A drawing of me reading by my 8-year-old son Jules is at the top of my most recent newsletter.
Messages from the compost heap
Every time I pass the local community garden I think of Ann Patchett’s “I am a compost heap.”
I feel like the signs on the compost heap could stand in for various stages of the creative process.
Books are made out of books
In the back of Show Your Work! and Keep Going, I took out the “recommended reading” heading I used in Steal and quoted Cormac McCarthy from a 1992 NYTimes profile:
The ugly fact is books are made out of books. The novel depends for its life on the novels that have been written.
It was also used for the title of a book on his literary influences.
RIP.
Do you have a nemesis?
Today’s newsletter is on the benefits of having a creative nemesis. I start out by quoting Dana Jeri Maier’s Skip To The Fun Parts:
The purpose of an artistic nemesis is to harness the narcissism of comparison, helping us identify the critical differences between our work and theirs, to emerge with a clarified sense of who we want to be instead. The point is not to be consumed with debilitating bitterness or rage but to summon just enough precious envy to put to constructive use.
(I previously wrote about how feelings are information and how making an enemy of envy can lead to new creative work.)
This, by the way, is how theses newsletters often begin: with a bubble map of my mind.
There were a few things I forgot to throw in, like Plutarch on how to profit from your enemies:
In Plutarch’s “How to Profit by One’s Enemies,” he advises that rather than lashing out at your enemies or completely ignoring them, you should study them and see if they can be useful to you in some way. He writes that because our friends are not always frank and forthcoming with us about our shortcomings, “we have to depend on our enemies to hear the truth.” Your enemy will point out your weak spots for you, and even if he says something untrue, you can then analyze what made him say it.
And these excellent Kate Beaton cartoons, which make me think of one of my favorite movies: Ridley Scott’s first feature, The Duellists.
More for me!
From today’s newsletter:
As I rapidly approach middle age (I’ve got exactly one week before the big 4-0), something I’ve been saying a lot to myself lately is “More for me!” Oh, the kids are rolling their eyes at something I like? More for me! People have soured on an artist I like? More for me! Not only one of my favorite conversational shortcuts, but a way to stay focused on minding my own business and doing my work.
The Ganzfeld Procedure
If you can’t afford an Apple Vision Pro but you’d still like to see what isn’t really there in front of you, just get yourself some tape, a ping pong ball, and a radio, try out The Ganzfeld Procedure:
Begin by turning the radio to a station playing static. Then lie down on the couch and tape a pair of halved ping-pong balls over your eyes. Within minutes, you should begin to experience a bizarre set of sensory distortions. Some people see horses prancing in the clouds, or hear the voice of a dead relative. It turns out that the mind is addicted to sensation, so that when there’s little to sense — that’s the purpose of the ping-pong balls and static — your brain ends up inventing its own.
(I saw this years ago in the Boston Globe. Infographic by Javier Zarracina.)
Nostalgia
Here’s a box I keep of random knick knacks from bulletin boards and desk drawers that I keep on the top shelf of my studio.
The box somehow didn’t make it into today’s newsletter about nostalgia, which begins:
Last weekend I spent a day at my mom’s house sifting through my childhood. Among the artifacts I saved or discarded from the first two decades of my life: a hundred pounds of notebooks and binders from high school, random junk like chem lab aprons I never returned, letters from former girlfriends, bank statements, rental agreements, brochures, ticket stubs, wristbands, notes, old sketchbooks, a stack of song lyrics and guitar tablature several inches thick, tuition statements, computer manuals, hint books, baseball cards, floppy disks, and best of all, toys. A glorious batch of toys from my youth, including He-Man, Ghostbusters, Robo Cop, G.I. Joes, and even one lone Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle.
You can read the rest here.
Summer (un)Schooling

Today’s newsletter is a list of 10 ways to “unschool” yourself over the summer:
In our house we believe that summer is a time for unschooling — a time for living and learning outside of the classroom, a time for self-guided education, for slow learning, and also a time for plain old rest and relaxation and play.
Read them all here.
Summer reading assignment
In today’s newsletter, my summer reading assignment for y’all:
- Visit your local library and apply for a library card. (Or pay your fines and renew.)
- Ask a librarian for a tour of the library building, the online catalog, and the digital holdings. Ask the librarian to show you how to put materials on hold, how to request materials for purchase, and how to use interlibrary loan.
- Check out at least one item. (So you have to return.)
Read the rest here.
School’s out for summer
In this week’s list of 10 newsletter:
- my message to graduates
- the album cover for Alice Cooper’s School’s Out
- the joy of pinning words to the wall
And more! Read it here.
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