Conversation

I’ve noticed a product development ethos creep into writing in the last few years. Essays that are “produced” like a book or movie rather than merely written. It’s like people are thinking in terms of target market, focus groups, concept, design, development, execution, launch...
9
129
No way I can survive in this haute couture essay world. Fully expect people to start announcing their fall or spring collections, doing ramp shoes on Twitter, mini pr campaigns. I’m not doing that much work per word, no way. You can’t make me 🤬
8
57
I think one reason this bothers me is that my general approach is “quantity to get to quality” and that does not scale with high production values. I do have more “produced” essays going at breaking smart but its bare minimum. Partly parable of pottery class, partly lazy research
Replying to
To be clear, I don’t there’s any quality difference in the mean but there is one in the variance. Production effort narrows the distribution but doesn’t shift the mean. Something something fat tail too. Also new-yorkerization as in dated ledes etc.
1
12
Thoughts sparked by this tweet this morning
Quote Tweet
Creative nonfiction writers be like: I first ate a hotdog when I was six years old. I remember the taste, the scent, the summer. SECTION BREAK Hot dogs were invented in 1693 by Steven Hotdog. According to Scientific American, the hotdog is
Show this thread
2
12
I do like the take on this though which is more like a coding notebook with embedded calculations. Still a product ethos, but more tinkering prototypes than finished
2
4
Feels like hardware acceleration in chips, where software functions get absorbed into specialty circuitry. Hardware = basic old-fashioned essay Software = dynamic thinking enabled by a piece of text Hardware acceleration = automate the thinking and put it in the text
1
5
Example: Old-fashioned essay: a personality model that suggests an obvious typology that you informally apply Product-style essay: embed a personality test and maybe tweak the presentation based on responses
2
5
Replying to
I actually feel the quality has gone down. And many of the produced essays feel produced, you can tell what they're trying to do and what tricks they use. I think your approach works frankly. Maybe it's just me but most of your essays feel well put together
1