Half A Month Of Consolation Writing Advice

This month, rationalist institution Lighthaven is running their second Inkhaven, a bootcamp for aspiring bloggers. Participants have to publish a post a day, or they get kicked out. You can read their posts here. I’m too old to manage that pace, but agreed to participate as an advisor. Then I missed the first half of the month because I was on a trip. As compensation, here are fifteen pieces of writing advice for the fifteen days I was absent.1: Against microdishonestySasha Chapin has a piece If You Have Writer’s Block, Maybe Stop Lying To Yourself. Maybe this causes writer’s block for Sasha, but for my last set of mentees it more often made things sound awkward and unclear. The English language hates even the slightest whiff of dishonesty, even levels so small you wouldn’t naturally notice them yourself. It punishes you by making your writing worse.I remember asking one of my mentees to take out a tangential paragraph that didn’t really connect to the rest of the argument. They…