Chris and I discussed the power law of writing, why books are meme delivery vehicles, and more. My takeaways: 1. Why write a book? Books are meme delivery vehicles, and memes are the code that societies run on. 2. Another reason to write a book: Books are “canon events.” A 200-page book won't be read as many times as a 20 second TikTok will be seen, but the odds that the book will spark off canonical change in society or somebody's life are much higher. 3. What the smartest people do on the weekend is what everyone else will do during the week in ten years. 4. People like people: As more people hide behind jargon and milquetoast AI-generated text, the returns to writing authentically will go up. 5. Humans like humans: Computers got better at chess than humans 20 years ago but chess has more fans than ever before. Art will be no different. Writers and designers worry about being replaced by AI but if they just focus on creating work that other humans enjoy, they’ll be fine. 6. Avoid “crutch words” that prop up bland writing. Here’s an example. Instead of saying a house fire was “very bad,” show a kid’s burnt sock on the pavement. 7. Philosophy is the act of making distinctions. Writers who slice up the world in new ways are read, remembered, and recommended. 8. The power law of writing: Most of what you write will be forgotten, a small percentage will be quoted years later. A blog is a self-regulating machine because no one pays attention to your bad posts. The attention economy is kind enough to only remember your home runs. Embrace volume (especially in the early days). 9. Muscles are built in the gym, and ideas in conversation. Chris uses intellectual sparring to sharpen his ideas. His popular dictum- “Come for the tool, stay for the network”-first came up in conversation with a startup founder. 10. In the tech world, writing is one of the quickest ways to build a reputation and jump ahead. It also helps organize your thoughts and debug half-baked ideas. 11. The demand for good writing exceeds supply, which means there's a hungry audience for people with domain expertise or a profound story to tell. 12. Jeff Bezos has a famous line: “Your margin is my opportunity.” A similar thing holds true for writing: “Your ignorance is my opportunity.” So if there’s something important that most people don’t understand, don’t despair. Write about it.

The Chris Dixon TSUNAMI in my pod feeds over the last 48 hours is impressive. He's one of my favorite thinkers in the space, but def didn't expect an appearance on How I Write Perell on a first name basis with all the cool kids. Love to see it

'Philosophy is the act of making distinctions. Writers who slice up the world in new ways are read, remembered, and recommended.' Got a new definition of Philosophy today that have potential to change the trajectory of my life. Thanks Chris and David!

Personally feel like this is one of the most important books in internet history. Gives hope for the future.

We need a Seth Godin podcast!

the title has changed 3 times until I have completed the episode

Very interesting, thanks!

Epic interviews David. Love these.

Excited for this!

Watching now!

Great podcast. I feel some of the podcast episodes can fall deep into vagueness, philosophizing and "mindset" side of writing. It's not like that here and that's great.