Welcome to my siteI have constructed this site this site largely for my own satisfaction. I have had two motives in putting it together.First, I wanted to put down, in a thoughtful and logical way, principal lessons and experiences that I have acquired from a lifetime of writing. Second, I wanted to lay out some of my principal writings, along with explanations of what significance they may have – at least to me.If, into the bargain, any of this should prove to be of some use to the occasional reader, so much the better. But that is not my principal purpose.The urge to writeI have always felt the urge to write. At junior school I enjoyed writing essays. At senior school I wrote for the school magazine. And I was also taught the rudiments of editing. At university I enjoyed co-editing the student newspaper, Salient, with my good friend Hugh Rennie. Also while a university student, I wrote my first academic article. I was studying law and economics, and it struck me that a subject that came up in our law lectures – the proposed change to New Zealand’s accident compensation scheme to a ‘no fault’ basis – had a sound basis in economics. So, I dashed off a quick article to a new public affairs magazine Comment and, to my astonishment, it was accepted. I was launched.But writing was by no means all pleasure. As I progressed, what I wrote mattered more; and it also proved painful. My first truly academic paper went through 21 drafts, no less, in a process that was excruciating, in part because of much-warranted revisions insisted on by the editor, but also because I found the whole process of saying precisely what I meant, and in a way that might conceivably interest the occasional reader, a monumental challenge. Learning to writeAnd so it was, curiously perhaps, that I really learned how to write in an international organisation of all places, the OECD in Paris. This came at the hands of two great men, John Fay and Stephen Marris. From both, I learned that the process of thinking, and the process of writing, are quite distinct. Many difficulties in writing are caused by starting it too soon, before at least the basics of the story line are clear in the mind. Of course, one should not be too didactic about this. There is truth in E.M. Forster’s “How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?" . But the point should not be stretched too far.Both Fay and Marris were not only superb writers, they were also brilliant editors. And crucially, they taught me the interrelationship between the two skills.Learning to editThat interrelationship was borne in on me some years later when, still at the OECD, I used to meet one of my former colleagues from St John’s College, Cambridge, George Watson, for dinner followed by a long walk in the Paris night. A prolific and accomplished writer himself, he once threw at me “Do you have a book in you?” I confessed that I did have many things that I wanted to say; but that when I got home at night and sat down in front of the typewriter, the words simply would not come. “Can you edit?”, he asked. When I said that I could, he said that I would have no problem. He explained that I had what he called ”White paper phobia”, and from which many people, he asserted, suffered ─ he being one, his former pupil Douglas (The hitch hiker’s guide to the galaxy) Adams being another. White paper phobiaGeorge’s personal cure, he explained, was to buy an electric typewriter. He would sit himself down every morning after breakfast in College and force himself to type. Whenever he started to run into self-doubt, he would plough on, singing “Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish.” When he had finished, he would put the text in a drawer “until it goes cold.” Sometimes, on review, it truly was rubbish. But often it was good, in which case he would edit it. Thus, he explained, the link between writing and editing. And, of course, the arrival of word processing, that miraculous technology, was to render the whole editing process so much more practical.And Douglas Adams? George solved his problem – or so he claimed – by buying him a ream of yellow paper!But I had one more problem. Deadlines. DeadlinesWhile Global Chief Economist at Lehman Brothers, I wrote a weekly piece on whatever was the economic or financial issue of the day. I did this week in, week out, even when on holiday, for over ten years. I did so in part because I felt I had to: but also in part because I knew that, if I did not sign myself up to doing so, I would lapse into infrequency, lose my readership, and become dissatisfied.So now, even though I no longer have to, I still circle around the track once a week, like an old goat on a mountain path. Some of my recent piece feature later in this website.These days, the pieces are shorter – around 350 words. But that does not mean that it takes less effort to write them – if anything it takes more. It is hard to explain to any non-writer how much comment, reaction, re-writing, and editing such a short piece can absorb.But , deep down, I must enjoy it: why else would I do it?Conversations with othersIn a related vein, I have also recounted a handful of conversations with people who have fundamentally influenced my thinking, in one way or another. I am extremely fortunate to have met such people, and their thoughts deserve a wider audience than just me.