I’ve been re-reading Roland Barthes’ A Lover’s Discourse. This is one of those things that happens every couple of years. If you don’t understand the appeal of Barthes, go read Matt Ortile’s Why I ended A Perfectly Fine Relationship, which is cogent and gorgeous and perfectly captures the comfort that settles over me every time […]
Some days I reach for words and they’re just…not there. That’s it, I think, no writing today. But generally, that’s just a lie I tell myself in an effort to feel better. What I really mean by there are no words is that I do not have it in me to deliver words the way […]
I have sixty minutes to write and edit this blog post. Fifty-nine minutes and twenty-seconds now. Even less, by the time you hit this sentence. I have sixty minutes because today is unexpected clear of distractions. The farewell I was meant to be attending this evening has been rescheduled. My usual Friday write-club buddy is […]
I’m in bad shape today. The details are unimportant – insert a huge paragraph about sleep issues and head-colds here, if you must – the important part is that I am very tired and very listless. That feeling you get where you lie awkwardly and cut off circulation to your arm, leaving it feeling numb […]
A few weeks back, when I first discovered Every Frame a Painting, I spent a lot of time re-watching Tony Szhou’s tribute to Robin Williams and the way he moves in movies. It’s one of the most succinct explanations of the importance of good blocking in a series that is full of great instalments that […]
If you take a quick gander at my Instagram feed, it should be pretty obvious that I am now an unapologetic notebook guy these days. A good 90% of my posts are basically me doing the pictorial equivalent of posting word-counts in a blog – tracking progress through a project by photographing page numbers. I do […]
I had breakfast at my local cafe this morning. It’s a habit I’m cultivating this year, on Write Club days, after realising that breakfast at my local cafe makes me extraordinarily happy and it becomes affordable within my budget if I stop buying Coke Zero. Giving up Coke Zero for something that makes me extraordinary happy […]
I went back to writing first drafts on the computer, then came back to notebooks after Christmas. The computer didn’t work for me the way it once did. It’s become the place for editing work, for doing the day-to-day stuff. It divides focus in a way that the notebooks don’t. My natural inclination is to […]
I’ve been waking in the middle of the night again. Three nights in a row now, for reasons I cannot adequately explain, although the safe bet is that it’s either related to the apnea, or related to the treatment that keeps the apnea under control. This is coupled with a tendency to wake ahead of my […]
I’m not a consistent writer. Not in terms of my work habits, not in terms of my approach, and not in terms of the genres that I’m interested in or my long-term goals. There is something inherently mercurial about my approach to all this, despite my best efforts to try and constrain my natural tendency […]
Four days left in the year, but there’s still seven days in the week. What are you trying to get done, fellow creative types? What’s inspiring you? What’s keeping you from getting your work finished? The Sunday Circle is the weekly check-in where I ask the creative-types who follow this blog to weigh in about their […]
Well, it’s here. Not just Sunday, where I ask all my fellow creative-types about their goals and inspirations for the coming week, but the holiday season where getting stuff done around the parties and family gatherings becomes a monolithic task. Personally, my war on Christmas is all about carving out writing time amid the goddamn […]
