Wonderful wonderful piece, Celine. I find copying to profound too because it unlocks a creativity found through another mind, — which for someone just starting out, is immensely beneficial. Hemingway (who I'm not the biggest fan of if we're being honest here) started out by copywriting Steins' The Making of Americans, after all, and that book's singular prose comes through in his prose. He took the lessons with him, clearly.
thank you Griffin!! I'm also remembering now that Benjamin Franklin would take articles he admired and reverse outline them, take notes on the structure, and then try to recreate the article using his notes + memory…a time-honored technique for improving one's writing!
and thank you for sharing Typelit (which I've never seen before but is surprisingly meditative and enjoyable)
I'll need to get on that as well, haven't ever done the deconstruction thing yet. And yeah! I love Typelit even if I wish there was more variety on there (there's very little poetry)
Phenomenal and insightful! Your examples, and the description of these examples, are inspiring—encouraging me to get back to my old writing in new ways. Thank you for compiling, curating, and creating this.
Thank you for reading, and for these kind words!! What I really love about these essays is that they feel so RICH with techniques and new ways of approaching writing…it's really helpful when I'm sick of my own work and don't know how to improve it
Ok wow, as someone who has muddled through picking apart introductions and essays, this was SO helpful to read you picking apart what you saw. Thank you for sharing this.
I’m so glad to hear! I really wanted to write the kind of newsletter I needed for my own writing—something that would help me pick up techniques from great writers. Thank you for reading and commenting!
this was, as always, so good! i spoke to a college journalism class today and one of the questions they asked me was about the line between inspiration and imitation. i was so glad to be able to send them this! you break it down so well
"One of the perils of being a Proust reader is that you start to see a bit of Proust in everything."
In a different part of the essay, you say one of the deepest gifts that a writer can offer readers is the feeling of being truly seen, understood, and valued. You managed to pull this off in many places, but especially in the Proust sentence. Couldn't help smiling.
Loved the article! It's a great, practical guide to copying the greats and owning the material you like. I'm going to share this with some writer friends.
haha, thank you—I do feel a bit embarrassed by how often I am returning to PROUST as a key reference point! But I think other Proust readers have a similar experience…it’s the work that everything else now orbits around, it exerts such an immense gravitational energy and it’s so satisfying to find bits of Proust elsewhere (even if it’s just my over-eagerness)
I really appreciate your comment, because that’s what I love in other writers and hope to achieve myself—that feeling of being seen and part of some human community!
and the more I come across instances of other readers sharing their experience with Proust, the more I'm able to appreciate the impact of his work – I was reading Henrik Karlsson's piece yesterday on how reading Proust completely changed the nature of Karl Ove's work. I'm yet to read your other pieces referencing Proust but I'm looking forward to it now!
Also wanted to say that I'm binge-reading essays by you and Henrik Karlsson now. I found your work through your essay "how to begin" and then read "in praise of writing on the internet", "mere description" and others. Appreciate your work! "mere description" especially has me revisiting it and thinking a lot. I have been working on paring down my writing and "merely" describing as an exercise, and it's much harder than it looks.
This is amazing! It makes me think of that anecdote about Joan Didion typing Hemingway's sentences so she could understand their structure. It really is an art, and understanding the foundations is imperative, even if it might seem counterintuitive and overly formulaic at first. I've found that doing this opens up my writing significantly.
A fantastic essay, it reminded me of why I loved my English literature classes at uni! Super inspired to go back and review my favourite writing from this lens—sometimes I get super stuck writing in my voice, but I just know this will help me experiment a lot more.
Thank you for this, Celine! I printed this out to stick in my “favorite essays binder” and took lots of notes in the margins. Thank you for dissecting these different methods to approaching structure of an essay — excited to put the method of dissection into practice to really develop my own voice.
Fascinating and inspiring to see how you take your craft so seriously. Learned a lot from this post and will consider doing the same exercise with my favorite essays + making some beetroot walnut claypot...
This was really helpful to the beginners who wants to dabble in writing essays. 👌🏼
Wonderful wonderful piece, Celine. I find copying to profound too because it unlocks a creativity found through another mind, — which for someone just starting out, is immensely beneficial. Hemingway (who I'm not the biggest fan of if we're being honest here) started out by copywriting Steins' The Making of Americans, after all, and that book's singular prose comes through in his prose. He took the lessons with him, clearly.
An additional resource that I've found to really enjoy is https://www.typelit.io/
though, I will say, it doesn't quite beat sitting with an essay or a book that you truly admire and rewriting it by hand or verbatim into a word doc.
thank you Griffin!! I'm also remembering now that Benjamin Franklin would take articles he admired and reverse outline them, take notes on the structure, and then try to recreate the article using his notes + memory…a time-honored technique for improving one's writing!
and thank you for sharing Typelit (which I've never seen before but is surprisingly meditative and enjoyable)
I'll need to get on that as well, haven't ever done the deconstruction thing yet. And yeah! I love Typelit even if I wish there was more variety on there (there's very little poetry)
Phenomenal and insightful! Your examples, and the description of these examples, are inspiring—encouraging me to get back to my old writing in new ways. Thank you for compiling, curating, and creating this.
Thank you for reading, and for these kind words!! What I really love about these essays is that they feel so RICH with techniques and new ways of approaching writing…it's really helpful when I'm sick of my own work and don't know how to improve it
Ok wow, as someone who has muddled through picking apart introductions and essays, this was SO helpful to read you picking apart what you saw. Thank you for sharing this.
I’m so glad to hear! I really wanted to write the kind of newsletter I needed for my own writing—something that would help me pick up techniques from great writers. Thank you for reading and commenting!
this was, as always, so good! i spoke to a college journalism class today and one of the questions they asked me was about the line between inspiration and imitation. i was so glad to be able to send them this! you break it down so well
Gaby!! thank you so much—I really wanted to make a useful resource to others, and I’m extremely happy that it’s worth recommending 💌
Loved this, thank you so much. All Media is Training Data is gorgeous and so fun to page through, you should definitely get a copy!
thank you Taryn! not that I needed convincing…but this is very helpful to know and I will open up the Serpentine web shop in a new tab…
Thank you for this, I very much enjoyed reading it.
reading it again, this piece is so good in too many levels
thank you so much for reading, and really appreciate you commenting to tell me this!
Learnt a lot from this. Thank you for writing!
great piece celine! not a writer (yet) but helpful guidance on where to start
Pia! I miss you & our wonderful conversations—and so happy that you enjoyed this
"One of the perils of being a Proust reader is that you start to see a bit of Proust in everything."
In a different part of the essay, you say one of the deepest gifts that a writer can offer readers is the feeling of being truly seen, understood, and valued. You managed to pull this off in many places, but especially in the Proust sentence. Couldn't help smiling.
Loved the article! It's a great, practical guide to copying the greats and owning the material you like. I'm going to share this with some writer friends.
haha, thank you—I do feel a bit embarrassed by how often I am returning to PROUST as a key reference point! But I think other Proust readers have a similar experience…it’s the work that everything else now orbits around, it exerts such an immense gravitational energy and it’s so satisfying to find bits of Proust elsewhere (even if it’s just my over-eagerness)
I really appreciate your comment, because that’s what I love in other writers and hope to achieve myself—that feeling of being seen and part of some human community!
and the more I come across instances of other readers sharing their experience with Proust, the more I'm able to appreciate the impact of his work – I was reading Henrik Karlsson's piece yesterday on how reading Proust completely changed the nature of Karl Ove's work. I'm yet to read your other pieces referencing Proust but I'm looking forward to it now!
Also wanted to say that I'm binge-reading essays by you and Henrik Karlsson now. I found your work through your essay "how to begin" and then read "in praise of writing on the internet", "mere description" and others. Appreciate your work! "mere description" especially has me revisiting it and thinking a lot. I have been working on paring down my writing and "merely" describing as an exercise, and it's much harder than it looks.
This is amazing! It makes me think of that anecdote about Joan Didion typing Hemingway's sentences so she could understand their structure. It really is an art, and understanding the foundations is imperative, even if it might seem counterintuitive and overly formulaic at first. I've found that doing this opens up my writing significantly.
Exactly this!! I was thinking the same thing as I read this. An exercise I’m going to put into practice for sure.
what a joy to wake up to this piece !!! it has made my whole day already
A fantastic essay, it reminded me of why I loved my English literature classes at uni! Super inspired to go back and review my favourite writing from this lens—sometimes I get super stuck writing in my voice, but I just know this will help me experiment a lot more.
Thank you for this, Celine! I printed this out to stick in my “favorite essays binder” and took lots of notes in the margins. Thank you for dissecting these different methods to approaching structure of an essay — excited to put the method of dissection into practice to really develop my own voice.
Loved this idea and will shamelessly copy it hehe!
Do it!!
Fascinating and inspiring to see how you take your craft so seriously. Learned a lot from this post and will consider doing the same exercise with my favorite essays + making some beetroot walnut claypot...