Beth

I still can’t wait to see Cuckoo, Blink Twice, Didi and the new Beetlejuice remake. However, the best movie of the summer *might* be Guillermo del Toro live-tweeting about paranormal activity at his hotel in Scotland, where he’s shooting a new Frankestein adaptation.

As soon as he arrived, GDT camped out in a room that someone else had already been... 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.

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

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

And the only way to practice is by doing. I spend a lot of time contemplating the approach. The systems I need in place before I can work. The desire for a perfect plan to execute the perfect result. I forget, too often, that simply doing the thing – flawed but finished – is what will lead me to my goals. Intention matters but only when paired with... See more

Sometimes maybe it’s best, in art and writing, to be as dumb as possible, follow the joy, because at the very least that's real. And there, you’ve taken the first step towards the truth.