Cal Newport

People's minds are uncomfortable.

when the pieces don't fit.

And I think too many pragmatic nonfiction writers come into it like, I just have a bunch of good ideas, and they're thinking about how they present each idea, and they want to zig here and zap, and yeah, and capitalism this and that, and da-da-da, and they want to have these moments of...

These sort of rhetorical moments where you're like, boom, oh, yeah, I'm on board with that.

Or, oh, that's funny.

Or, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm fired up or whatever.

What they miss is if the pieces, the big level pieces don't click together beautifully, the whole thing is going to make the reader uncomfortable.

Like, oh, these ideas and this kind of fit, but doesn't this push back on that?

And what are you trying to say here?

Idea first.

All the pieces have to click.

And then you've got to deploy craft.

When you explain things, you're explaining things well and clear, and that's all fine, too.

You need craft as well.

But the ideas have to click.

And so, yeah, I'm obsessive about it.

But that's what I do.

All right.

That's all the time we have for this week.

I'll be back next Monday with another advice episode.