Beth

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.

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.

So I did what (some) autistic people do: I dug in my heels, and I got my receipts.

For a long time, I didn’t really take notes as I read. I didn’t know how . But over the years, I built a process of notetaking that was mostly underlining and writing gay in the margins.

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.

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... 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

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... See more