David Perell Clips
@PerellClips
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I interview writers. How I Write is where I do it. New episodes every Wednesday, and this is a feed of the very best clips. My personal account: @david_perell
New York, NY
Joined March 2026
I asked Dana Gioia what he learned from great writers. Here are his answers: Bob Dylan changed the nature of pop music. He gave us the images to understand the kind of weird industrial urban environment that we find ourselves in. Marsh McLuhan understood, before anybody else,
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Full interview with Alain deBotton below https://t.co/nC2sZmBc6f
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How to Write an Irresistible Story "Any story can be exciting. It's not about the writing. It's about the storytelling. It's questions like: Where's the drama? Where's the tension? Where's the uncertainty? In my second book, Freezing Order, there's a whole chapter bout a
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The Problem with Fiction Books "It's unfortunate that in the English language we use the word fiction as if it were the opposite of fact. I think fiction is very interested in truth and it does bring us closer to truth, but it does it in its own way. There's a transcendental
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Beware of Reading Too Much News Alain deBotton says: "The news media gives us a sense of what you're supposed to be thinking about. This is a very programmatic way of thinking. People will routinely say things like: 'Well, of course, we're living in this very sad age'. And
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Ezra Klein: "Having AI summarize a book or paper for me is a disaster. It has no idea what I really wanted to know and wouldn't have made the connections I would've made. I'm interested in the thing I will see that other people wouldn't have seen, and I think AI typically sees
From Ezra Klein, more true than ever. You would not believe how many shortcuts everyone else is taking. In many areas, you can get way ahead of everyone just by doing the work. More true than ever now, when more people are shirking and AI lets you do 10x if you try. 1/
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Beware of outsourcing your thinking to AI Fareed Zakaria says: "Part of how you think and how you develop your thoughts is you read and you interact. You talk to people. I could tell Gemini or ChatGPT, 'This is exactly what I want to argue. Now make this argument and find me the
Fareed Zakaria is one of the world's leading journalists. Maybe you've seen him on CNN. Maybe you've read his books. Or maybe you've read his articles in the Washington Post. This conversation is a university-level seminar in the craft of writing, which builds upon the
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To write is to have greater intimacy with the world. "I remember when I was 14, writing about a snowfall and seeing how beautiful it was. The silence. This lamp on the wall. This light that it casts. How beautiful that was. Any way that as a writer we bring something to life
Henry Shukman is a poet who's been meditating for 35 years. T.S. Eliot said that the present moment is shot with rays of infinity, and Henry's spent his life learning how to see those rays. First through poetry. Then through novels. Then through meditation. Then through a
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Leo Tolstoy was once asked if a novel should deal with social issues and stuff like that. He said: "No, no... a novel isn't commensurate with those things. What a novel does is make you feel the joy of being alive in the world." That's what art does. It ignites our humanity.
Dana Gioia is one of the world’s greatest living poets. He’s been writing for ~55 years, and this 3-hour interview is all about his approach to writing. Some lessons: 1. What is poetry? Here’s a definition: “Poetry is a way of remembering what it would impoverish us to forget.”
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People stopped liking poetry because we got too good at teaching it. For thousands of years, poetry was central to education and people loved it because we were so bad at teaching it. Then came a group called the New Critics in the 1920s who figured out how to analyze poetry.
Dana Gioia is one of the world’s greatest living poets. He’s been writing for ~55 years, and this 3-hour interview is all about his approach to writing. Some lessons: 1. What is poetry? Here’s a definition: “Poetry is a way of remembering what it would impoverish us to forget.”
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"I'm pretty sure that writing is not teachable." — Lee Child
Lee Child is the man behind the Jack Reacher series. He's sold more than 200 million books, and two of his books were adapted into movies starring Tom Cruise. How popular are his books? In the UK, his series has sold more copies than J.K Rowling did with Harry Potter on Amazon.
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Ted Gioia’s cure for writer's block is as good as I’ve seen. Here’s what he recommends: 1) Buy a blank journal, and keep it in a safe place. You don’t want anybody to see what you write in it. 2) At the end of each day, put down what happened during the last 24 hours. But
Ted Gioia thinks our culture is stagnant. Algorithms have us addicted to distraction, Hollywood's out of creative ideas, and people don't read hard books like they used to. 16 lessons about writing and breaking free from dopamine culture: 1. Ted's golden rule for writing:
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The 'Turn in Your Badge' Moment "In a lot of cop movies, there's a moment when the boss says to the detective: 'Turn in your badge. You're off the case.' It's a kind of all-is-lost moment. In Silence of the Lambs, Clarice Starling gets stripped of her badge and her gun to
“The soul has a universal structure of narrative receptors." That's the thrust of this conversation with Steven Pressfield. He's written more than 25 books and spent decades reverse-engineering what makes great stories great. We went principle-by-principle by focusing on
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This is 100% correct. Use AI to deepen research, not replace it. If you’re not working through ideas in your own mind, you will not be able to access and use them to the extent your work and life deserve. There’s no shortcut for understanding.
Ezra Klein: Writers who outsource their research to AI operate on a flawed model of how the mind works. https://t.co/XTrKw7ilIR
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Here's the full Lee Child interview https://t.co/fqtBcP2U2x
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"By 1990, people watching TV had something they didn't have in the 1980s, and it utterly changed the TV business. What changed? What was it? The answer is the remote control. In 1980, people had to physically get off the sofa to change the channel. In 1990, they could do it with
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Walking makes you more creative Daniel Pink says: "The research on walking is unbelievable. There's a famous study where they put people in a chair and they put people on a treadmill, and they do the "alternative uses for an object test." Basically, you give somebody something
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Here's the full interview with @ezraklein
https://t.co/1zzwHj4SB3
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