'I Published a Novel and No One Cares!'

It is very tempting to believe that because you are twenty-something and struggling, the world is conspiring against you. But sometimes, the pain we feel in life is not from people holding us back, but our own inability to deal with their indifference.3 In other words: no one is out to get you. They just don’t care that much. This is both a little ... See more

book and I’m trying to get it published. So, I show it to people, and they say, “Gee, this is a fabulous book! Let’s hop into bed. I can get it published for you.” And that wouldn’t be so bad either only everyone is so old and ugly and untalented. It always winds up with me running out of an apartment, clutching my manuscript to my over-developed c

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I think a lot of people want to be but they don’t want to do . They want to have written a book, but they don’t want to write the book. They want to be fit, but they don’t want the tedium of working out. They’re ashamed of rejection and they’re ashamed of imperfection. I might want lots of people to subscribe to this Substack, but do I want to work... See more

• As an author in 2023, unless you’re Donna Tartt (and even if you are Donna Tartt honestly, because even Donna Tart has a Public Persona), it impossible to sell books without selling yourself. I spent approximately 12,302 hours writing pithy Twitter posts, drafting earnest Instagram posts, creating fucking Canva graphics, and sharing Insta stories i

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In retrospect, I am astounded I could let go of the drama of being a suffering artist. Nothing dies harder than a bad idea. And few ideas are worse than the ones we have about art. We can charge so many things off to our suffering-artist identity: drunkenness, promiscuity, fiscal problems, a certain ruthlessness or self-destructiveness in matters o

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