SENTENCES PARAGRAPHS SHORTEST LONGEST 3 words Novelty is easy. 12 Pour maple syrup on a Saturn V rocket and you've done it. 20 Now slingshot a strip of three-quarters-cooked bacon at a presidential motorcade and, huzzah, you've done it not once but twice. 7 Progress, on the other hand, is hard. 20 It involves not just doing something new, but achieving a new level of quality - a new pinnacle of performance. 17 By the way, if interesting novelty is your ultimate aim, try making progress on some specific problem. 38 Its many specific constraints will force you to do many specific things (things you otherwise would not do), and end up with a very specific result that is peculiar and not what you'd have predicted when starting off. 27 To see what I mean, look at the artifacts produced by engineers, like the windings of an electric motor or the symmetries of a jet engine's blades. 19 They're often very artful indeed, but shaped first by the engineering problem, not aesthetics or a desire for novelty. 16 I'm currently thinking about this in the context not of art or engineering, but prose style. 12 How do you let the material and the meaning guide the style? 19 Might you end up with compelling and even novel style just by trying to do justice to the ideas? made by @dela3499 UPLOAD DARK