The app for independent voices
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 knowledge shields: These are mental models that are good enough to explain most of what we see, but cause us to ignore everything else, filter out contradictory evidence, and resist deeper explanations of reality.
Many of the greatest mathematicians didn't think in words or symbols; they thought kinetically. They'd feel ideas in their hands and follow the intelligence of their body.
When drawing, the trick is to spend more time looking at the thing you’re trying to describe than actually drawing. The same is true for writing. Look at what you’re describing more than the words you’ve written.
The philosopher Wittgenstein said: “Don’t think, look!”
"I'll go and look at a plant. I could stand and look at that for a long time, just describing what I'm seeing and then correcting it again and again."
The writing is finally good when what you’ve written evokes the same sense of aliveness and truth as the thing you’re trying to describe. Edit your writing until that’s true.
Finding your people is perhaps the biggest perk of writing online, but if you follow conventional writing advice, you will cut the very things that’ll help you find the people you’re looking for.
“I need to let things live in my body for about a year before I can actually turn them into essays.”
This is obvious, but bears repeating: If you write the best thing that’s ever been written about a topic, you’ll receive repeat traffic for years to come. There’s lots of competition for mediocre writing, but very little for any piece that’s 5-10x better than average, which is paradoxically the easier strategy to pursue.
If you insist on making your writing immediately comprehensible, you’ll block yourself off from especially interesting ideas that are right at the edge of language.
"Sometimes I'll lie on the sofa in my writing studio, close my eyes, and put on voice transcription and just talk."
To write is to pin your thoughts to the table so you can examine them.
The real work of becoming a writer is in becoming the kind of person who can think interesting thoughts, and essays are the exhaust from that process of personal growth.
