Beth

Molly: I will say, I do recommend that everyone try the non-chronological form of writing, even if it causes a lot of headaches in the post-production phase. For some people it can be helpful to write about what they’re most interested in at one particular moment, and then to figure out the chronology later.

Kate: One of the best backwards definitions of happiness is from Walker Percy in The Moviegoer . He says, basically, that despair is when you feel like you are not *onto* something. I think happiness is when— even if only occasionally— you feel like you're *onto* something—you're pursuing something in life, or in your thoughts.

Have I been doomed by competence? What if I die a better administrator than an artist?

Then also recognizing that there are certain effects in horror movies and weird movies that can be translated into fiction in a useful way. Not like jump cuts and crude stuff like that. But I pull from movies all the time in my fiction, I just try to translate it in such a way that it’s interesting in terms of craft and not just about scares or som... See more

He’s unlikable, but he’s also the only person on the expedition who actually does anything. He always takes action. I set up, hopefully, the situation where the reader maybe doesn’t like him but they still are like, “Oh, he actually tried to do something!” That’s useful in terms of how we think of characterization, because we’re often led astray by... See more

You didn’t know quite what you thought, and you didn’t know quite how to respond to the conversation you found yourself drawn into. Maybe it felt exciting; more likely, a bit embarrassing to be dumbstruck and tongue-tied. Now you have something—maybe preliminary, doubtless evolving, but recognizably your own contribution to an ineluctably social pr... See more

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.