On the Perils of Self-Assessing...

George Saunders · 6 Aug 2026

Others here said this too

The only style worth having is the one you cannot help; setting out to develop a personal style is the wrong goal.

Their wordsAnd that there might come a moment, while reading a new, just-edited-for-the-thousandth-time draft, where that true self, or voice, pops out at you, suddenly revealed, as if someone else, not you, had done it.

Also said by Paul Graham

Read the piece on georgesaunders.substack.com ↗

6 korrents from this piece ↓

George Saunders did not write this page.

Every claim below was made in this piece, quoted word for word and numbered in the order the piece makes them, so you can read it there rather than take our word for it. The sentence above each quote is our reading of the claim, not their wording. Each quote was checked against a stored copy of the page at build time; where the two differ, the quote is the fact.

Our reading
Going to read work you know is good when your own is going badly is legitimate recalibration, not theft.

Their wordsI do, yes, get into “funks like that” and I do just what you describe: I go find some writing that I know is good and check in against that.
Our reading
What matters is not how the writer felt while writing it but how the reader will feel while reading it.

Their wordsWhat matters is not how we felt on reading what you’re written, but how the reader is going to feel on reading it.
Our reading
The only style worth having is the one you cannot help; setting out to develop a personal style is the wrong goal.

Their wordsAnd that there might come a moment, while reading a new, just-edited-for-the-thousandth-time draft, where that true self, or voice, pops out at you, suddenly revealed, as if someone else, not you, had done it.
Our reading
The recipe for great work is very exacting taste plus the ability to gratify it; it is easier to see ugliness than to imagine beauty.

Their wordsCould this phrase or sentence or paragraph or section be improved, even a little? That is, can I make myself (on this very localized turf) make myself dislike it less?
Our reading
A first draft should not be graded good or bad; it is only the material that taste then gets to act on.

Their wordsJust don’t do it. Accept it, whatever it is, as a starting place in the long game of exerting your taste on your own prose.
Our reading
Making art is a job you turn up to whether or not you feel inspired, and the work only arrives for people who are already at the desk.

Their wordsWrite something, in any old mood – feeling great about it or terrible, doesn’t matter.

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The other pieces are the ones whose claims are worded most like this one's. That measures language, not agreement: they may argue the opposite.