Does a computer give your drafts "too smooth a gloss"?
In November, following the publication of his presidential memoir, it emerged that Barack Obama wrote the entire 760-page tome by hand, on yellow legal notepaper with a pen. A pen!? "I still like writing things out in longhand, finding that a computer gives even my roughest drafts too
Are templates running our creative lives?
We need to talk about templates. These days, if you'd like to communicate an idea to another person, other than perhaps in casual conversation, there's a template for you. There's a Powerpoint template. There's an Instagram template. There's a website
A writing approach I'll never use
I have a confession. Judge if you want. I have always hated index cards. I have hated them since fourth grade when we were taught some irritating method of organizing our "bibliography" by tediously writing various information about books in specific places on the index cards. The directive
Knowing What You Really Want - Why I Left Substack
In response to a prompt in The Wayward Writer, I drew this: You can take up more space than you think. When people don't know what you're really about, that can be its own form of protection. I might say, "When you know what you&
The Most Glorious Pasteboard
From a review of one of Paul Monette's novels: Every act, every event is cut and re-cut by the author's sparkling prose and bizarre imagination to give us new facets, new depths and new insights. The characters aren't quite real and--this is
Maintenance as a Creative Act
Why did I never question my desire to "grow my newsletter"?
The Book I Never Published
In 2019, things were falling apart, so I decided to write a novel about a trans man who tries to get pregnant and then things fall apart for him. His name was James. I signed up for Ariel Gore’s manuscript writing workshop and worked on it all summer. On
Work to be Done
Today is my last day in Valatie. I’ll miss this mug, I thought. It’s been good to me. In Valatie, when I get up, I heat water in the electric kettle to make pour-over coffee. I always drink the coffee out of the same mug: a white
On Being a Real Writer
I suppose I spent so long worrying about being a real man, or even a real trans man, that I haven’t found much time to worry about being a real writer. I am a man who doesn’t have a cock. In fact, I am a man who has