on writing

cafes really should have a ‘newsletter of the week’ noticeboard because half the people in them are probably writing substacks

My strategy is loose, then tight. I write the first draft of an essay fast, trying out all kinds of ideas. Then I spend days rewriting it very carefully.

One of the mirages that resides in many books today, of course, for him and for many of us, is the idea of its author being a “middle class writer.” That appellation seems somewhat fantastical, something borne of secret inheritances and side hustles. Becoming one has become the literary version of the illusory American Dream. It rhymes with the “do

... See more