letters from hill house
Finding pleasure in the work
I wrote my very first novel just after high school. As with most first novels—particularly first novels written by someone hardly more than a teenager—it struggles mightily to be good. Oh, young me wanted so badly to be a writer. That eagerness regularly collided with my inexperience, not
A little bit out of your depth
Felicia shared this video with me recently, and I've probably rewatched now a half dozen times. I really can't get enough of listening to artists talk frankly about their work, their process, their self-doubt. Bowie's first note here is about not "playing to the gallery": > But never work for other
Permission to be creative
In 2020, Ethan Hawke gave a remote TED Talk on the subject of creativity and permission, and I liked a lot of what he had to say here: About defining "good": > I think that most of us really want to offer the world something of quality, something that the world
Leaving a little want-to
I've just spent the weekend putting miles on my keyboard. My hands don't hurt, but they've gotten clumsy. More and more words came out with transposed letters. My word count plummeted. I developed a headache from all of the screen-staring. There haven't been many happy writing stretches in the last