1) “Stephen King: Can a Novelist Be Too Productive?“

It always seems werd to me that people dismiss writers who write “too much.”

Picasso painted a lot of paintings, plus drawings and some other stuff, too. People seem to think he was pretty good.

Bach, too. He composed a lot.

But writing, no, writing is the difficult one, and you’re weird if you do too much of it.

As my father said, there is only one rule in writing: write well. As long as you’re writing well, write as much or as little as you want.

Speaking of which:

2) I don’t care about track and field, and I never have. But this piece caught my attention: “The Most Awesome Female Runner in the World“

Why did it catch my attention? Because it’s written well. Despite my complete lack of interest in, or knowledge of, the topic, it was really gripping (and completely comprehensible).

Well, this is why I still subscribe to The New Yorker after all these years (and on paper, but that’s a different question).

Not that everything is gold or anything like that, but there are these moments — as with Joan Acocella’s writing about dance, which I always read despite not giving a damn about dance.