Thank you for the great article. I Googled the title because that’s what I usually do now a days: prefer not to speak on certain matter but rather write them down. I’m so happy to have stumbled upon your website. I’m going to give War of Art a nice read after my finals.

@Vaughn: I just listened to That’s Entertainment and it’s really good (going straight to my iPod)! The Jam need to be more popular than they are.

But in all seriousness, I understand what you’re saying and why you say it. People really only hear something and take it to heart when they’re ready and not before. Often writers in classes are ready, but there’s still no guarantee — as you note, you can’t always schedule these things.

However, I do want to say that as someone lucky enough to have heard you speak in private about the things you write so well about, let me tell you that without a doubt it works and has had an impact on me!

And on a somewhat separate track but still in terms of speaking to people about — both Hil and I agree that we’d pay to hear you talk about/teach Greek history. You brought it to such vivid life!

Churchill “wrote” 43 books in 70+ volumes, plus numerous newspaper articles in his youth. Almost all of this was via dictation, hearing how the words sounded, mediated with secretarial feedback. He won a Nobel for literature.

Solzhenitsyn wrote some thirty volumes, largely in secret, sometimes in prison or a labor camp, committing passages to memory before burning them. He accepted very little input from others and even used archaic words and expressions most fellow Russians no longer knew or use. Solzhenitsyn too won a Nobel.

Then there’s Cicero, regarded as Rome’s greatest orator and, in his lifetime, writer.