david sedaris& #39;s master class is interesting in that it starts and you have no idea what& #39;s going to happen and before long there& #39;s taxidermy owls and offhanded mentions he& #39;s cleaning up trash every day on the side of the highway.

here& #39;s some learnings from this wild ride:
1/ "you should never ask a question you hear in a hotel lobby or a book store. save the small talk.

it doesn’t have to be small talk - you can decide what it is.

as long as i’m having encounters with people, i want them to be meaningful."
2/ david recommends doing this by asking more nuanced questions, which will lead into richer stories. here& #39;s some examples:
3/ on writing autobiographically -

"your life is worth writing about. please don’t feel like you’re not special - you just haven’t found it…yet.

maybe no one’s recognized it yet.

and remember it’s not about what happened, it’s about how you write about it."
4/ "if you’re tuned in, life feels like a story. every now and then, your subject comes right to you and sits in your lap."
5/ on his daily routine - "i write 10-1:30 and then go pick garbage until 8 and then write and have dinner. i find it very important to write everyday. you have to do the work, people are going to think you’re a drag. but if it means that much to you, you’ll find time to do it."
6/ "when you’re in school, you learn topic sentences. but i hate openings like that.

i once started an essay with: & #39;Does there come a day in every man’s life when he looks around and says to himself, “I’ve got to weed out some of these owls”?& #39; "
7/ "and yes, & #39;weeding out owls& #39; is an absolutely ridiculous concept to insist i had in common with my readers.

but the ridiculousness and the assumption that it is a perfectly normal common ground made it that much funnier."
8/ "i think we all like to believe that we can hide our selves from whoever we choose.

and this is true for a lot of people…

but there are other people out there that are our type and that’s both terrifying and comforting. "
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