I imagine my inner critic as a stern school teacher who wears prim cardigans and too-serious loafers. In her crisp button down shirt and impeccably coiffed hair, she is the paragon of perfectionism. Our inner school teacher is convinced there’s a right way to do things: introductions should have a hook followed by background and … Continue reading
Finishing a project brings about two contradictory emotions: exaltation and dread. On one hand, birthing an idea and witnessing its metamorphosis from squirming caterpillar to a shimmering creature capable of flight offers a sense of gratification few things can. We mere mortals accomplished a feat of God-like proportions: we brought something into being that previously didn’t exist! … Continue reading
“John Laroche is a tall guy, skinny as a stick, pale-eyed, slouch-shouldered, and sharply handsome, in spite of the fact that he is missing all his front teeth.”- Susan Orlean, The Orchid Thief “The Santa Anas blew in hot from the desert, shriveling the last of the spring grass into whiskers of pale straw. Only … Continue reading
Why I write. I stole the title of this piece from Joan Didion who stole it from George Orwell. “I write,” she confessed in her superb 1976 essay, “to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” Much like … Continue reading
All writers occasionally doubt themselves when they revisit their work. “You, a writer?!?” our censors scoff, “can your sentences be any more choppy?” “And that ending? Could you conclude in a more predictable way? I thought we did away with ‘in the end’ and ‘all and all’ in 2nd grade?” Suddenly, our work, our whole … Continue reading
When contemplating a piece of work, Julia Cameron advises we’d do better to think whom is this work for? whom will it serve? rather than how will it serve me? Pondering this notion of art as service, I’m reminded of Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s luminous Letters to a Young Poet, a collection of his five … Continue reading
“There are two states in which you may exist, person who writes, or person who does not. If you write: you are a writer. If you do not write: you are not. Aspiring is a meaningless null state that romanticizes Not Writing. It’s as ludicrous as saying, ‘I aspire to pick up that piece of paper … Continue reading
Writing is like playing a sport: if we want to get better, we have to practice everyday. If we want to write, for example, we have to write every morning when we wake up (or, depending on our schedule, every afternoon). But we don’t just simply write- we write to improve a particular skill, … Continue reading
Just finished listening to an interesting Dear Sugar podcast about artistic dreams. A listener who calls herself Career Purgatory writes of a common dilemma: should she quit her soul-sucking day job to be a “real” writer or find time to write in her life right now? It’s a prevalent and pernicious myth that to be a … Continue reading
“It is possible to write out of ego. It is possible, but it is also painful and exhausting. Back in my drinking days, I used to strain to be brilliant, to write the best, the most amazing, the most dazzling…Is it any wonder that additives seemed like a good idea, like a secret hidden advantage … Continue reading
The Blank-Faced Confidante 