Podcast Summary: Paul Harding – A New Way To Think About Writing

Podcast: How I Write
Host: David Perell
Guest: Paul Harding (Pulitzer-winning novelist, author of Tinkers)
Date: June 11, 2025

Overview

In this episode, David Perell delves deep with Paul Harding, acclaimed for his improvisational, sense-driven approach to writing. Harding eschews the traditional focus on plot and sometimes even character, instead centering his writing on vivid observation, careful attention to reality, and the translation of sensation into artful prose. Going far beyond craft, Harding explores his literary lineage, teaching philosophy, the influence of music, and what it really means to honor the reader’s mind and soul.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Improvisation Over Outlining in the Writing Process

• Harding shares his aversion to plotting and outlines, viewing writing as an act of improvisation:
  • “I love to just light out for the territories without a compass, without a map… I just love seeing what language gives me.” (Paul Harding, 01:36)
  • Compares writing to Buster Keaton stepping into open space—relying on emergence, where new properties arise from complexity once a system is set in motion. (01:04–02:00)

2. The Importance of Observation and “Slowing Down”

• Gregariously anti-formula, Harding instructs students to cultivate the raw skill of careful, unhurried observation.
  • “You need to actually work it, you know, which is the power of observation. Just being observant and being able to devote the best quality of observation you can… that will not work in good writing.” (Paul Harding, 02:34–04:00)
  • Cautions against “received, acculturated or habituated language.” (03:05)
  • Main advice for all writers: “Slow down, slow down. Just slow down, slow down, slow down.” (15:22)
• Describes a practice of sifting through linguistic and perceptual habits, likening it to meditative attention. (04:28-05:06)

3. Translating Sensation into Prose

• Shares a vivid example from Tinkers, developing a hallucination scene from his grandfather’s death by sharply following each imaginative leap to its logical endpoint:
  • “What would happen if the roof caved in? Well, he’d see the clouds and the sky. Well, and what would happen next? And, well, the clouds would fall out of the sky… Then it would be the stars… Then what would happen next? The stars would fall out… and then what would happen next… it’s like, oh, that’s his funeral shroud.” (Paul Harding, 05:36–08:00)
  • Emphasizes the literal roots of metaphor and the vital role of lived experience in description.

4. Modeling, Not Prescribing: Teaching Writing as Self-Discovery

• Harding resists imposing his process:
  • “I just try to flood my students with a million different ideas… you try that, and you come up with your own repertoire of what works for you.” (09:38)
  • Encourages students to cultivate patience, “the patience of slowing down and really taking in what you’re looking at.” (15:59)

5. Description as Experience & Character

• Advocates for merging interior and exterior description:
  • “They’re just coextensive. And so then description of, say, the way that the Boston Common is layered… that’s what a character starts thinking… and then as I get to know the character better, I can use those descriptions… Description actually becomes character.” (Paul Harding, 11:20)
• Warns against ornamental description for its own sake, favoring “description in service of the reader.” (13:15)

6. Ambitious Reading and Self-Awareness

• Harding’s development as a writer is rooted in “ambitious reading”—taking on the hardest, densest classics, striving to comprehend them intimately:
  • “Your writing can only be as good as the best stuff that you’ve read. And furthermore, it can only be as good as the best readings that you can give to the best stuff.” (Paul Harding, 28:22)
• Urges writers to evolve “from being self-conscious about your writing to being self-aware about your writing.” (30:13)
• Encourages permission to be ambitious: “Melville is just trying to write a book as good as Hamlet.” (30:54)
• Distinguishes between reverent ambition (serving the tradition, the craft) and egotistical ambition (serving the self). (31:48)

7. On Feedback and Solitude

• Prefers to work in “hermetic solitude,” avoiding agents, editors, or readers until late stages:
  • “I want to be alone. I don’t want you in my house while I’m building it. Partly because… learning how to observe things… part of that is not being distracted and not hearing outside voices.” (Paul Harding, 32:34)

8. Daily Practice, Revision, & the Role of Accumulation

• Not a subscriber to rigid daily routines:
  • “I’ll go for months on end where to all appearances, I’m napping on the couch… But I’m always reading… letting them all become coextensive in my… [mind]...” (35:40)
• Revision is central, and iterative—often writes “a thousand pages for a 150-page book”:
  • “[I] print up the entire manuscript… once every six to eight weeks… mark stuff up endlessly… and I think I made 250ish changes” for a reprint of Tinkers. (72:09)
  • “If you’re writing fiction… you have to get over [being efficient]. You have to make a lot of false starts… I love having a bunch of stuff that’s just floating around in a manuscript for years…” (73:50)

9. Wordcraft: The Dictionary Habit

• Reads the dictionary daily—old and new—finding nuance and hidden meaning in ordinary words.
  • Gives the example of “-ly” and how it once only adorned positive connotations (39:22-41:00).
  • “If you know what a word is a little bit more deeply than just… superficial… your sentences can just start to have a little bit more dimensionality to them, a little bit more depth.” (42:23)

10. Plot vs. Consciousness

• Sees plot as “Newtonian,” mechanical—while consciousness is “quantum,” instantly associative:
  • “...if there’s too much plot… you lose… the mind or the soul of the character. If you’re just running the character through a lot of plot… I just felt like I would lose the time and the space… for consciousness.” (43:57)

11. Music & Rhythm in Writing

• Harding, a former professional drummer, deeply connects music and prose:
  • “When you’re writing narrative fiction, you’re writing about time… pacing and dynamics… I’ll often know what the musicality and rhythm and tempo of a scene is…” (78:02)
  • Example from Tinkers: “Tinkerbird coppersmith, but mostly a brush and mop drummer.” (80:16)

12. On Lessons, Messages, and Openness

• Avoids explicit themes or “takeaways”:
  • “If somebody reads my book and gets what the point is, they never have to think about it again… A lot of times we don’t know what the lesson is… I want somebody to come out of my book being like, wow, that really… resonated with me.” (50:27–51:54)
  • Prefers books act as “openings,” a “gallery,” not instructions.

13. Tradition, Influence, and Literary “Lineage”

• Expresses reverence for Emerson, Melville, Shakespeare, the Bible, Thoreau, and Marilynne Robinson:
  • “Behold and be a genius.” (Emerson-inspired, 82:08)
  • “I love the idea of… watching Marilyn Robinson watch Faulkner watch Melville, watch Shakespeare, watch Moses.” (58:33)
  • On Shakespeare: “Every line means exactly what it says… starting with that literal, it stands on its own. And then… arranging and the choreography… gets that kind of figurative and symbolic… meaning…” (84:54–86:05)

14. Writing as Portraiture, Not Explanation

• “One way that you can think about it… is you’re making portraits. You’re writing portraiture. That’s not explaining them… you’re just depicting them with a certain amount of richness…” (66:27)

15. Struggle, Self-Doubt, and the Writer’s Life

• Acknowledges “dark nights of the soul,” the constant confrontation with one’s limitations:
  • “…being an artist is one of the… ways you can occupy your life where your job every day is to sit down and confront your own limitations… how can I be a better writer?” (87:47)

Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• On Process:
  “I love to just light out for the territories without a compass, without a map… I just love seeing what language gives me and what experience gives me.”
  — Paul Harding (01:36)

• On Teaching & Patience:
  “Two words. They’re gonna be on my headstone. It’s… slow down, slow down. Just slow down, slow down, slow down.”
  — Paul Harding (15:22)

• On Ambition:
  “Your writing can only be as good as the best stuff that you’ve read.”
  — Paul Harding (28:22)

• On Character & Description:
  “Description actually becomes character.”
  — Paul Harding (11:20)

• On Revision:
  “For a 150-page book, how many pages do you think you write?
  — Easily a thousand.”
  — Paul Harding (70:55)

• On the Reader:
  “When I write a book, I want you to just be like, dang, that is an awesome… you finish something and you go, that’s absolutely true. I’ve always known it’s true. And I’ve never seen anybody put it into words.”
  — Paul Harding (23:50)

• On Writing’s Purpose:
  “I want any person who enters any of my books in good faith to come out the other end and feel like they have been paid nothing but the highest respect… I don’t want them to think that anything… is at the expense or belittlement of their humanity.”
  — Paul Harding (54:17)

Timestamps for Key Segments

| Time | Topic | |-----------|--------------------------------------------------------| | 00:47–02:28 | The Improvisational Process, “Emergence”, and Taste | | 05:15–08:00 | Vivid Exploration: Tinkers and Pursuing Observation | | 09:38–11:15 | Teaching, Modeling, and Learning to See and Describe | | 13:15–14:19 | Virtuosity, Show-off Writing, and Writing as Service | | 15:22–15:59 | The Centrality of Patience, “Slow Down” | | 28:22–31:33 | Ambitious Reading, Role of Influence, Literary Canon | | 32:34–34:16 | On Solitude, Shielding the Work from Outside Voices | | 35:40–39:17 | Daily Practice, Letting Experiences and Influences Interact | | 42:19–43:27 | Dictionary Reading, Nuance, and Word Origins | | 43:57–45:58 | Plot vs. Character, Quantum Consciousness | | 78:02–82:08 | Music & Rhythm: The Drummer’s Influence | | 82:08–84:54 | On Emerson, Melville, Shakespeare and Literary Tradition | | 87:47–88:21 | The Artist’s Struggle with Limitation |

Tone and Atmosphere

Throughout, Harding is humble, patient, and rigorous. There’s an almost spiritual reverence for language, observation, and artistic lineage—a willingness to pursue truth without guarantee, and to honor the reader’s intelligence at every turn. Perell matches with curiosity, playfulness, and a willingness to chase each idea to its roots.

Memorable Moments

• The hallucination sequence from Tinkers that unspools from cracks in the ceiling to cosmic blackness—an embodiment of Harding’s improvisational, image-leaping prose. (05:36-08:00)
• Harding’s candid admission that “a 150-page book might take 1,000 pages of drafts”—and his delight in the iterative process. (70:50-72:09)
• The metaphor of learning from legends: “I love the idea of watching Marilyn Robinson watch Faulkner watch Melville, watch Shakespeare, watch Moses.” (58:33)
• His personal mantra: “Slow down, slow down, slow down…” (15:22)

Takeaways for Writers

• Prioritize genuine observation and patience.
• Let language, experience, and character emerge without prematurely seeking plot or “the point.”
• Read ambitiously; dare to join the conversation with greats.
• Be self-aware, not self-conscious; give yourself permission to write what you love.
• Revision is not a punishment—it’s the medium of discovery.
• Word choice matters deeply; even humble words have hidden depths.
• Respect the reader—never condescend or oversimplify.
• Accept and embrace the artist’s struggle—it’s where growth is found.

Recommended for:
Writers seeking permission to slow down, embrace uncertainty, and honor both themselves and their tradition; teachers looking for ways to nurture individuality; anyone for whom art is a way of being—and observing—in the world.