flâneur

Henrik Karlsson: The Writing Process Nobody Teaches You

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Just as it happens that my nose is big and hooked, Mozart’s nose and not another man’s. I do not aim at originality and I should be much at a loss to describe my style. It is quite natural that people who really have something particular about them should be different from each other on the outside as well as on the inside. A general request: more writing on subjects you have unique deep expertise in Writing this piece was really hard work—I did a bunch of research and struggled to synthesise the ideas, and I still have material for 2-3 more essays unfinished—but what I do notice is that since I wrote it, problems I face have started to just sort of melt away. I don’t even know why I found them hard to solve before. I really love it when a piece of writing changes me like that. I write many, many first drafts that I never polish into finished essays. Most ideas are not worth finishing, but it can be worth getting them on paper—rapidly—to see if there is some life in them. These days, I

Henrik Karlsson may be the best new writer I know. He has near-superhuman powers of eloquence and perception, and if you aren’t reading his Substack, it’s time to change that. How does he write? That’s what this interview is all about. Some highlights: A blog post is a very long and complex search query to find fascinating people and make them route interesting stuff to your inbox. Almost everybody would be well-served thinking more about what to focus on. Always, always aim to reach past your current understanding of a topic — to reach the thought behind the thought. Beware of…

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