Write every day. That’s the bloody edge. Do it. Do it. Either you do it or you don’t.

Stare deep, deep, deep, like Rilke – at Rodin’s suggestion — staring at a panther in the Paris zoo and writing a poem about it. Focus on one point. Give it enough work, enough energy, to write something compelling.

I used to spend hours writing in notebooks, with no goal, no outline, then go back later and try to pick out something usable, maybe a poem or a fragment. The problem with filling pages as fast as you can is that you never get below the surface. You just glide along, a paper sailboat taking on water, falling apart in the sun. It’s not as if you don’t have a million thoughts coursing through your brain. Fight for a greater facility in grabbing those thoughts and putting them down. Go down deep. Write real fucking sentences that express real fucking thoughts.

Do specific exercises to train your eye and hand. Write sketches, little descriptions of people. Take the simplest dumb-dumb incident and describe it, like the little scenes that Hockney recorded in his “joiners” — multiple snapshots arranged into larger compositions to create pictures of events or gatherings or simple actions. For example, Hockney made dozens of exposures as a woman with two cups of coffee walked down the steps behind his house and handed one cup to a woman seated by the pool.

Experience reality as fully as possible, and then describe it as best you can. Leave your scratch on oblivion.

Master the details, where God lives. Worship the practice — good grammar, good sentences, good reporting.

Write with a subject, a purpose, and an audience. It’s pointless to do it any other way. Try to see the world — with sight standing in here for all the senses — as clearly and objectively as possible.

One’s descriptive powers must have a focal point to be of any use. Without it you’re fucked. Look around. Find an object.

A writer’s equipment: Soul and mind, values and objectivity, the ability to see, hear, feel, taste, and touch.

Get the story, a piece of the truth — who, what, when, where, how.

Break down the ego. Let other voices, other subjects, speak through you. Real people: what do they care about, dream about, fight for?

Strive to be a reporter, not just a commentator. To be a good writer, a cogent thinker, AND a good reporter — that could put you over the hump.

Describe what you see. Tell the truth. Crank out piece after piece after piece. God help anybody who gets in your way.

Charlotte Joko Beck, in her book, Everyday Zen: “Life is actually a very simple matter. At any given moment in time we hear, we see, we smell, we touch, we think. In other words there is sensory input; we interpret that input, and everything appears.”

This means that, if you’re ready, you can make your own world, that the whole world is open to you, that the universal reveals itself in the particular. Great stories are all around, all the time, ready to be plucked from the trees like pieces of fruit. The Big, Wide World remakes itself for you every day.