Neal Stephenson - Why I Am a Bad Correspondent

!tags:: #lit✍/📰️article/highlights
!links::
!ref:: Neal Stephenson - Why I Am a Bad Correspondent
!author:: nealstephenson.com

=this.file.name

Book cover of "Neal Stephenson - Why I Am a Bad Correspondent"

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(highlight:: Normally, my only interaction with readers is to go to a Fedex drop box every couple of years and throw in the manuscript of a completed novel. It seems reasonable enough to ask for a little bit more than that! After all, the time commitment is very small: a few minutes tapping out an e-mail message, or a day trip to a conference to speak.
For some authors, this works, but in my case, it doesn’t. There is little to nothing that I can offer readers above and beyond what appears in my published writings. It follows that I should devote all my efforts to writing more material for publication, rather than spending a few minutes here, a day there, answering e-mails or going to conferences.)
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Quote

(highlight:: The productivity equation is a non-linear one, in other words. This accounts for why I am a bad correspondent and why I very rarely accept speaking engagements. If I organize my life in such a way that I get lots of long, consecutive, uninterrupted time-chunks, I can write novels. But as those chunks get separated and fragmented, my productivity as a novelist drops spectacularly. What replaces it? Instead of a novel that will be around for a long time, and that will, with luck, be read by many people, there is a bunch of e-mail messages that I have sent out to individual persons, and a few speeches given at various conferences.
That is not such a terrible outcome, but neither is it an especially good outcome. The quality of my e-mails and public speaking is, in my view, nowhere near that of my novels. So for me it comes down to the following choice: I can distribute material of bad-to-mediocre quality to a small number of people, or I can distribute material of higher quality to more people. But I can’t do both; the first one obliterates the second.)
- No location available
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- [note::The tradeoff between deep work and busy work.]

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As it is, my books are bought by enough people to provide me with a sort of middle-class lifestyle, but not enough to hire employees, and so I am faced with a stark choice between being a bad correspondent and being a good novelist. I am trying to be a good novelist, and hoping that people will forgive me for being a bad correspondent.
- No location available
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- [note::Everything in life is a tradeoff - in order to do important things, you have to be willing to ignore most other things.]


dg-publish: true
created: 2024-07-01
modified: 2024-07-01
title: Neal Stephenson - Why I Am a Bad Correspondent
source: hypothesis

!tags:: #lit✍/📰️article/highlights
!links::
!ref:: Neal Stephenson - Why I Am a Bad Correspondent
!author:: nealstephenson.com

=this.file.name

Book cover of "Neal Stephenson - Why I Am a Bad Correspondent"

Reference

Notes

Quote

(highlight:: Normally, my only interaction with readers is to go to a Fedex drop box every couple of years and throw in the manuscript of a completed novel. It seems reasonable enough to ask for a little bit more than that! After all, the time commitment is very small: a few minutes tapping out an e-mail message, or a day trip to a conference to speak.
For some authors, this works, but in my case, it doesn’t. There is little to nothing that I can offer readers above and beyond what appears in my published writings. It follows that I should devote all my efforts to writing more material for publication, rather than spending a few minutes here, a day there, answering e-mails or going to conferences.)
- No location available
-

Quote

(highlight:: The productivity equation is a non-linear one, in other words. This accounts for why I am a bad correspondent and why I very rarely accept speaking engagements. If I organize my life in such a way that I get lots of long, consecutive, uninterrupted time-chunks, I can write novels. But as those chunks get separated and fragmented, my productivity as a novelist drops spectacularly. What replaces it? Instead of a novel that will be around for a long time, and that will, with luck, be read by many people, there is a bunch of e-mail messages that I have sent out to individual persons, and a few speeches given at various conferences.
That is not such a terrible outcome, but neither is it an especially good outcome. The quality of my e-mails and public speaking is, in my view, nowhere near that of my novels. So for me it comes down to the following choice: I can distribute material of bad-to-mediocre quality to a small number of people, or I can distribute material of higher quality to more people. But I can’t do both; the first one obliterates the second.)
- No location available
-
- [note::The tradeoff between deep work and busy work.]

Quote

As it is, my books are bought by enough people to provide me with a sort of middle-class lifestyle, but not enough to hire employees, and so I am faced with a stark choice between being a bad correspondent and being a good novelist. I am trying to be a good novelist, and hoping that people will forgive me for being a bad correspondent.
- No location available
-
- [note::Everything in life is a tradeoff - in order to do important things, you have to be willing to ignore most other things.]