10 Good Things: Playful alertness, the triple misdirect, and the secret of creative work

Thoughts from James Clear, Stewart Lee, George Saunders, Sam Altman, etc.

💥 The secret of creative work, according to James Clear:

The secret of creative work is to make a lot and publish a little.

Don't underestimate the power of giving yourself permission to create junk. Most of what you create will be mediocre or bad.

But that's okay. You only have to show people the good stuff. Make 100 things, discard 90, and share the 10 best. Create, create, create. Edit, edit, edit.

💥 Stewart Lee goes after comedians “who’ve mastered the art of monetising anger, outrage and the denigration of minorities.”

He’s particularly interested in the irony that comedians presenting themselves as edgy free speech warriors are often mainstream acts with incredibly conservative views. “It’s disingenuous. You get people saying they can’t say anything. But a lot of them are filling stadiums, winning Grammys, and getting $60m off Netflix. Jimmy Carr carries on despite the idea he was cancelled for his joke about gypsies. Ricky Gervais would love to be properly ‘cancelled’, I think, but,” Lee breaks off into a chuckle, “he doesn’t seem able to say anything actually controversial enough to be as controversial as he’d like to be.” 

💥 Book excerpt: Writing Without Bullshit.

💥 Writer George Saunders on playful alertness:

Here’s one definition of writing: being in a state of high, playful alertness to what we’ve just written. 

Ditto revising.  Revising is being in a high state of playful alertness to what we’ve already written, and that we’ve just now read.

💥 The triple misdirection:

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Up ahead: Tech bigwig explains his note-taking process, late night’s problem with Biden, an interesting take on Chris Rock’s latest special, and more.