
An interview with Paul Graham on writing - razin
https://www.writingroutines.com/paul-graham-interview/
======
cambalache
From what I have read from several sources --especially from the Paris Review
interviews- the routines for many good writers share the following traits:

\- Most productive time is in the morning, right after waking up + optional
coffee/breakfast.

\- The time slot dedicated to writing lasts 4-6 continuous hours and that's it
for the day, as far as for the pure creative process goes.

\- No distraction when writing, so it is not weird to see people writing by
hand or typewriter.

\- Same starting/finishing time every day.

\- Many writers like to go for a walk or nap after finishing the main daily
task.

All those things are pretty much aligned what the current research says about
productivity so I dont think is just a coincidence.

~~~
onion2k
It might be true, but it also might just tell you about the sort of writers
the Paris Review chooses to interview.

~~~
WA
Yeah, reminds me of the (good) advice: make writing and editing two separate
processes. But yet, some writers need to fiddle with their sentences until
these are perfect before they can continue writing. There are certainly
approaches the majority follows. But doesn’t mean you can’t deviate from that.

~~~
convery
Ye, I often rewrite the same sentence to make it flow well or just get a nice
line-ending. Found that Hemmingways motto of "write drunk, edit sober" worked
well but maybe not the healthiest way =P

------
seanhunter
Whenever anyone wants to talk to Paul Graham about writing I always wonder
whether they've read any of his works, because since writing "On Lisp" (which
I think is great) he's been in a death spiral of self-importance.

Let's take a recent example (from [1]):

    
    
      > Though no doubt correct, such statements tell the reader 
      > nothing. Useful writing makes claims that are as strong as
      > they can be made without becoming false.
    
      > For example, it's more useful to say that Pike's Peak is
      > near the middle of Colorado than merely somewhere in
      > Colorado. But if I say it's in the exact middle of
      > Colorado, I've now gone too far, because it's a bit east
      > of the middle.
    

This is _deeply pedestrian_ writing you could be proud of if English was your
second language and writing was not any sort of job but as written it reads
like that boring father-in-law who collars you at a family picnic and insists
on telling you (even though you know) about what a frequent flyer programme is
and about that time 15 years ago when they hit silver status.

It's a very unfair comparison, but if you want to read amazing technical
writing, try reading "Everything and more: A compact history of Infinity" by
David Foster Wallace. Or contrast PG's essay with Umberto Eco's "How to write
a Thesis"[2].

It's hard to escape the conclusion that PG's writing would not survive a
double-blind test where someone didn't see his name attached.

[1]
[http://www.paulgraham.com/useful.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/useful.html)

[2] It's a whole book but is excerpted here in a format that bears comparison
to PG's essay [https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/umberto-eco-how-to-
write-...](https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/umberto-eco-how-to-write-a-
thesis/)

~~~
FragenAntworten
The pedestrian phrasing is in service of communicating an idea simply. The
text you quoted is building to a point:

"Useful writing tells people something true and important that they didn't
already know, and tells them as unequivocally as possible."

Plainly stated; thought-provoking and useful as a tool for assessing prose.

I am more inclined to read essays with PG's name attached, but that's because
they reliably provide an interesting perspective on their subject matter.

~~~
CaptArmchair
> "Useful writing tells people something true and important that they didn't
> already know, and tells them as unequivocally as possible."

The fallacy here is that statement assumes that what you're saying is a priori
true and important, regardless of what the reader might think. As if that
thought already existed out there, being true and important in its own right
and you were the first to merely stumble across it.

"Useful writing" presumes that the reader will agree with the usefulness of
your writing and accept whatever you've written at face value. Whereas the
entire point of publishing an essay is to push your thoughts out into the
world, out of your control, where others might de-construct and criticize what
you're bringing to their doorstep.

Useful writing is basically a take on Positivism. And while that works in
certain areas of scientific endeavor, there's a long philosophical tradition
that argues against taking this too far. Especially in social and sociological
sciences.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positivism)

------
keiferski
If you are interested in the routines of writers, I can't recommend _Daily
Rituals_ by Mason Curry enough. Kierkegaard's method of preparing coffee is
probably my favorite:

 _“The Danish philosopher’s day was dominated by two pursuits: writing and
walking. Typically, he wrote in the morning, set off on a long walk through
Copenhagen at noon, and then returned to his writing for the rest of the day
and into the evening. The walks were where he had his best ideas, and
sometimes he would be in such a hurry to get them down that, returning home,
he would write standing up before his desk, still wearing his hat and gripping
his walking stick or umbrella.

Kierkegaard kept up his energy with coffee, usually taken after supper and a
glass of sherry. Israel Levin, his secretary from 1844 until 1850, recalled
that Kierkegaard owned “at least fifty sets of cups and saucers, but only one
of each sort”—and that, before coffee could be served, Levin had to select
which cup and saucer he preferred that day, and then, bizarrely, justify his
choice to Kierkegaard. And this was not the end of the strange ritual. The
biographer Joakim Garff writes:_

 _“Kierkegaard had his own quite peculiar way of having coffee: Delightedly he
seized hold of the bag containing the sugar and poured sugar into the coffee
cup until it was piled up above the rim. Next came the incredibly strong,
black coffee, which slowly dissolved the white pyramid. The process was
scarcely finished before the syrupy stimulant disappeared into the magister’s
stomach, where it mingled with the sherry to produce additional energy that
percolated up into his seething and bubbling brain—which in any case had
already been so productive all day that in the half-light Levin could still
notice the tingling and throbbing in the overworked fingers when they grasped
the slender handle of the cup.”_

[https://www.amazon.com/Daily-Rituals-How-Artists-
Work/dp/030...](https://www.amazon.com/Daily-Rituals-How-Artists-
Work/dp/0307273601)

[https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/05/daily-
ritual...](https://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/oct/05/daily-rituals-
creative-minds-mason-currey)

~~~
freepor
Whatever Kierkegaard was drinking, calling it coffee would only dignify it.

------
cairo_x
[https://www.writingroutines.com/routines/](https://www.writingroutines.com/routines/)

Had a scroll through those interviews. Lord, what a hack fest. A conga line of
cringe, meh, and OKAY.

~~~
subpixel
I suspect the aim here is to sell aspiring writers some info product. Such is
the web today.

------
greendestiny_re
Can we go deeper? I'd like someone to do an interview with PG on Hacker News
comments.

~~~
ryanmercer
You can always try emailing him and cross your fingers.
[http://www.paulgraham.com/info.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/info.html)

------
IAmEveryone
Only Paul Graham and the more fanatic acolytes believe Paul Graham is a good
writer ("...and Paul Graham is having second thoughts", the joke usually goes
on. But PG has only ever had one thought, and LISP isn't _that_ great).

Seriously: in comparison to, say, Scott Alexander, I don't see a single novel
idea in Graham's Oeuvre. Mix any current text generator with the opinions of
some 1980s teen just discovering Ayn Rand-style libertarianism, and it will
fill as many pages as you want with the expected drivel, only in superior
prose.

~~~
claudiawerner
>Seriously: in comparison to, say, Scott Alexander, I don't see a single novel
idea in Graham's Oeuvre.

The irony to me is that a lot of Scott Alexander's writing seems to build on
singular concepts that have been around for a while in sociology or philosphy,
or studied, just not by exactly that name. Other times, the concepts aren't
novel at all, but there's a fun AI/tech spin to the story which doesn't really
add much. A continuing ignorance of established work in the field
(particularly when the Internet lets you get away with it, in "soft subjects"
like philosophy, sociology, political theory and critical theory[3]) is par
for the course in both PG and Scott's writings. If it's not published in a
blog post or a trendy book written within the past 15 years, chances are that
they'll think the concept is novel.

Sometimes reading Scott's articles I feel a strong sense of the Gell-Mann
amnesia effect: an article I know a little something on, and he's only done
minimal background reading, to the point where any serious scholar would laugh
at his authoritative tone. In another comment, continuing in the Scott-PG-
rationalsphere tradition, I invented a term of my own, "the hacker blogger
mindset"[0].

Valuable work to introduce people to an opinionated version of one concept or
another (without any pointers so you can learn more about similar work)? Sure.
Valuable work for someone willing to spend twenty minutes on Google Scholar or
having already read primary literature? Not really.

A recent example, from one of Scott's posts on meritocracy[1]:

>The intuition behind meritocracy is this: if your life depends on a difficult
surgery, would you prefer the hospital hire a surgeon who aced medical school,
or a surgeon who had to complete remedial training to barely scrape by with a
C-? If you prefer the former, you’re a meritocrat with respect to surgeons.
Generalize a little, and you have the argument for being a meritocrat
everywhere else.

It's amazing how much this misses the point of the conversation on meritocracy
- that critics of meritocracy do not have a problem with merit itself, but
rather (1) how merit can be measured in more abstract ways, (2) the degree to
which meritocracy can exist with current social relations, (3) the degree to
which meritocracy really does exist, with respect to claims that it does (in a
just-world hypothesis kind of way). A similar problem was pointed out in the
comments[2]. And yet... in support of the position Scott is attacking, he
cites one recent pop-phil book, and two blog posts. Where are the published
journals? Where are the essays? What have domain experts (i.e. philosophers,
political theorists, economists, and sociologists) said about meritocracy? Who
knows.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22101989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22101989)

[1] [https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/07/24/targeting-
meritocracy/](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/07/24/targeting-meritocracy/)

[2] [https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/07/24/targeting-
meritocracy/...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2017/07/24/targeting-
meritocracy/#comment-526449)

[3] The fact is that when you state a technically incorrect opinion relating
to computer science, engineering, physics, biology, etc. you'll have a hundred
Internet users responding with citations and research. When you do the same
with the other subjects, usually the people who would prove you wrong are
either disinterested in another silly Interent debate that will hinge on
ideological terms, or they think they can ignore it because it's not published
in a popular journal. Whether that's wise or not remains to be seen.

~~~
Tenoke
>Where are the published journals? Where are the essays? What have domain
experts (i.e. philosophers, political theorists, economists, and sociologists)
said about meritocracy? Who knows.

He _very_ frequently cites philosophers, economists and papers. You've chosen
a quote where he is arguing against the popular perception and then blaming
him for quoting related sources.

~~~
claudiawerner
He much more frequently cites his own articles than external ones, and when he
does cite external ones, they're either news articles from journalists, or in
the narrow case when they are published papers, they're from a field he knows
well (psychiatry, for which I'd be happy to give him a pass). The point is not
only whether he does it, but the degree to which he makes an honest point and
engages with the surrounding literature. In his article on Marx, he only reads
Marx through a philosopher who is absolutely not renowned for his expertise on
Marxology, Peter Singer. Does that count as a citation? I suppose so. Is it an
honest attempt to engage with the discussion around the topic? Not really.

I was getting at the idea that Scott likes to invent concepts that already
have some standing, if in a slightly different form and terminology, already
present in the literature. He does not build upon that work, or cite it. I'm
never one to argue against novelty, but for a reader introduced to these
concepts, some due diligence should be made to see what already exists out
there. Arguing against a "popular view", as if it is the forefront of debate
on the topic (which he does, if he discusses the topic in the formal sense),
is just as silly as an amateur physicist who believes the scientific community
is localized entirely in pop-sci books and Twitter.

------
dangus
Paul Graham, on the front page for more unsubstantial Paul Graham content.

I mean, his essays are decent but this was a snooze-fest of an interview. And
recent Paul Graham blog posts that have shown up here have been obvious
nonsense.

I think we need to stop encouraging personality cults. This is a guy who’s a
decent writer and also happened to ride the dot com boom to wealth. There’s
nothing really admirable about it. You can’t gain any magical advice from
someone like this because they stumbled into success. All the self-help style
advice offered is basically either already obvious or impossible to replicate.

All you gotta do is make a product that Yahoo! will buy off you for millions
of dollars and you too can spend most of your time writing essays and starting
venture capital funds.

If I ran my own venture that had a community forum I’d probably be creeped out
by people talking about me like I’m a savant of advice all the time...

~~~
LanceH
It isn't about PG necessarily being great in everything he writes. It's that
the readership of HN has his writings in common, possibly more than anything
else.

Some articles are on the front page to be read on their own or maybe even just
to look at the pictures. Some are effective just for being a jumping off point
for the discussion. Since what he writes about is so closely aligned with the
readers here his articles almost always qualify for the latter, and
occasionally for the former.

~~~
dangus
Replace his name with Jim Bakker or Joel Ostern and everything you said still
applies to their followers.

The following of a personality in this way can lead to crappy groupthink.

