Encore #1: The single best bit of advice on writing

The Logic Matters blog is ten years old next month, and is fast approaching its thousandth post too. Heavens above! — doesn’t time fly when you are having fun?

So I’ve been revisiting old posts, partly to recall some of what I’ve been up to logically and otherwise, since I don’t keep any other diary. And over the next few weeks I will repost a few efforts that, for one reason or another, strike me as interesting enough, no doubt editing a little and occasionally adding a few second thoughts. 

I’ll probably dart around between different years of the back catalogue, but let me start with an encore of one of the very first posts. This is pleasingly short, but contains the single best bit of actually useful advice for authors I know, which I happily pass on at no charge. You’re welcome …

Broad’s advice for writers (April 15, 2006)

I’m ploughing on as fast as I can to get my Gödel book finished. I try to keep in mind the good advice that C.D. Broad used to give. Leave your work at the end of the day in the middle of a paragraph or two which you know roughly how to finish. That way, you can pick up the threads the next morning and get straight down to writing again. So much better than starting the day with a dauntingly blank sheet of paper — or nowadays, a blank screen — as you ponder how to kick off the next section or next chapter. Instead, with luck, you face that next hurdle while on a roll, with the ideas already flowing again.

Well, it works for me …

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