In the Margins is a series by Contributing Writer Emily Coyle. Each installment gathers some of the best writer-focused (or generally creative) books and summarizes the biggest brand/copywriting takeaways from each. Novelists. Researchers. Creative Directors. Linguists. You name it.
Online can be a great place to be. It’s where we work together, find inspiration, and share book reports like this one. Online is also the home of digital burnout, unrealistic comparisons, “always-on” expectations, and algorithmic echo chambers.
For this installment of In The Margins, I retreated into nature. I found inspiration in the ripple of water and questioned our industry’s digital-first instincts. I looked to an actual guru, a guru-like creative director, a creative researcher, and a short story scholar. And while what I found for us isn’t too surprising, it always, always bears repeating.
- The Zen of Creativity by John Diado Loori (how the Buddhist practice of Zen can shape a creative life)
- The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin (a hyped creative director and producer reminds us how to balance our chill and our discipline)
- Offline Matters by Jess Henderson (a critical look at our industry’s dependence on the internet)
- Meander, Spiral, Explode by Jane Alison (how patterns in nature can help us write more interesting stories)
The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life by John Daido Loori
After attending a life-changing workshop in 1971, John Daido Loori became a serious student of Zen. This Mahayana Buddhist tradition focuses on being in the moment and free of expectation. Loori went on to form a still-active monastery and eventually wrote The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life, a book that shows how Zen practices can cultivate a healthy creative process.
Much of the creative industrial complex is about having the best, most unique taste. Conversely, The Zen of Creativity teaches us to capture snapshots of our presence and perspective to “help people see things as if for the first time.” Loori posits, “If the painter begins with preconceived notions of what the finished work should look like, her ideas will preclude the occurrence of exciting ‘accidents’ of the brush.”
Instead of searching for inspiration in what “the culture” values, Zen empowers each to look inward, assess, and only then begin to express. Loori frames this method of creation as a spiritual practice, saying, “Through our art, we bring into existence something that did not previously exist. We enlarge the universe.” 1 I’m not 100% sure that applies to commercial writing, but thinking about the weight and potential of our words is always a worthy exercise.
In the same way Zen sets taste aside, it also tells us that “originality” ain’t all it's cracked up to be. Loori says, “Originality is born of craftsmanship, skill, and diligent practice, not from trying to stand out in a crowd.” He claims you don’t need to travel the world, go to the right conference, or have the most-designer couch— just show up and the flow will find you. I love how this philosophy reframes practice from a necessary evil to a patient conversation between you and the universe.
“You do not need to leave your room...Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.” - Franz Kafka
1 Gives new meaning to content creation…
The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin
A highly anticipated release in 2023, Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being is an unstructured ride through the renowned creative director and producer’s approach to creativity.
Like Loori, Rubin emphasizes creativity as a universal desire to express who we really are. “Just as trees grow flowers and fruits, humanity creates works of art…Through the ordinary state of being, we’re already creators…composing the world we perceive...participating in the great remembering of what we came into this life knowing: There is no separation. We are one.”
Its shorter passages and meandering range of topics make it an easier but still interesting read.2 While the book includes a lot of thoughts around editing, self-belief, finishing the work, and embracing play, we’ll focus on the parts where Rubin draws inspiration from our inner and outer worlds. “To be self-aware is…to notice how we notice the outside world. Our definition of self-awareness as artists: the way we tune into our inner experience, not the way we are externally perceived.”
As most of our sources today do, Rubin’s book hinges on creativity as a balance of diligence and awareness. “Whatever route the information arrives through, we allow it to come by grace, not effort. The whisper cannot be wrestled into existence, only welcomed with an open state of mind…And if inspiration doesn’t come: working without lightning bolts is simply working. Like carpenters, we [still] show up each day and do our job.” Rubin likens this practice to collecting seeds: “It’s generally preferable to accumulate several weeks’ or months’ worth of ideas and then choose which of them to focus on, instead of following an urge or an obligation to rush to the finish line with what is front of us today.”
Using the ocean as an example, he goes on to say that the noticing itself can serve our spirit: “There’s a reason we are drawn to gazing at the ocean. It is said the ocean provides a closer reflection of who we are than any mirror…It’s better to follow the universe than those around you.”
2 Rubin calls out early on that elements may repeat or contradict, and that it should all be taken or left depending on the reader. I have…some issues with that, but ultimately found a lot of value in the read.
Offline Matters: The Less-Digital Guide to Creative Work by Jess Henderson
I’ve recommended this book a few times, but always preface that it can lean pretty academic and esoteric. However, there are plenty of diamonds in the pages.
Offline Matters is a Substack-turned-book 3 written by researcher and creative strategist Jess Henderson. Released in 2021 to a “post” Covid world, the book seeks to “take you on a trip through an unusual variety of elements: approaches, realities, delusions, possibilities.”
In the intro, Henderson emphasizes that this book is not anti-technology. Instead, it’s a “call to prioritize enjoyment of life and unreasoned imagination.” It’s less about nature and more about the concept of being offline in general, but the thesis is similar: the internet is not the only place of value or inspiration in this world.
Henderson claims our industry defaults to digital because “humans have always had an obsession with the future and the desire to control…Life’s too complicated if each person is distinct, different from one another.” Others believe in digital-first creative because it’s measurable and accurate—though only the first part is true. Media-loving readers may want to look away for this next part:
“Research into the performance of certain marketing media consistently reveals that those dealing in digital marketing work have no clue…Very little of [the content online] is valuable. Very little of it is worth what we exchange it for: our time, concentration, mental health, social connections, and bio-equilibriums.” According to Henderson’s sources, only 52% of traffic on the web is now human. In 2018, fraudulent clicks, traffic, and websites stole at least $12 billion. I imagine that number has only grown in 2024. But when slide 63 says you increased impressions by 250%, it can be hard to walk away.
Beyond the reporting ethics, Offline Matters points a spotlight on the ethics of the creative itself. “At one time, TV and radio were offline. Now they are not. Stickering a street is considered an offline action. And yet the urge to photograph this intervention and post it online can arise. The lines are not clean. Offline means stepping back from the urge of instant gratification.”
Henderson paints a very Orwellian picture, but she’s not wrong. Brands are constantly looking for “creative” ways to say #ad without getting in trouble. And with editorial content on the rise, we’ve lost even more of “the symbolic cues that enable us to know when we’re interacting with advertising. “
Offline Matters goes a step further to frame many websites and apps as inherently manipulative. “The use of platforms, data, and mechanisms designed to manipulate the behavior and emotions of the receiver means that the relationship is exploitative from day one. It is a clear contradiction to claim care via attention-abusing means.”
A sidebar on imposter syndrome: We all know the feeling of seeing another writer’s brilliance as a threat to our own. On Instagram, it’s like “everybody is making the most of their moment and maxing out their capabilities. It is intimidating.” However, Henderson quotes writer and cultural critic Nathalie Olah, and shares this helpful reminder—“What far-reaching and harmful message are we sending out when we paint the natural reaction of working-class and marginalized people as evidence of some kind of syndrome?”
So, what now? Are we all doomed to being chronically online and stressed out about it? Henderson warns against the black and white thinking of staying in or getting out for fear that “offline" will become a space of “guilt and self-punishment.” Technology itself is amoral. It’s what we choose to do with the tech that matters—how we critique ourselves and the relationship we have with it. Offline Matters offers some practical advice:
- Take baby steps: “Rather than attempting an earthquake-sized change, imagine a seeping flood that inches in through our consistent input…No need to think up a brand new concept and struggle attempting to realise it.”
- Reset your focus: “Make art and call it marketing. Make marketing that gets mistaken for art.”
- Find time to reflect: “Find your solitude, your unique method of getting out what lies within. It’s the dance of knowing your time is a choice…Ask yourself: Why are we doing it like this? What are the alternatives? Is there something I would prefer? How did I even get here?
- Try the just because: “Just Because acknowledges that everything is marketing, then forgets everything it knew marketing to be. Just Because utterly embraces the idea that no reason is a reason. It is the willingness for surprise.”
3 The Substack is inactive, but all the posts are archived for your reading pleasure
Meander Spiral Explode by Jane Alison
Jane Alison is an Australian short story writer who grew tired of writing and reading stories that follow a classically-defined dramatic arc. “If you ask Google how to structure a story, your face will be hammered with pictures of arcs. How curious that a single shape has governed our stories for years. So many other patterns run through nature, tracing other deep motions in life. Why not draw on them, too?”
Meander, Spiral, Explode walks through about half a dozen alternative story structures inspired by our planet’s many naturally occurring patterns. The main six are:
- Wave: A forward-moving story with one major rise and fall (includes stories with multiple wavelets)
- Meandering: A story that winds in unstructured directions until it eventually reaches the intended ending
- Spirals: More structured than a meandering, a spiral moves toward or away from a central point, visiting the same themes or motifs over and over again
- Radials or Explosions: When a story’s drama comes not from a linear experience but rather the fractured view of one moment, all leading to—or coming from—a central point
- Networks and Cells: A repeating group of texts connected by subtle or obvious themes
- Fractals and Branches: A story that begins small and adds more detail and depth as it repeats and expands outward
Breaking each of these down could be its own article. Instead, we’re focusing on the most complex and interesting to me—radials, cells, and fractals.
Radials or Explosions: Think of a firecracker spraying a shower of color, petals spoking from a gerbera’s heart, or rays of light flaring from the sun: in each, a core of energy radiates outward.
Alison describes a radial structure as when “a powerful center holds the fictional world—characters’ obsessions, incidents in time—tightly in its gravitational force.…a reader might have a sense of being drawn again and again to a hot core—or, conversely, of trying to pull away from the core… [it’s] many fractured views of the same moment, or many fractured views of things avoiding that moment.” It makes me think of Love, Actually, or any other ensemble movie where by the end, all the characters are revealed to be connected to each other.
In our world of brand writing, it might look like Third Space’s work around “The Great Indoors.”
All of the people featured have different stories and reasons for being at Third Space, but here they are, bound by a drive to push their bodies. These focus on differing views or “ways in” to the same idea, feeling, or moment.
Networks and Cells: Picture a beehive, the monastic orderliness of its cells: row upon row of hexagons neatly fitting together. Or imagine a field so parched a network of cracks has crawled through it, breaking the crust into islands…
Cellular writing doesn’t care about cause and effect or a timeline moving forward. These stories move us along “through linked ideas, images, or phrases…The questions a spatial narrative asks are not “what happens next?” but “why did this happen?” and, more complexly, “what grows in my mind as I read?”
For example, Street Easy’s “Let The Journey Begin” uses a cellular approach to further their reputation for “getting” New Yorkers.
“Mother presented a strategic idea that leaned into this reality: The Hero’s Journey. Through using a popular storytelling framework, they helped us to understand how the ups and downs of NYC buying would allow us to hit all the main points of the buyer’s journey, embrace the emotion and drama of buying, and maintain our track record of a hyper-specific and realistic approach to showing life in New York City.” [Read more]
Fractals and Branches: Fractals are everywhere. Look at a tree: from trunk to branch to branchlet to twig, you see about the same shape, same proportions…lightning, coastlines, rivers splitting into ever smaller streams, cauliflower, capillaries, lungs.
A fractal is the most fascinating of the structures Alison shares. These stories. begin with a seed of a story or idea that branches out in replicating but expanding detail. An example Alison shares goes like this:
- The story’s first incarnation is a sketch of events minus detail or depth.
- Next comes the second story: same beginning and plot, but the loop now magnifies the *desire.*
- Now the third story: Same start and same plot, but the loop moves farther along the storyline, focusing upon the consequences
- The fourth turns the lens inward: the narrator’s internal monologues and psychological complexity.
My brain immediately draws parallels between Fractal stories and recurring skits on Saturday Night Live. The first time we’re introduced to a sketch it’s a funny premise. The second time, a familiar face. The third, an inside joke and so on. The repetition gives us time to go straight to the new, more out-there places.
The Epilogue
I spend a lot of time feeling insecure on Instagram and calling it inspiration hunting. I take notes while I read to write things like this article. And I think about succeeding at work probably more often than I should. But ultimately, nothing replaces taking a minute to go sit in the sun, look around, and let something new work its way into my noggin.
After reading these four books, I feel like my three biggest takeaways were:
- Learn to trust yourself. Data can be helpful, but few things beat a well-honed intuition.4
- Return to the great outdoors—or just life offline—as often as needed. The more you do, the more it rewires your brain in a good way.
- Remain aware. Remain open. Notice the life around you. The big and small. The bright and dark. Find inspiration in structure, or lack of. Try and notice the patterns, then bring them into your practice.
4 It’s not often that the advice that makes you live a healthier life is also the advice that helps you become a better writer, but that’s the power of nature.
Now get off the internet,
Em, Contributing Writer + Wannabe Librarian
PS - if you read these or any of the books from Part I or II, let us know what you think!
In the Margins is a series by Contributing Writer Emily Coyle. Each installment gathers some of the best writer-focused (or generally creative) books and summarizes the biggest brand/copywriting takeaways from each. Novelists. Researchers. Creative Directors. Linguists. You name it.
Online can be a great place to be. It’s where we work together, find inspiration, and share book reports like this one. Online is also the home of digital burnout, unrealistic comparisons, “always-on” expectations, and algorithmic echo chambers.
For this installment of In The Margins, I retreated into nature. I found inspiration in the ripple of water and questioned our industry’s digital-first instincts. I looked to an actual guru, a guru-like creative director, a creative researcher, and a short story scholar. And while what I found for us isn’t too surprising, it always, always bears repeating.
- The Zen of Creativity by John Diado Loori (how the Buddhist practice of Zen can shape a creative life)
- The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin (a hyped creative director and producer reminds us how to balance our chill and our discipline)
- Offline Matters by Jess Henderson (a critical look at our industry’s dependence on the internet)
- Meander, Spiral, Explode by Jane Alison (how patterns in nature can help us write more interesting stories)
The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life by John Daido Loori
After attending a life-changing workshop in 1971, John Daido Loori became a serious student of Zen. This Mahayana Buddhist tradition focuses on being in the moment and free of expectation. Loori went on to form a still-active monastery and eventually wrote The Zen of Creativity: Cultivating Your Artistic Life, a book that shows how Zen practices can cultivate a healthy creative process.
Much of the creative industrial complex is about having the best, most unique taste. Conversely, The Zen of Creativity teaches us to capture snapshots of our presence and perspective to “help people see things as if for the first time.” Loori posits, “If the painter begins with preconceived notions of what the finished work should look like, her ideas will preclude the occurrence of exciting ‘accidents’ of the brush.”
Instead of searching for inspiration in what “the culture” values, Zen empowers each to look inward, assess, and only then begin to express. Loori frames this method of creation as a spiritual practice, saying, “Through our art, we bring into existence something that did not previously exist. We enlarge the universe.” 1 I’m not 100% sure that applies to commercial writing, but thinking about the weight and potential of our words is always a worthy exercise.
In the same way Zen sets taste aside, it also tells us that “originality” ain’t all it's cracked up to be. Loori says, “Originality is born of craftsmanship, skill, and diligent practice, not from trying to stand out in a crowd.” He claims you don’t need to travel the world, go to the right conference, or have the most-designer couch— just show up and the flow will find you. I love how this philosophy reframes practice from a necessary evil to a patient conversation between you and the universe.
“You do not need to leave your room...Remain sitting at your table and listen. Do not even listen, simply wait. Do not even wait, be quite still and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.” - Franz Kafka
1 Gives new meaning to content creation…
The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Rubin
A highly anticipated release in 2023, Rick Rubin’s The Creative Act: A Way of Being is an unstructured ride through the renowned creative director and producer’s approach to creativity.
Like Loori, Rubin emphasizes creativity as a universal desire to express who we really are. “Just as trees grow flowers and fruits, humanity creates works of art…Through the ordinary state of being, we’re already creators…composing the world we perceive...participating in the great remembering of what we came into this life knowing: There is no separation. We are one.”
Its shorter passages and meandering range of topics make it an easier but still interesting read.2 While the book includes a lot of thoughts around editing, self-belief, finishing the work, and embracing play, we’ll focus on the parts where Rubin draws inspiration from our inner and outer worlds. “To be self-aware is…to notice how we notice the outside world. Our definition of self-awareness as artists: the way we tune into our inner experience, not the way we are externally perceived.”
As most of our sources today do, Rubin’s book hinges on creativity as a balance of diligence and awareness. “Whatever route the information arrives through, we allow it to come by grace, not effort. The whisper cannot be wrestled into existence, only welcomed with an open state of mind…And if inspiration doesn’t come: working without lightning bolts is simply working. Like carpenters, we [still] show up each day and do our job.” Rubin likens this practice to collecting seeds: “It’s generally preferable to accumulate several weeks’ or months’ worth of ideas and then choose which of them to focus on, instead of following an urge or an obligation to rush to the finish line with what is front of us today.”
Using the ocean as an example, he goes on to say that the noticing itself can serve our spirit: “There’s a reason we are drawn to gazing at the ocean. It is said the ocean provides a closer reflection of who we are than any mirror…It’s better to follow the universe than those around you.”
2 Rubin calls out early on that elements may repeat or contradict, and that it should all be taken or left depending on the reader. I have…some issues with that, but ultimately found a lot of value in the read.
Offline Matters: The Less-Digital Guide to Creative Work by Jess Henderson
I’ve recommended this book a few times, but always preface that it can lean pretty academic and esoteric. However, there are plenty of diamonds in the pages.
Offline Matters is a Substack-turned-book 3 written by researcher and creative strategist Jess Henderson. Released in 2021 to a “post” Covid world, the book seeks to “take you on a trip through an unusual variety of elements: approaches, realities, delusions, possibilities.”
In the intro, Henderson emphasizes that this book is not anti-technology. Instead, it’s a “call to prioritize enjoyment of life and unreasoned imagination.” It’s less about nature and more about the concept of being offline in general, but the thesis is similar: the internet is not the only place of value or inspiration in this world.
Henderson claims our industry defaults to digital because “humans have always had an obsession with the future and the desire to control…Life’s too complicated if each person is distinct, different from one another.” Others believe in digital-first creative because it’s measurable and accurate—though only the first part is true. Media-loving readers may want to look away for this next part:
“Research into the performance of certain marketing media consistently reveals that those dealing in digital marketing work have no clue…Very little of [the content online] is valuable. Very little of it is worth what we exchange it for: our time, concentration, mental health, social connections, and bio-equilibriums.” According to Henderson’s sources, only 52% of traffic on the web is now human. In 2018, fraudulent clicks, traffic, and websites stole at least $12 billion. I imagine that number has only grown in 2024. But when slide 63 says you increased impressions by 250%, it can be hard to walk away.
Beyond the reporting ethics, Offline Matters points a spotlight on the ethics of the creative itself. “At one time, TV and radio were offline. Now they are not. Stickering a street is considered an offline action. And yet the urge to photograph this intervention and post it online can arise. The lines are not clean. Offline means stepping back from the urge of instant gratification.”
Henderson paints a very Orwellian picture, but she’s not wrong. Brands are constantly looking for “creative” ways to say #ad without getting in trouble. And with editorial content on the rise, we’ve lost even more of “the symbolic cues that enable us to know when we’re interacting with advertising. “
Offline Matters goes a step further to frame many websites and apps as inherently manipulative. “The use of platforms, data, and mechanisms designed to manipulate the behavior and emotions of the receiver means that the relationship is exploitative from day one. It is a clear contradiction to claim care via attention-abusing means.”
A sidebar on imposter syndrome: We all know the feeling of seeing another writer’s brilliance as a threat to our own. On Instagram, it’s like “everybody is making the most of their moment and maxing out their capabilities. It is intimidating.” However, Henderson quotes writer and cultural critic Nathalie Olah, and shares this helpful reminder—“What far-reaching and harmful message are we sending out when we paint the natural reaction of working-class and marginalized people as evidence of some kind of syndrome?”
So, what now? Are we all doomed to being chronically online and stressed out about it? Henderson warns against the black and white thinking of staying in or getting out for fear that “offline" will become a space of “guilt and self-punishment.” Technology itself is amoral. It’s what we choose to do with the tech that matters—how we critique ourselves and the relationship we have with it. Offline Matters offers some practical advice:
- Take baby steps: “Rather than attempting an earthquake-sized change, imagine a seeping flood that inches in through our consistent input…No need to think up a brand new concept and struggle attempting to realise it.”
- Reset your focus: “Make art and call it marketing. Make marketing that gets mistaken for art.”
- Find time to reflect: “Find your solitude, your unique method of getting out what lies within. It’s the dance of knowing your time is a choice…Ask yourself: Why are we doing it like this? What are the alternatives? Is there something I would prefer? How did I even get here?
- Try the just because: “Just Because acknowledges that everything is marketing, then forgets everything it knew marketing to be. Just Because utterly embraces the idea that no reason is a reason. It is the willingness for surprise.”
3 The Substack is inactive, but all the posts are archived for your reading pleasure
Meander Spiral Explode by Jane Alison
Jane Alison is an Australian short story writer who grew tired of writing and reading stories that follow a classically-defined dramatic arc. “If you ask Google how to structure a story, your face will be hammered with pictures of arcs. How curious that a single shape has governed our stories for years. So many other patterns run through nature, tracing other deep motions in life. Why not draw on them, too?”
Meander, Spiral, Explode walks through about half a dozen alternative story structures inspired by our planet’s many naturally occurring patterns. The main six are:
- Wave: A forward-moving story with one major rise and fall (includes stories with multiple wavelets)
- Meandering: A story that winds in unstructured directions until it eventually reaches the intended ending
- Spirals: More structured than a meandering, a spiral moves toward or away from a central point, visiting the same themes or motifs over and over again
- Radials or Explosions: When a story’s drama comes not from a linear experience but rather the fractured view of one moment, all leading to—or coming from—a central point
- Networks and Cells: A repeating group of texts connected by subtle or obvious themes
- Fractals and Branches: A story that begins small and adds more detail and depth as it repeats and expands outward
Breaking each of these down could be its own article. Instead, we’re focusing on the most complex and interesting to me—radials, cells, and fractals.
Radials or Explosions: Think of a firecracker spraying a shower of color, petals spoking from a gerbera’s heart, or rays of light flaring from the sun: in each, a core of energy radiates outward.
Alison describes a radial structure as when “a powerful center holds the fictional world—characters’ obsessions, incidents in time—tightly in its gravitational force.…a reader might have a sense of being drawn again and again to a hot core—or, conversely, of trying to pull away from the core… [it’s] many fractured views of the same moment, or many fractured views of things avoiding that moment.” It makes me think of Love, Actually, or any other ensemble movie where by the end, all the characters are revealed to be connected to each other.
In our world of brand writing, it might look like Third Space’s work around “The Great Indoors.”
All of the people featured have different stories and reasons for being at Third Space, but here they are, bound by a drive to push their bodies. These focus on differing views or “ways in” to the same idea, feeling, or moment.
Networks and Cells: Picture a beehive, the monastic orderliness of its cells: row upon row of hexagons neatly fitting together. Or imagine a field so parched a network of cracks has crawled through it, breaking the crust into islands…
Cellular writing doesn’t care about cause and effect or a timeline moving forward. These stories move us along “through linked ideas, images, or phrases…The questions a spatial narrative asks are not “what happens next?” but “why did this happen?” and, more complexly, “what grows in my mind as I read?”
For example, Street Easy’s “Let The Journey Begin” uses a cellular approach to further their reputation for “getting” New Yorkers.
“Mother presented a strategic idea that leaned into this reality: The Hero’s Journey. Through using a popular storytelling framework, they helped us to understand how the ups and downs of NYC buying would allow us to hit all the main points of the buyer’s journey, embrace the emotion and drama of buying, and maintain our track record of a hyper-specific and realistic approach to showing life in New York City.” [Read more]
Fractals and Branches: Fractals are everywhere. Look at a tree: from trunk to branch to branchlet to twig, you see about the same shape, same proportions…lightning, coastlines, rivers splitting into ever smaller streams, cauliflower, capillaries, lungs.
A fractal is the most fascinating of the structures Alison shares. These stories. begin with a seed of a story or idea that branches out in replicating but expanding detail. An example Alison shares goes like this:
- The story’s first incarnation is a sketch of events minus detail or depth.
- Next comes the second story: same beginning and plot, but the loop now magnifies the *desire.*
- Now the third story: Same start and same plot, but the loop moves farther along the storyline, focusing upon the consequences
- The fourth turns the lens inward: the narrator’s internal monologues and psychological complexity.
My brain immediately draws parallels between Fractal stories and recurring skits on Saturday Night Live. The first time we’re introduced to a sketch it’s a funny premise. The second time, a familiar face. The third, an inside joke and so on. The repetition gives us time to go straight to the new, more out-there places.
The Epilogue
I spend a lot of time feeling insecure on Instagram and calling it inspiration hunting. I take notes while I read to write things like this article. And I think about succeeding at work probably more often than I should. But ultimately, nothing replaces taking a minute to go sit in the sun, look around, and let something new work its way into my noggin.
After reading these four books, I feel like my three biggest takeaways were:
- Learn to trust yourself. Data can be helpful, but few things beat a well-honed intuition.4
- Return to the great outdoors—or just life offline—as often as needed. The more you do, the more it rewires your brain in a good way.
- Remain aware. Remain open. Notice the life around you. The big and small. The bright and dark. Find inspiration in structure, or lack of. Try and notice the patterns, then bring them into your practice.
4 It’s not often that the advice that makes you live a healthier life is also the advice that helps you become a better writer, but that’s the power of nature.
Now get off the internet,
Em, Contributing Writer + Wannabe Librarian
PS - if you read these or any of the books from Part I or II, let us know what you think!
