Daily Productive Sharing 943 - The Best Article

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Paul Graham asks: What makes the best essays?

1. Good essays surprise people -- they impart knowledge that people didn't already have.
2. Writing such essays is itself a form of exploration and adventure.
3. Your ideas might be quite abstract, and writing turns these ideas into something concrete. Even if the quality isn't high at first, it's a starting point.
4. This starting point means you need to reread and edit what you've written. You must be rigorous in your rereading and editing to carve out a better version.
5. More importantly, through this process of rereading and editing, you'll discover the gaps between your version and the truth. These gaps often serve as a breeding ground for new ideas.
6. There are two possible outcomes to a question: one that reaches the truth and one that leads to new questions.
7. Essays are linear, not tree-like -- so when you write, you need to choose a path and dig deeper into it. Paul chooses points of interest to explore and occasionally deletes sections that are not crucial.
8. Paul rarely decides what to write about in advance but instead writes down his thoughts, which gradually form into an essay. Indeed, reading Paul's essays feels like a stream of consciousness, without a strict outline, but rather flowing from beginning to end.
9. The quality of output depends on the breadth and depth of input. The breadth of input comes from reading, experiences, and conversations, while depth comes from practice.
10. The more you write under a theme, the more you'll find they are highly interconnected.

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Paul Graham 问道：什么是最好的文章？

1. 好文章要给人们带来惊喜 -- 即告诉人们还不知道的知识；
2. 写这样的文章本身也是一种探索，也是一种探险；
3. 你的创意可能是很空洞的，写作把这样的创意变得具体，即使质量不高，但这是一个起点；
4. 这样的起点意味着你需要重读自己所写的，编辑自己所写的。你需要严格对待重读和编辑，这样才会雕琢出更好的版本；
5. 更重要的是，在这样的重读和编辑中，你会发现这个版本和真理之间的差距，而这些差距往往是新点子的温床；
6. 一个问题的回答有两种可能，一种是抵达了真理，一种是引出新的问题。
7. 文章是线性的，不是树状的 -- 所以你在写作时，要选择一条路往深处挖掘；Paul 选择感兴趣的点进行挖掘，并且时不时地删去无关紧要的章节；
8. Paul 很少选择写什么，而是把思考写下来，慢慢地就变成了一篇文章。确实，读 Paul 的文章，很像意识流，并没有一个严格的提纲，而是从前往后慢慢流动；
9. 输出的质量取决于输入的广度和深度。输入的广度取决于阅读，见识和交谈，而深度取决于实践；
10. 在一个主题下写得越多，就会发现他们之间高度联结。

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