I used to read a lot of novels when I was younger. I can’t read most anymore, because they don’t have enough information in them.

Novels seem so impoverished compared to history and biography. But reading Jane Austen is like reading nonfiction. She writes so well you don’t even notice her.

— Paul Graham ‘Some Heroes’

Paul Graham | Atul Gawande | Bill Simmons

My test for a great writer is whether I’ll stop whatever I’m doing to read what they just wrote.

The three people who pass that test for me are: Paul Graham (founder of Y Combinator), Atul Gawande (surgeon and New Yorker contributor) and Bill Simmons (founder of Grantland).

Their areas of expertise align tightly with the things I’m most interested in. For Paul Graham, it’s startups. For Atul Gawande it’s medicine. For Bill Simmons, it’s sport (and mostly the NBA).

They’re my heroes because they write the way I want to.

‘Taste For Makers’ — Paul Graham

“If you mention taste nowadays, a lot of people will tell you that “taste is subjective.” They believe this because it really feels that way to them. When they like something, they have no idea why. It could be because it’s beautiful, or because their mother had one, or because they saw a movie star with one in a magazine, or because they know it’s expensive. Their thoughts are a tangle of unexamined impulses.”

‘Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect Science’ — Atul Gawande

We look for medicine to be an orderly field of knowledge and procedure. But it is not. It is an imperfect science, an enterprise of constantly changing knowledge, uncertain information, fallible individuals, and at the same time lives on the line. There is science in what we do, yes, but also habit, intuition, and sometimes plain old guessing. The gap between what we know and what we aim for persists. And this gap complicates everything we do.

‘God Loves Cleveland’ — Bill Simmons

Magic and Bird were done before I graduated college. Jordan came and went before I turned 30. Duncan, Kobe, Hakeem and Shaq never quite got there — all of them were great, but they were never GREAT. Durant might be a magnificent scorer and an even better teammate, but it’s hard to imagine him getting to that last level. After him, you’re looking at Anthony Davis — someone with an infinitely better chance of becoming the next Duncan than a basketball genius — and there’s nobody on the immediate horizon. This might be it for a while.

So yeah, I wanted a picture. Shoot me. I was there for Larry. I was there for Magic. I was there for Michael. And I was there for LeBron James. Now he’s bringing his genius back to Cleveland. It’s the right move at the right time for the right guy. This will be fun.

I want to write with the compactness of Graham.

The main reason nerds are unpopular is that they have other things to think about. Their attention is drawn to books or the natural world, not fashions and parties. They’re like someone trying to play soccer while balancing a glass of water on his head. Other players who can focus their whole attention on the game beat them effortlessly, and wonder why they seem so incapable.

I want to describe complex situations with the simplicity of Gawande.

He drew the electrified metal tip of the cautery pen along the fat underneath the skin, parting it in a line from top to bottom, then through the fibrous white sheath of fascia between the abdominal muscles. He pierced his way into the abdominal cavity itself, and suddenly an ocean of blood burst out of the patient.

The blood was everywhere. The assailant’s knife had gone more than a foot through the man’s skin, through the fat, through the muscle, past the intestine, along the left of his spinal column, and right into the aorta, the main artery from the heart.

And I want to imbue my writing with the same passion and energy of Simmons.

The game made me feel the same way I felt while watching “March of the Penguins.” I had always wondered what a penguin’s life was like; once I knew how depressing it was, I wanted to sit in my garage with the car running. Sometimes it’s almost better not to know these things.

And Kobe’s 81-point game was a little like that. For a perimeter player to score that many points, you have to hog the ball to a degree that’s almost disarming to watch; it almost stops resembling a basketball game.

I want to make people feel how I feel when I’m reading their writing.

I want to write things that make people stop what they’re doing, drop everything and just read.

I want to write things that make people laugh and cry and feel, really feel, something, when they read.

All that’s standing between me and that kind of writing is the gap.

And on the other side of that gap stand my writing heroes.

(Read Part I)