Dear Summer: I Haven’t Written in Months
Dear Summer,
If You Give a Girl a Book
If You Give a Girl a Book is a sharp, loving field guide for writers, authors, small press people, mothers, misfits, and literary workers trying to build a serious creative life without becoming well-behaved content.
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Permission Slip: Your Life Is Not an Interruption
You are allowed to make dinner before you finish the chapter.
The Life Around the Book
A book does not come from nowhere, despite the industry’s fondness for pretending manuscripts emerge fully dressed from a tasteful mist.
Permission Slip: You Don’t Have to Become a Brand
You do not have to become a brand, which should be obvious but apparently needs saying now that the internet has convinced half the literary world to behave like underfunded lifestyle divisions of themselves.
Forty, With Garden Shears
I turned forty yesterday, though forty has not yet done anything interesting enough to earn its reputation.
The Gentle Knife: Your Book Needs Witnesses
The Gentle Knife: Your Book Needs Witnesses
Dear Summer: Why Do Publishers Make You Do All the Work Except Printing Now?
Because publishing has changed, marketing has gotten uglier, margins have thinned into something resembling deli paper, attention has become harder to reach, and a great deal of labor that once looked optional for authors is now treated as part of the job whether anyone has the decency to say so clearly.
Writing When Your Life Is Not Quiet
Most writing advice has a silence problem, which is a polite way of saying it was often designed for lives with doors, supportive partners, bags of money, or at least fewer people asking where the clean socks live.
The Mainentance of Love
We are hopelessly enchanted by beginnings: first dates, first kisses, the first time someone reaches for your hand as if their body made the decision before their brain could file the paperwork.
Field Notes from the Small Press Swamp: What “Community” Actually Costs
Literary community is a beautiful phrase until someone has to stack the chairs, answer the emails, update the flyer, and pretend the microphone is not actively auditioning for a nervous breakdown.