Day job: English professor, Nonfiction writing coach; Building: Writer Science—Studying the art and science of expert writing, sharing what I learn
Busan, Republic of Korea
Joined March 2021
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William Fitzpatrick retweeted
did this cut with claude code
new convo with @WriterScience to youtube asap
William Fitzpatrick retweeted
Only skill that matters in business is writing.
Everything is downstream. Writing is the root.
The people that takeover in the next era will be all excellent writers
Each day, I write 15-20 pages.
Either content scripts, trainings, YouTube videos, etc.
The clarity loop that comes from distilling your thoughts is the most valuable thing to spend time on.
If you want to get better at writing, you need to start creating content (that is longer-form and requires articulating your thoughts)
William Fitzpatrick retweeted
There's writing, and there's journalling. The latter is expressive, the former communicative.
William Fitzpatrick retweeted
Writing is a relationship with your reader. The writer and the reader both invest in that relationship.
A writer who publishes something generated by AI betrays that relationship. They’re not investing in it. They want the benefits of the relationship without actually being in it.
Relationships develop when both parties put skin in the game.
William Fitzpatrick retweeted
The world needs more AI writing, not less. There is a massive amount of human knowledge that has never been captured because the act of writing is so expensive and hard.
The same way that the internet lowered the costs of publishing, AI lowers the cost of writing
William Fitzpatrick retweeted
Guy who reads the King James Bible after prolonged Fable use as a prose palate cleanser
William Fitzpatrick retweeted
The problem with personal essays is right there in the name: they're personal.
Stop writing about yourself and start writing about the world, says Zadie Smith, who developed a simple writing framework that'll help you write useful essays.
William Fitzpatrick retweeted
Every sentence tells a story.
And your reader wants to know: Who is this story about?
In film, directors answer this question by placing the character in the center of the shot.
Writers have the same tool. It just has a different name.
William Fitzpatrick retweeted
The look from DFW to Franzen lol
William Fitzpatrick retweeted
busan is a pretty impressive place. new and modern urbanism yet still safe, feels livable, near beaches, walkable
underrated city
William Fitzpatrick retweeted
That's not true. Writing helps you clarify your ideas in a way that nothing else can. That's why writing essays is the basis of the Oxford tutorial system, where the class size is 1.
William Fitzpatrick retweeted
Writing is one of the most underrated business skills.
It forces clarity.
It exposes weak ideas.
It sharpens thinking.
And it kills more bad ideas than anything else.
William Fitzpatrick retweeted
Extremely important lesson about sharing thoughts and #writing in general from @WriterScience.
Two-step writing practice for sharing valuable information:
1. First draft: select insights and key points.
2. Second draft: communicate the value to the reader.
William Fitzpatrick retweeted
It’s funny because it works
a wonderful example of the obscenity of capitalism. the cheese needs to age to appreciate in value. so time is money, yes? but not in the boring liberal metaphorical sense like I need to get back to my work and so on and so forth but literally, the passage of time creates surplus value. the cheese is sitting there doing nothing except becoming more valuable. it's pure Hegelian Becoming. like capital doesn't circulate, it only ages, so does the cheese. we have abundance: we have cheese. but no, it can't be eaten. it must appreciate. generate value. pure ideology.
William Fitzpatrick retweeted
Dan Koe makes $5 million a year with nothing but a keyboard.
Yet when he self-published The Art of Focus, the reviews were brutal.
The book failed not because it lacked value, but because it failed to make readers perceive that value.
So in this video I'll show you the 4 writing mistakes that resulted in reviews like this:
"If someone asked me to describe what the book is about, I would have great difficulty explaining it."
"This book about focus couldn't keep my focus."
"I love Dan Koe, but man, get a good editor."
Books are tools, not diaries.
Of course, everyone should have a writing practice that makes them feel free to explore. But when it's time to publish, writers need to know how to position their ideas in a way that solves reader problems.
Dan walked so we can run. Taking a page out of my own book, I've positioned this video as a roast that it may be smiled upon by Lady Algorithm. But at its heart is just a few tips on how to position your ideas for success, as well as much appreciation for @thedankoe and his work.
William Fitzpatrick retweeted
Scott Adams is right; Stunk & White is wrong: xitter.cf/writerscience/status/1…
If you learned to write from The Elements of Style, I've got bad news for you.
This book is one of the most popular writing guides out there. It's been in print constantly for over 100 years. And it's one of the top 10 most assigned books in university syllabi worldwide, according to @opensyllabus.
You might even have a copy on your desk right now.
But what if I told you that it's wrong?
No–not just out of date or cliché. Wrong. Demonstrably wrong.
This book is responsible for some of the most pervasive myths about writing.
But not to worry: this video will debunk them all.
By the end of the video, you'll be able to cut through the misguided advice in this classic writing guide, and focus instead on what really counts: specific readers.