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On writing

Essays about sentences, attention, voice and the work of making ideas legible.

17 recommendations

001

Paul Graham

Write Like You Talk

Its single conversational test gives writers an immediate way to make stiff prose clearer, warmer, and easier to read.

5 min
Essay

002

Literary Hub

What Makes a Great Opening Line?

Approaches opening lines through the charged instant when a stranger or sentence first catches and holds attention.

15 min
Essay

003

Shane Parrish · Farnam Street

Why I Blog

Defends writing as a method for clarifying thought and deepening understanding even when AI can generate fluent prose.

8 min
Essay

004

David Perell

The Ultimate Guide to Writing Online

Connecting online writing to clearer thought, audience growth, and career momentum makes the craft relevant beyond better prose.

30 min
Essay

005

David Perell

Why You Should Write

Treating words as internet infrastructure shows how publishing can create relationships and opportunities that passive networking cannot.

15 min
Essay

006

Julian Shapiro

Julian's Writing Guide

Covering topic choice, introductions, process, style, and editing makes this a complete working reference rather than isolated writing tips.

30 min
Essay

007

Rachel Sussman · Nautilus

What a 9,000-Year-Old Spruce Tree Taught Me

Sussman’s search for organisms at least two millennia old demonstrates how art can translate deep time across the boundaries of scientific specialization.

11 min
Essay

008

Sasha Archibald · The Public Domain Review

Love and Longing in the Seaweed Album

An unusual history of how Victorian seaweed albums transformed scientific specimens into intimate expressions of taste, desire, and remembrance.

20 min
Essay

009

Karlos K. Hill · The Public Domain Review

Photographing the Tulsa Massacre of 1921

Hill examines photographs not merely as records of racial violence but as contested objects that can reproduce white supremacy or preserve Black resilience.

28 min
Essay

010

Betsy Golden Kellem · The Public Domain Review

Circassian Beauty in the American Sideshow

This visual history shows how entertainment, racial classification, beauty standards, and fabricated biography converged in a durable American stereotype.

23 min
Essay

011

Ross Bullen · The Public Domain Review

George Washington at the Siamese Court

The story of a Siamese prince named for an American president becomes a study of translation, diplomacy, sovereignty, and selective engagement with the West.

16 min
Essay

017

Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina · The Public Domain Review

100 Years of The Secret Garden

Gerzina connects Frances Hodgson Burnett’s family losses, transatlantic life, and attachment to gardens with the emotional architecture of her best-known novel.

7 min
Essay