In these unprecedented, largely awful times, it’s tempting to look toward the distant future as a time when things will return to normal. When there’s a vaccine or the virus mutates into something less deadly or there’s a miracle cure. It’s hard to avoid looking at this time we’re in as a nightmare that will […]
The Writing Life
Writing, marathons, and sprints
There are few spectacles in sports that are more thrilling than the 100-meter dash. Silence. Bang. A mad dash and it’s over in less than ten seconds. But when it comes to the things that are most meaningful in life, they tend to be more like marathons. They’re grinds. They require mental and physical endurance. […]
Harness your fears
One of the things I’ve noticed lately is that amidst the pandemic I’ve started worrying a ton about very small things. Tiny intricacies of my business. Whether I should have used this or that word in an email. Whether I took too long to respond to a text. I have plenty of big things to […]
Lean into the things that bring you meaning
At the risk of stating what is blindingly obvious, there is nothing fun about the time we’re living through. Even if you’re one of the very privileged among us who has avoided sickness, financial calamity, or worse… the pandemic has closed off many of our normal outlets for relief and mental breaks. The most fun […]
Is the pandemic upending the plot of your novel?
The world will never be the same after this and it’s going to affect fiction in unpredictable ways as well. Ben Winters wrote a recent article about how the pandemic upended the novel he was 80% finished, much of which takes place in the spring of 2020. And Lawrence Wright has a novel coming out […]
There will be a time after this one
It’s a ridiculously hard time to write. No one is feeling productive. Many people have been plunged into financial uncertainty and feel vulnerable to a virus that’s an invisible menace. Some people have even started wondering: what’s the point of writing? What kind of a world will even be left for me to publish a […]
