"Yah, that's the hard part".
Tim Ferriss was talking to Malcolm Gladwell about how he decides what parts of the story are interesting. He goes on to say that writing is not a math equation, there is no right or wrong.
I've never thought about the fact that right and wrong are easy. Math, no matter how complicated is easy because you either get a right or wrong answer.
What's really hard is things that are very simple but not right or wrong.
Taking a paint brush and dipping it in paint and putting that paint on a canvas is not complicated. Why is a Picasso worth millions? Because he did something and to this day we still don't know exactly what it is that he did. Not only do we not know there is no way for anybody else, with a lifetime to study his paintings, to take what he did and build on it and do better than Picasso at being Picasso.
Newton said he was standing on the shoulders of giants. I think we are in love with science in the modern era and we are all running around looking for a giant's shoulder to stand on. But the hard stuff is just taking a story and deciding which parts are important and then telling that story really well.
The Mona Lisa is not wrong for not being cubist, because there is no right and wrong there.
The lazy person is dying for right and wrong as much as they are dying for shoulders to stand on. Tell me what to do and either I will tell you that you are wrong or I will do it. The lazy person want's an algorithm that spits out the right answer when you put something in it. That machine by default makes the person useless.
This is as true for writing a novel as it is for building a spiritual life.
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