Larissa MacFarquhar: belief

Transcript context

…It means you’re never not writing, and something gets done. A lot of it is never used or thrown out or re-edited, but it’s a way of avoiding having long blocks of time where you don’t get writing done, which is the bane of many a writer. I guess. I don’t think it’s a bane. I don’t think it’s a bad thing if I am not writing every day. I certainly do not write every day, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. I think it’s sometimes good not to be purposeful in what you are doing. If you’re writing, you are distilling vague thoughts into something more organized and purposeful, and I think there’s a lot of merit to allowing thoughts to just meander about in your head and make weird connections with each other before you push them onto the page. Final question. Let’s say a very smart 22-year-old comes up to you, and they say they would like to emulate your career — not in every detail, and obviously the path you took is no longer exactly available. But what advice would you give that person overall?…

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