Tools for Thought

Constraints are more reliable than discipline. Rather than count on exemplary self-control, I try to structure my environment to make unproductive activities inconvenient to do. As part of my experiment with more filtered approaches to writing, a couple of days ago, I snagged an AlphaSmart 3000 word processor on the cheap from eBay. The 3000 [...]

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I once had a poetry teacher, Ron Koertge, who constantly urged his students to eliminate weak lines in a poem rather than modify them. When we would present our poems before the class, he would often lob casual critiques like, “That third stanza should be cut” or “This poem probably needs to be cut in [...]

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