On writing

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 of art, I think they are trying to drown us in their flood of garbage until we are hollowed out automatons with no function left but to consume “content.” Yet isn’t that all the more reason to mak... See more

Practicing an art form changes you and enlarges you. It makes you look closer at the world, think deeper, live better

I was writing for some clear, single person—I would say myself, because I was quite content to be the only reader. I thought that everything that needed to be written had been written: there was so much. I am not being facetious when I say I wrote it in order to read it. And I think that is what makes the difference, because I could look at it as a... See more

Students are frequently unwilling to rewrite, because rewriting suggests to them that what they wrote the first time is wrong, and they don't like that feeling. But it's not that, it's just that writing is a process and you are cleaning up the language.

It's not that you're changing it: you're doing it better, hitting a higher note or a deeper tone ... See more

approach writing not as an intellectual operation but as capturing your personal emotional experience.

I find that when I write from life and not theory, I am most able create something that feels unpolluted by all the ideas I’ve consumed, all the things I endlessly regurgitate that never provide any catharsis. I think creative autonomy is best understood as honesty without confessionalism. I don’t have to, like, name everybody I’ve ever slept with ... See more

the only way I can gain autonomy is to write from my incomplete point of view. Put like that, autonomy comes from trust in the self, in subjective vision. It’s a rejection that the answer lies in any narrative framework.

I think a lot of people are dismissive of their best thoughts. They can’t put their observations on paper because they’ve already censored them in their mind. They don’t have confidence that what they see is real, because to believe that it’s real requires them to believe that their understanding of the world is as valid as anyone else’s.

Creativity is inherently anti-authoritarian. As in: to be successfully creative, you have to shed the part of yourself that desperately wants reassurance. It’s only then that you can escape cliche and escape paradigmatic thinking.