New Year’s Resolutions | Patrick Rothfuss
By Daniel Miessler on January 10th, 2012: Tagged as Philosophy | Writing
1. I’m going to hang out with Oot at least two hours every day. I’m going to make it a priority, rather than something I try to fit in around the edges of the other stuff I have going on in my life.
2. I’m going to do my damnedest to hang out with my friends at least twice a month for the express purpose of playing games, hanging out, watching movies, and just generally dicking around.
3. I’m going to start exercising at least three times a week. Because, y’know, I don’t really want to die from author-related sitting-on-my-ass-ness.
You must read this whole post.
Hitchens vs. Strunk and White
By Daniel Miessler on December 30th, 2011: Tagged as Writing

Image from vintageclothesdesignerdrugs.com
I am quite curious how top tier writers square the circle of Strunk and White’s demand for being concise and avoiding long, complex sentences, and Hitchens’ ability and inclination to do so beautifully.
An example from a Hitchens essay:
I have heard arguments about whether it was Milton Friedman or Gore Vidal who first came up with this apt summary of a collusion between the overweening state and certain favored monopolistic concerns, whereby the profits can be privatized and the debts conveniently socialized, but another term for the same system would be “banana republic.”
Another:
There was a sort of half-truth to what they said. But they would have been very much nearer the mark—and rather more ironic and revealing at their own expense—if they had completed the sentence and described the actual situation as what it is: “socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the rest.”
This to me seems flagrantly opposite to Strunk and White’s philosophy. Yet I, and much of the world, love to read Hitchens.
Does anyone have any guidance on this?
I have a few thoughts on possible answers:
- Nobody has rules, just guidelines.
- The actual rule is to vary your tempo, which Hitchens did. He would give long, beautiful, complex sentences and follow up with two-worders, to great effect.
- It’s still a rule, but the greatest among us can break rules. You can’t. Don’t try.
Which do you subscribe to of these explanations? And have I missed any?
::
Christopher Hitchens on Writing, Mortality and Cancer | NYTimes.com
By Daniel Miessler on October 9th, 2011: Tagged as Christopher Hitchens | Writing
His main regret at the moment, Mr. Hitchens said, was that while he was keeping up with his many deadlines — for Slate, The Atlantic and Vanity Fair — he didn’t have the energy to also work on a book. He had recently come up with some new ideas about his hero, George Orwell, for example — among them that Orwell might have had Asperger’s — and he said he ought to include them in a revised edition of his 2002 book, “Why Orwell Matters.” He had also thought of writing a book about dying. “It could be called ‘What to Expect When You’re Expecting,’ ” he said, laughing.
Man I love this guy.
Christopher Hitchens on Using Clichés
By Daniel Miessler on August 10th, 2011: Tagged as Christopher Hitchens | Writing

Christopher Hitchens is perhaps my favorite writer, and definitely my favorite speaker. I’m currently reading The Quotable Hitchens, by Windsor Man, and I found this fragment of genius yesterday:
You must get control of your speech if you wish to write…It’s ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL AND INDISPENSABLE that you begin the work of forming correct sentences in your head. Try writing things, even short things, and reading them aloud. Try reading them aloud from any work that you admire.
Make a resolution that you will not use obvious or easy words and phrases…If you want to be any good at all as a writer you simply MUST throw aside the crap idioms that pass for speech these days. Purify the well of your English: there is no other way.
I wish I could have another 30 years of Hitchens. That’s my wish. ::
Common Sense (Thomas Paine)
By Daniel Miessler on June 12th, 2011: Tagged as Education | History | Writing
Common Sense[1] is a pamphlet written by Thomas Paine. It was first published anonymously on January 10, 1776, during the American Revolution. Common Sense, signed “Written by an Englishman”, became an immediate success.[2] In relation to the population of the Colonies at that time, it had the largest sale and circulation of any book in American history.
I just finished this essay. It’s stunning to read this and imagine the time (1776). It reminds me much of The Prince, which I’m about to finish, and desperately makes me want to visit Boston.
Orson Scott Card Reviews Ender’s Game
By Daniel Miessler on May 25th, 2011: Tagged as Writing
For those who have commented that the reason the book is awful is because I don’t describe, or my language is so very direct and plain, I must point out that there are several stylistic traditions available to a writer. I, for one, have little patience with writers who show off and try to dazzle readers with their language. The style I choose to use has been called “The American Plain Style,” in which the author tries to become as invisible as possible, bringing the reader to see things as if experiencing them along with the character, instead of having a writer constantly commenting and interrupting the flow of the story. Moreover, ever since my days as a playwright I have preferred the bare stage to a realistic set: I found that the less I put on the stage, the more the audience would imagine a much more compelling set than I could ever build. Likewise, in my fiction I describe only as much as is asbsolutely necessary in order to understand what is going on; the rest, the readers create in their own imagination, if they’re willing to use it. I try never to describe anything that the point-of-view character would not notice, because such extraneous descriptions take you out of the story. However, when I find it necessary I do describe, and when it is useful (especially at moments of denouement or release) I use more evocative language; some of my story endings (though not Ender’s Game) are written as blank verse, though of course I run the lines together so as not to distract the reader. I am also constantly aware of the sound and rhythm of the language, so that it flows and remains pronounceable, since at an unconscious level readers all “read aloud” even if their lips don’t move – the written word is inexorably tied to the spoken.
In short, there are many aspects to style, and while those who complain about the style of Ender’s Game are entitled to their preferences, it’s rather parochial to condemn a book because the author is following a stylistic tradition with which they are unfamiliar. Of course, they are hardly to be blamed for this, since so many literature teachers in American colleges and universities teach as if there were only one way to write well, and one kind of story worth telling.
Excellent.
Amis on Hitchens
By Daniel Miessler on May 23rd, 2011: Tagged as Debate | Writing
Everyone is unique – but Christopher is preternatural. And it may even be that he exactly inverts the Nabokovian paradigm. He thinks like a child (that is to say, his judgments are far more instinctive and moral-visceral than they seem, and are animated by a child’s eager apprehension of what feels just and true); he writes like a distinguished author; and he speaks like a genius. As a result, Christopher is one of the most terrifying rhetoricians that the world has yet seen. Lenin used to boast that his objective, in debate, was not rebuttal and then refutation: it was the “destruction” of his interlocutor. This isn’t Christopher’s policy – but it is his practice.
Agreed on all points.
My Ümlaut Page
By Daniel Miessler on March 24th, 2011: Tagged as Language | Writing
I am creating this page about the ümlaut because every single time I attempt to write the word “über” I need to go and find one. Well, no more. From now on I’ll come here.
ü
97 (hex)
151 (dec)Ü
9A (hex)
154 (dec)
It’s a page for ümlauts.
5 tips on writing from Ernest Hemingway | Holy Kaw!
By Daniel Miessler on March 24th, 2011: Tagged as Writing
CopyBlogger put together a list of five tips gleaned from Hemingway’s classic terse style that offer a handy lesson in effective writing.
- Stick to short sentences.
- Use short opening paragraphs.
- Use vigorous English.
- Stick to the more positive-sounding word
- Four rules isn’t enough
I need to aggregate all these together some day. I have a ton of them in various posts.