why I write

More and more, I find myself turning to reading and writing to grapple with the fact that I only get to live out one life. Chewing on the cud of my one earthly existence lets me experience life once on the way down—as I go about my day and live it all in real-time—and once again on the way back up, when I regurgitate it back onto the page.

It’s a li

Writing has taught me to carry myself more lightly. I notice what patterns recur, I notice that I write things down and think I’ll believe them forever and I rarely do. Living lightly means: we have a long long life but it’s also really short and it’s okay to change our minds to live in the fullest, most vibrant way. I see that now we’re playing ou

Annie Dillard calls the writer’s life colorless to the point of sensory deprivation. That fits. But, as she also knows, there is another kind of color that can only be discovered three years down a writing hole. It is a subtle, nightly color; your eyes need time to adjust to the dark before you can see them. You wouldn't believe their beauty if I t

We don’t have control of certain forums, but we can do a lot on a page.

Endless curiosity, observation, and a great amount of joy in the thing.

ii) Aesthetic enthusiasm. Perception of beauty in the external world, or, on the other hand, in words and their right arrangement. Pleasure in the impact of one sound on another, in the firmness of good prose or the rhythm of a good story. Desire to share an experience which one feels is valuable and ought not to be missed.

Being at the edge of something means that there’s something new ahead. You’ve come up against the wall of the proverbial box, whether that’s your own capacities, your own knowledge, your expertise of a medium. You can either retreat away from the edges and stay in the box or tear it down and build a new one. Or decide that boxes actually aren’t you

An essay is not a vehicle of knowledge transmission; it is a landscape to think in, and a path to get there.

On shortcuts and longcuts

My difficulty is that I am writing to a rhythm and not to a plot.

Virgina Woolf