Writing seriously means nursing enormous egotism, believing that your inner life is worthy of concrete expression, worthy of sharing. The outside world wants to constantly remind you that you are nothing but a small, failed, decaying byproduct of its grand mulching system. But bringing forth what’s inside you gives independent life to something that never before existed outside your mind, something that cannot be immediately quantified, digested, and mulched. Therefore, writing is subversive. Writing is Occupy Consciousness. Writing is black magic. It’s an external frame of reference, a constellation of ideas, a place outside the compost heap. And we can go there together.
Welcome . . .
I write fiction and nonfiction for magazines, work as a freelance writer / editor / journalist, and teach composition and fiction writing.
This blog is mostly dedicated to writing about politics and media, travel essays, creative non-fiction, discussions about books, the MFA experience, publishing, and work I’ve already placed in magazines. But I might write anything.
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“To educate is to seek meaning in everything. It is to teach others to seek the meaning of things. This means mixing the dreams of children and young people with the experience of adults and the elderly. This exchange must always take place, or else there can be no humanity because there would be no roots, no history, no promise, no growth, and no prophecy.”
— Pope Francis, 5 June 20
Recent Posts
- You Are the Universe August 2, 2020
- Compulsory Education Might Be a Necessary Evil July 28, 2020
- Salt of the Earth July 23, 2020
- Two Women July 20, 2020
- Lesser Magic July 15, 2020
If I don’t believe what you believe, that’s okay. I don’t have to. I will defend your right to hold, express, and live by your own belief system, but you have no right to impose any of it on me.
— Helen Pluckrose
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“Either you repeat the same conventional doctrines everybody is saying, or else you say something true, and it will sound like it’s from Neptune.”
― Noam Chomsky
Twitter Updates
- This is what I am referring to. I don't fully understand the need for it, but maybe it's meant to counterbalance pi… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 15 hours ago
- It seems that the op-ed as a genre is becoming less straightforward, more aestheticized and hyperbolic. I'm a bit s… twitter.com/i/web/status/1… 15 hours ago
- splicetoday.com/politics-and-m… 15 hours ago
“Perhaps if you know you are insane then you are not insane. Or you are becoming sane, finally. Waking up.”
― Philip K. Dick, The Man in the High Castle
Subjects
“I write it myself, edit it myself, censor it myself, publish it myself, distribute it myself, and spend time in prison for it myself.”
— Vladimir Bukovsky
“If you’re going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don’t even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery—isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you’ll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you’re going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It’s the only good fight there is.”
― Charles Bukowski, Factotum
