Plump your mind-glutes
I read this piece recently from Adam Mastroianni’s excellent Experimental History Substack.
The reference to the body metaphor appealed to my physiotherapist's brain, but it’s the idea that to be better at what we do we sometimes need to work on things that are a long way proximate to where we think the problem lies. The penultimate paragraph just blew me away.
A reader recently DM’d me this question on Twitter. I started typing a response, but then it got out of hand, and so I thought I’d just post it here.
I’m a relatively new writer [and] I’m really interested in working to get better at this craft. Obviously the biggest part of the improvement equation is reps, and I’m solid there; I write frequently. But I’m curious as to whether there is anything you’ve done to help you develop your style and voice.
-Alex Michael, who writes A Questionable Life
Hi Alex,
Yes! These things helped a lot:
I went to an orthopedist
I downloaded a lot of music illegally in the early 2000s
I was in a community theater production of Godspell
I got a D on a paper
A woman spat into my mouth in front of a crowd of 90 people
Here’s what I mean.
1. PLUMP YOUR MIND-GLUTES
I have flat feet and bow legs—from the waist down, I kind of look like a Loony Tune. This is the wrong design for a human body, as my feet often remind me, by hurting.
I recently went to an orthopedist and asked her if there was anything I could do to make sure I can still walk when I’m 60. She told me the problem is actually in my hips. They aren’t strong enough to compensate for my goofy legs, so my ankles roll in a weird way with every step, which in turn puts pressure on my non-existent arches, causing them to cry out in pain. To save your feet, she said, buff your glutes.
There’s something profound in that: sometimes the thing that hurts isn’t the thing that needs to be fixed. And if causes and effects can become estranged even in the short distance of a human leg, imagine how hopelessly separated they can get in the infinite space of a human mind.
But if you don’t appreciate that, you’ll treat the brain like it’s a big dumb lump of muscle, as if you can make certain parts bigger just by squeezing them over and over. This is only true for the stupidest, simplest tasks, and is not at all true for complicated, mysterious tasks. To improve at anything interesting—science, law, friendship, whatever—repetition won’t be enough, and it might not even help.
(One of my friends is a clown, and once, when I was watching her practice her routine, I asked her how she got good at it. She said something like, “I got good at juggling by juggling a lot. I got good at being a clown by, as a kid, coming home one day and discovering my dad’s dead body.”)
All that is to say: if you want to get better at writing, maybe the best place to do it isn’t at the keyboard. You’ve gotta go find your mind-glutes. I’m not sure where yours are, but maybe it’ll help if I show you mine.
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You can find the rest of the post here.