Shiny Dimes

The essence of an essay

A shiny dime is the smallest viable idea you can write about. As a rule, yours isn’t small enough until you can summarize it with a one-liner. For example, my article about “The New American Dream” orbited around a quote from Tyler Tringas: “The New American Dream is to build a profitable, sustainable, remote software business that can be run from anywhere, scales nicely, and prints money.” I found freedom in the constraints of that shiny dime. Instead of pursuing an expansive topic like “entrepreneurship in the 21st century,” I rejected every idea that didn’t relate to the quote.

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Could you summarize your essay in one sentence?

I’m staring to build a collection of shiny dimes.

Next week I’m going to ship a new web application that allows you to cycle through all of them. If you’d like to include something in the collection, drop it in the comments below or simple reply to this email.