What is true, though, is that you should only write (or paint or photograph or act, etc.) if you love it. If you enjoy the act of creation. If you get satisfaction from wrestling with words and shaping sentences and producing paragraphs. If you do not enjoy it, don’t bother. There are many other things to do in life. And many easier ways to make a... See more

There is no time machine. You cannot transport yourself to the 1960s Greenwich Village any more than the theatres of ancient Greece performing Aeschylus. You are only here, now, with the brain you have and the times you live in. All that other shit has nothing to do with what you are doing.

The poem was not so bad. I won’t publish it here. Or anywhere. Maybe I’ll be able to give it to my daughter when she is older. Maybe it will mean a lot to her. Maybe not. But it meant a lot to me.

I am not terribly optimistic about the state of the world. I do not think the people with power and wealth are working to improve our lives. In the realm... See more

The writers I know who have been driven mad by the industry are those whose expectations were untethered to reality. Secondly, it is useful to separate the business side of publishing from the artistic side. I mean that both in actual practice—e.g., do your business work at different hours than you create—and in your mentality. Sales aren’t art.... See more

We all must ask ourselves what it is we want to do with our time on this planet. Do you want to make something beautiful and true and unique to you? Or do you want to make something formulaic, trend-chasing, and interchangeable because “the market” is says the ROI might be better? You can choose to compete with books written by committee and... See more

Even Shakespeare’s plays were overshadowed by the truly popular entertainment of the day: watching dogs maul chained bears. (Did Shakespeare get stressed about the pointlessness of writing sonnets in an age dominated by bear baiting? Maybe. But I’d like to think he thought, that shit doesn’t have anything to do with what I’m doing

it is useful to remember that art and literature—and especially good art and good literature—have more or less always been of marginal interest to the general population.

The AI evangelists with NFT avatars who tweet about wanting to eliminate artists weren’t ever going to read your work. The people who only care about multimedia corporate franchise “universes” or who simply have interests other than reading weren’t going to either. So why bother worrying about what they do with their time? You don’t need to think... See more

here is what I remind myself when I’m depressed about bestselling dreck or algorithmic slop or declining literacy of the country or any of that noise: that crap has jack shit to do with you or your art.

It has nothing to do with you! Nothing. It is completely irrelevant to what you are trying to do. It doesn’t matter. Don’t waste your time on it.