worse, you won’t want to write at all. Our brains must constantly be weighing up new knowledge and experiences, otherwise why will we ever bother putting anything down on paper?
George R.R. Martin famously said, "A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one."
You need a thousand lives if you’re going to produce good work. You need a thousand opinions, too, so I don’t care what you read as long as you are reading.
Christopher Hitchens also used to say he didn’t care what people thought as much as how they thought. As writers, we must learn how to think, and that’s not the kind of skill you simply learn by doing. If you’re going to become good at justifying opinions and evolving worthwhile perspectives, you must read the work of great thinkers. You must pick up their methods and techniques. You must learn how to process information rationally.
Bombs are a good metaphor here. They’re pretty simple implements. They contain explosive material and a fuse. A tiny ignition can destroy an entire city because the explosive material was available at the point of ignition. In writing, ignition is the act of writing itself. A constant state of learning is the explosive material. If you’re not constantly learning, your ignition won’t achieve much if it happens at all.
Want to feel more motivated to write? Then read more.
Read the inspired poetry of Neruda. Read the scepticism of Hitchens. Read the exceptional nonfiction pacing of Dave Cullen. Expose yourself to the finest writers in your niche. Learn to think better by working through sceptics like Michael Shermer and Carl Sagan. Hell, read a damned science blog or drop down a Button Poetry hole on YouTube. Consume content until you’re fit to burst.
Then tell me you’re not in the mood for writing.
