process
A little book
In March, when I finished major work on the third draft of my in-progress novel, The Dark Age, I printed a copy, then set it aside to breathe a bit. I'd always intended this novel to be a slender little affair, and it very much isn't that. I don't think
For every novel, a font of its own
I've been a designer for nearly as long as I've been a writer, and there's little I love more than a great font. Which is why it can be painful to encounter manuscript submission guidelines that require something like 12pt double-spaced Courier or Times New Roman. Don't get me wrong,
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
Got myself a new brain
Every week I write a newsletter [https://www.jasongurley.com/newsletter]. What I write about is usually informed by notes I've kept for myself: Things I've read that interest me, often about artists and process and such. The problem isn't what to write about; it's how to make sense of
Patience, writer-person
This might be some of the best writing advice I've ever read. > Don't rush your thinking. Don't rush to make sentences. —From Several Short Sentences About Writing [https://amzn.to/35gHVsW] by Verlyn Klinkenborg
Writing daily
I've been trying, for the last week or two, to string together as many days of I wrote words today as possible. Today, I think, means I've written daily for two weeks (with the exception of one day when nothing quite worked right). All of this writing is for a
Love or fear
Last week I listened to an episode of Off Camera, in which Sam Jones interviewed Rashida Jones [https://offcamera.com/issues/rashida-jones/watch/#.YV2_MC9lC-o] about her life and career. At one point, asked how she made some career choices, Jones said her father, legendary music producer Quincy Jones, had