I spent most of yesterday staring at a finished manuscript and a very empty bank account. If you have ever hit “publish” on a digital platform, you know that hollow feeling of realizing the work has only just begun. The text is there, but the world is increasingly moving toward the ear. For a long … Read more
The radiator in my small workspace has started making this rhythmic, clicking sound that usually signals the end of my productivity, but lately, it has been the metronome for something else entirely. It is Friday evening. There is a specific kind of silence that settles over a neighborhood when the work week ends, a transition … Read more
I was sitting in a crowded coffee shop in Austin, Texas, last Tuesday, watching a ten-year-old navigate a tablet while simultaneously narrating a complex lore-heavy backstory for a character she had designed in a sandbox game. It wasn’t just the multitasking that struck me. It was the way she expected the story to respond to … Read more
There was a moment, maybe five or six years ago, when everyone in the self-publishing world seemed convinced that the physical book was heading toward the same graveyard as the vinyl record or the film camera. We were told that convenience would swallow everything. And for a while, it did. My own nightstand became a … Read more
I spent most of yesterday staring at a stack of paperbacks on my desk, thinking about how stubbornly we cling to the idea that a book is just a bound collection of dead trees. There is a specific, almost holy comfort in the weight of a physical spine, the way the paper smells like a … Read more
There is a specific kind of quiet that settles over a room when you realize the story you’ve been carrying around for years might actually stay locked inside your head forever. It’s a heavy, slightly suffocating feeling. Most people call it writer’s block, but I think it’s more of a structural collapse. We’ve been told … Read more
There is a specific kind of quiet that settles over a room when you realize the old way of doing things is finally, irreversibly broken. For years, the dream was the Big Launch. You’d spend eighteen months huddled over a keyboard, emerge blinking into the light, and throw your soul at a retail platform, praying … Read more
There was a time, not so long ago, when you knew exactly what you were getting with a cozy. A small town, a punny bakery name, a protagonist with a precocious cat, and a murder that felt about as threatening as a spilled cup of Earl Grey. It was a formula that worked until it … Read more
I spent most of last Tuesday staring at a flickering neon sign outside a diner in Austin, Texas, wondering if I had finally reached the point where the act of writing was no longer about the words themselves. It feels like every time we settle into a rhythm, the floor moves. We used to just … Read more
The glow of a smartphone at three in the morning used to be the universal sign of insomnia or perhaps a misplaced sense of urgency regarding a work email. Now, it is where the modern American novel is actually being written. We have spent years mourning the death of the long-form narrative, weeping over the … Read more