Beth

In the back of my mind right now is the AI “art” worshippers’ conviction that process is an obstacle to creation instead of being the whole thing. Like: what if we just removed the work part? What if we just removed the effort? I think it’s quite beautiful that Louise Gluck would say writing never gets easier. It shouldn’t! Ease isn’t the point.

Thanks for being here and for being nervous with me. I hope this week you see a bird you’ve been looking for, that you get to do a few of the things you love, and that if you love bran muffins you don’t feel shy about it.

I’ve come to suspect that the greatest injury inflicted on us by the internet is its perpetual circumscription of perspective.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that America runs on Dunkin and BookTok runs on Romantasy.

I think if I solely loved it, I wouldn’t be me. And if I was solely terrified by it, you’d never have heard my name.

I’m old enough to tell young people now, that doesn’t change. I got some bad news for you: There’s always just got to be both. And hopefully more of that joy — which I think I’ve had.

I was listening to Paramore’s “Misery Business,” a song about delighting in the misery of your boyfriend’s inferior ex and enjoying the thought of them seeing you two together. I really love that song—it’s kind of slut shamey, but honestly, like, I don’t know man, a bop is a bop—and I listen to it before I play tennis to get in a cruel and competit... See more

When we moved to Pittsburgh, we were going to all these new places, and my husband was always at ease and I was always a little bit nervous. No matter what I'm doing, even now, I always feel nervous, so I finally decided to embrace it, instead of shaking it off.

Characters like Nikolai and Stoner, who react to life more often than they “take action”—whatever that term means—are often labeled by my students as passive characters. Sometimes a student is advised by his or her peers to give characters “higher stakes” or “more agency .” This tends to lead me to groan internally. Isn’t living from day to day eno... See more

Thinking through —rather than just thinking—is important. A thought or an idea is never that precious. People have thoughts and ideas all the time, many of them preliminary. Sometimes people mistake their feelings for thoughts and ideas, which are in turn mistaken for absolute truths. The point of writing and reading fiction is not to stay with the... See more