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The Best Essay

paulgraham.com

1–10 of 274 posts

Re: The Best Essay

#5
The hardest part of writing is it's hard to predict how it will be received. You cannot 'focus group' writing, unlike other mediums of information.

Disney can predict with a high degree of certainty that its superhero movies will do well, as there is a large, built-in market for those movies, and they tend to be conceived on the same creative blueprint or foundation. Even its 'duds' are still profitable.

But this is not possible with writing, especially not internet writing. What is the market for short-form contrarian non-fiction? Who knows. It's hit or miss, mostly miss

Re: The Best Essay

#8
> One thing I like in an initial question is outrageousness. I love questions that seem naughty in some way — for example, by seeming counterintuitive or overambitious or heterodox. Ideally all three.

I believe it is possible/likely that the best essay in the world could not be realized as such (thus, it wouldn't/couldn't be the best essay in the world), because most people couldn't even get by one of these let alone all three...and, there's likely to be many other hurdles one would have to make it over.

Re: The Best Essay

#9

The hardest part of writing is it's hard to predict how it will be received. You cannot 'focus group' writing, unlike other mediums of information. Disney can predict with a high degree of certainty that its superhero movies will do well, as there is a large, built-in market for those movies, and they tend to be conceived on the same creative blueprint or foundation. Even its 'duds' are still profitable. But this is…

> Disney can predict with a high degree of certainty that its superhero movies will do well, as there is a large, built-in market for those movies, and they tend to be conceived on the same creative blueprint or foundation. Even its 'duds' are still profitable.

Google something like "Marvel superhero fatigue". It seems that either the movie quality is decreasing or the audience is becoming more and more bored by these movies.

Re: The Best Essay

#10
Really liked this quote.

“While breadth comes from reading and talking and seeing, depth comes from doing. The way to really learn about some domain is to have to solve problems in it”

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