Writing Slowly

19 Aug 2026

Is your note collection making or unmaking the world? A reflection on institutional collecting, personal note archives, and why output matters more than input.

18 Aug 2026

> “The British Museum is not a good thing in and of itself. It is good only to the extent that its influence in the world is for the good. The collection is a starting point, an opportunity, an

13 Aug 2026

Dave Winer has said WordPress really needs a simple, normal writing interface and I couldn’t agree more. We’re hardly alone and it turns out they’ve been listening.

11 Aug 2026

Author David Kadavy made a fantastic podcast a while back about the contrast between Leonardo and Raphael: [Leonardo mind, Raphael world](https://kadavy.net/blog/posts/leonard-mind-raphael-world/).

10 Aug 2026

![A rocky cliffside at North Head, Sydney, overlooks the ocean with waves gently crashing against the shore and some greenery in the

10 Aug 2026

Do you ever feel there’s too many ready-made answers that don’t fit your needs? Me too. That’s why I’m exploring an alternative: ’living questions’. Not quite Rilke, but also not *not*

10 Aug 2026

Instead of chasing after easy answers, the poet Rilke urged a young artist to “live the questions”. Sound advice maybe, but which questions really matter, and how can we go about living them?

3 Aug 2026

From time to time I venture opinionated answers to questions people have about making notes — and right now is one of those times. *NB: A Zettelkasten is a simply the German term for a box with

3 Aug 2026

The idea of reading *continuous* narrative may be relatively recent. For example, the Bible is arranged in many places with a long sequential narrative, and some have seen it as ‘the greatest story

3 Aug 2026

A question I asked on Hyde’s [under/over](https://lazybea.rs/ovr-076/): > Before we find our own voice, we usually copy our mentors or heroes. Who was the teacher or model that inspired you when

2 Aug 2026

📷 🍳Sunday morning is time for shakshuka. ![A dish of shakshuka - baked eggs topped with herbs, crumbled cheese, and a tomato-based sauce is served in an oval ceramic bowl on a wooden

2 Aug 2026

 Currently reading: [Wise Finding Purpose, Meaning and Wisdom Beyond the Midpoint of Life](https://micro.blog/books/9780349146225) by Frank

28 Jul 2026

I’m delighted to be featured in Hyde’s intriguing series *Under/Over*, where bloggers are asked for their thoughts on what they find under-rated and over-rated. I have opinions on Zettelkasten,

27 Jul 2026

 Currently reading: [Wise. Finding Purpose, Meaning and Wisdom Beyond the Midpoint of Life](https://micro.blog/books/9780349146225) by Frank

27 Jul 2026

> I made the twenty photographs that accompany the text of [Shu Ha Ri](https://writingslowly.com/shuhari-book) as part of a personal learning process, inspired by David Ulrich’s *Zen Camera*. I was

20 Jul 2026

📷 A pair of cockatoos, feeding each other while scavenging. #BirdsOfAustralia #WildlifePhotography #FeatheredFriends ![Two white cockatoos are perched near a street corner, with one eating a

14 Jul 2026

*The Atlantic* suggests that [the end of reading is here](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/08/reading-crisis-postliterate-age/687618/?gift=j9r7avb6p-KY8zdjhsiSZyM-26EN9jpQa5BZoBCHLjE). It

13 Jul 2026

> Only in silence the word, > Only in dark the light, > Only in dying life: > Bright the hawk’s flight > On the empty sky. *– Ursula K. LeGuin* You might care to check out the

12 Jul 2026

Cockatoos? Five sulphur-crested cockatoos, foraging beneath the Norfolk Island pines of Botany Bay? Well, all right, if you insist. ![Five white cockatoos with yellow crests are foraging on the

12 Jul 2026

You might be wondering how anyone can grow from being an advanced learner to becoming an expert. It might seem like an impossible step to climb. According to the traditional Japanese approach of

12 Jul 2026

News just in from 2009: > “It’s time to get completely off RSS and switch to Twitter.” *– [Techcrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2009/05/05/rest-in-peace-rss/)*. Well that didn’t exactly age

12 Jul 2026

We’ve been having our regular family disagreement about [thinning our bookshelves](https://writingslowly.com/2026/05/15/remembering-what-you-read.html), which made this article timely: [How and why

6 Jul 2026

Since we’re currently lost somewhere in the middle of wars that seemingly have no end-point, and arguably no point, I wonder just what film director Christopher Nolan will make of *The Odyssey*,

6 Jul 2026

Watched: [The Return](https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/975511) 🍿 Odysseus brings the war home with him. As [Simone Weil](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/simone-weil-the-iliad) said of

5 Jul 2026

Happy 250th birthday, USA. The defining image in my lifetime of American culture is [the hooded man](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hooded_Man) at Abu Ghraib prison. Well, you’re still young and

30 Jun 2026

The ascended Christ of this mural at St. Vitus’s Cathedral in Prague seems so happy I couldn’t help but think of the song by *The Postal Service*: > They will see us waving from such great

29 Jun 2026

> “There’s something to be learned from everything. From even the most ordinary, commonplace things, there’s always something you can learn.” – Haruki Murakami, *Pinball*, 1973. I read

29 Jun 2026

📚 Spotted in a charity store, the most ambitious book title I can remember. Can anyone beat it? ![A worn book titled What Happened in History by V. Gordon Childe features an classical-style

24 Jun 2026

Samuel Johnson, writing on hope. ([More](https://writingslowly.com/2026/06/23/heres-dr-johnson-on-the.html)) ![A quote by Samuel Johnson from The Rambler, No. 2, dated March 24, 1750, discusses

22 Jun 2026

Here’s Dr. Johnson on the dangers of quoting others in a commonplace book: > “the pleasure of wantoning in common topicks is so tempting to a writer, that he cannot easily resign it; a train of

17 Jun 2026

Loud and agitated shouting had me alarmed this morning. Sounded like a real bust-up. Then I understood. It’s the World Cup. Messi has scored. Our neighbours are Argentinian and this is only the

15 Jun 2026

> ”A student’s understanding of particular subjects forms in collaboration with teachers, peers and the daily friction of being one mind among many.” – W. Ian O’Byrne A thoughtful article

15 Jun 2026

So you practised for 10,000 hours but you’re still not an expert. What happens next? How to learn deliberate practice:

14 Jun 2026

Have you heard of ‘deliberate practice’? You might well have, because Swedish psychologist Anders Ericsson’s work on what makes an expert has been hugely influential over the years. His

8 Jun 2026

Pelicans? Well if you insist. 

8 Jun 2026

7 Jun 2026

Why must sci-fi author Ted Chiang state in *The Atlantic* that AI is not conscious? I call this [**La Stilla Syndrome**](https://writingslowly.com/2023/05/23/jules-verne-could.html): my Jules

7 Jun 2026

Sci-fi writer Ted Chiang has [words of wisdom](https://www.theatlantic.com/philosophy/2026/06/no-artificial-intelligence-is-not-conscious/687378/) about so-called AI consciousness: > 💬 “it is

7 Jun 2026

> 💬 ”Roughly speaking, the world is divided into two classes: those who use the Card Index System and those who do not.” > [Byles, R.

6 Jun 2026

> “There’s a great strength in me showing you a chord or a riff or something, and it’s just going from mind to mind, there’s no paper involved. All of what we did in this very studio would be

6 Jun 2026

 Currently reading: [Eight Million Ways to Happiness](https://micro.blog/books/9781526672162) by Hiroko Yoda 📚 Japan is a deeply secular

31 May 2026

31 May 2026

Did previous generations ever think much about atomicity of ideas in their notes? After all, if most people were using notebooks, surely they didn’t need to consider how long their notes should be

28 May 2026

I’m very interested in Brett Terpstra’s Mac app, [Marked3](https://markedapp.com), launched today on [Product Hunt](https://www.producthunt.com/products/marked-2). It’s a utility that gives

28 May 2026

> We are very close to a prompt to fan fiction model of publishing. I heard this on the *Author Update Podcast* and it’s a shift I predicted at the start of 2024: [Soon we’ll all be writing the

27 May 2026

📷 Stormy weather is a great time to take photographs. ![Waves wash onto a sandy beach under a cloudy sky at dusk, with a distant rocky headland and the scattered lights of houses clinging to the

24 May 2026

Two fascinating articles show quite different sides to Japan: [Why Japanese companies do so many different things. The internal logic of the world’s strangest

23 May 2026

Watched: [Resurrection](https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/878608) 🍿 An amazing experience. More fragmented than Bi Gan’s previous movies, but easily as engaging. There were many nods to cinema

18 May 2026

 Some books on writing: Hidalgo, César A. 2025. [Infinite Alphabet: and The Laws Of Knowledge](https://micro.blog/books/9780241655672).

18 May 2026

> The expert’s trap is where you start thinking of yourself as having gone beyond the need to learn anything new. What did the legendary Zen maverick Ikkyū Sōjun teach about overcoming the