Paul Graham：Good Writing, Excerpt 3

But I found, to my surprise, that it never did. I always ended up with something I liked better. I don't think this was because my writing was especially careless. I think if you pointed to a random paragraph in anything written by anyone and told them to make it slightly shorter (or longer), they'd probably be able to come up with something better. The best analogy for this phenomenon is when you shake a bin full of different objects. The shakes are arbitrary motions. Or more precisely, they're not calculated to make any two specific objects fit more closely together. And yet repeated shaking inevitably makes the objects discover brilliantly clever ways of packing themselves. Gravity won't let them become less tightly packed, so any change has to be a change for the better.

Source： https://paulgraham.com/goodwriting.html
Locator：Essay, additional excerpt 3 · Verified：2026-10-19 · Verification：Short excerpt

公开随笔；仅摘录并链接作者官网原文，不托管全文。

This text is still in copyright. Only a short excerpt is shown; read the full text at the official link above. Copyright

← Back to the library