You write the first draft for yourself, but you write the second draft for a stranger.

Process is extremely important, but more so for the writer than the reader. If your rituals, feelings, and psychology are out of sync, you might not show up to make anything in the first place. It has to be fun. But at a certain point, you need to make the flip and take responsibility for being understood. You write the first draft for yourself,... See more

• Writing advice is often about prose in general, but essays are a specific beast. An essay is different from a diary entry, a newsletter, and a business memo. It is more substantial than a tweet, and less intimidating than a book. Given an essay’s length, you can get feedback, rewrite it, and still publish every week. Done right, an essay is a

... See more

Done right, an essay is a timeless artifact that uses language to fuse a human with their culture.

David Foster Wallace had a similar piece of advice for writers: “ the reader cannot read your mind .” You don’t get to live in the margins and clarify confusion or expand on your implicit intentions.

Tootzi instilled a philosophy of “all that exists is the artifact that’s on the table.” It doesn’t matter if your ideas come from your mind, your heart, your soul, your belly button, the tops of mountains, a bottle of red wine, or from managing an in-house spider colony (this was Salvidore Dali’s process). No matter how you arrive, conscious or... See more