Snowstorm on campus today led to closure around noon, and as I was leaving my building, I encountered 2 under-dressed French students filming the snow with appalled delight, and I was glad of my minuscule French that allowed me to immediately understand when one shouted, "ça c'est foutu!"

I appreciate that there's a whole subgenre of holiday music that's basically "it's cold outside, guess it's time to fuck"

Sometimes, revising sucks, but sometimes it feels like this:

Rewatching The Craft for the umpteenth time, and I know I'm not the first to say it, but--justice for Nancy.

Me @ me writing tense, climactic dialogue in which one character disillusions another:

My 2-year-old daughter has become obsessed with witches, so yeah you could say I'm a great mom

Today is a day when arts degrees are worthless, but the product of those degrees is so valuable it would kill an entire industry if they were made to pay for it.

I spent the summer reporting this essay on why it seems harder than ever to sell a book right now—especially if it isn't a debut and comes with the dreaded "sales track." I'm grateful to the writers, agents, editors, publishers & experts who spoke to me for this piece: thewalrus.ca/the-publishi...

this is gaslighting, plain and simple. No, it's not the worker producing workslop, it's the fucking AI!

Had a dream where an undergraduate creative writing class read the first chapters of my WIP and absolutely hated it, with some even finding it offensive, so, you know, I’m closing in on finishing a first draft

There are very, VERY few people who are equipped to talk about this shooter correctly given the brainrot written on the shell casing. You have to understand so much of online culture to get it and also understand how that culture is both connected to and separate from real world ideological spaces

Had a lovely (and not pretentious) convo with a barista today about whether hot shots of espresso or cold brew is better for iced lattes, and this is why I love indie coffee shops. This guy full-on cared that I had the best beverage possible. (Java Break in Lawrence, KS btw)

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.

Send me your prose!

What people think writing is: Hunching over your desk and furiously scribbling or typing out the burning song of your soul. What writing actually is: Staring into space and googling definitions of words you already know but just want to make sure you actually know.

Staring down another whole chapter that will need to be cut from my WIP.

My Depression-born, farm-raised, youngest-of-eight-children grandma used to make me bread and butter for a snack. That's it. Bread and butter. And I DEFY you to come up with a better savory snack.

Watching Disney’s Beauty and the Beast with my 2 y.o. daughter, getting to the part where wolves chase Maurice and am a bit concerned it will be too scary…My daughter giggles with delight when the wolves bite Maurice’s foot. ☠️

Send me your prose, folks! (Beginning Sept. 1)

Wrote a scene set here today. I miss Chicago.

With no direction from me, my toddler has defaulted to calling every character, stuffed animal, etc. she/her and I’m like hell yeah sister

I watched FRIENDSHIP last night and it was the funniest movie I have seen in AGES. I can't stop thinking about what an apt commentary on masculinity (and dare I say the "male loneliness epidemic") it is. And, of course, just our lonely age in general.

Daguerreotype image of the hand of fishing boat captain and slavery abolitionist Jonathan Walker showing the “SS” (for “Slave Stealer”) that the US Govt branded on his palm after he tried in 1844 to help runaway slaves in Florida find freedom in the West Indies (Massachusetts Historical Society) 🗃

“A legitimate PhD-level expert in anything,” they said. “Show me a diagram of the US presidents since FDR, with their names and years in office under their photos,” I said.

Been seeing a lot of AI-generated, fraudulent "pin-ups" in antique stores of late. A pox on the people who have found yet another way to both defraud customers while simultaneously picking at Marilyn Monroe's corpse.

it’s basically trite to note at this point but if this were any other president, and certainly a democrat, spending a ton of money to gild the white house would be a legit scandal

The way these guys talk about PhDs is like the tv shows where a character is said to have three PhDs to show you they're smart. Every time they talk about it they just keep showing they have no idea what expertise is

There’s hell and then there’s converting a thrice-weekly class into a twice-weekly class

What kills me about people claiming they “can’t” is that of course they can but brainstorming is a skill and if you don’t exercise that muscle, it atrophies. Using an LLM to brainstorm will make you worse at brainstorming.

I have jury duty the last 2 weeks of my summer, so instead of revenge bedtime procrastinating, I'm revenge semester-prep procrastinating.

Decades of mechanistic talk about university degrees as if they were bundles of 'skills' and 'prep' are about to be proved completely wrong (obviously). Want to get a real boost? Do History or English.

Leaving an editing note for future me because I wrote a whole scene forgetting that it takes place in December in Chicago: "REMEMBER, IT'S COLD AF"

Me, a literary fiction writer, attempting to write a fight scene:

Discovered I can kind of write while sitting next to my 2-year-old on the couch as long as I open her own document so she can have a "turn" every few minutes. I won't show you my WIP, but here's hers: “ ‘ \’ :\’/;,[,[p\\\\\\\’.,>>>>>>> ]=[[ [[[[[ [[[[[[[ [[

Let’s freaking gooooooo 💪

Writers, you ever have a dream where you think, while still within it, “wow, this is a great story, I have to write it when I wake up,” then you wake up and lol no it isn’t?

Pity me: Had to look through a looksmaxxing forum for writing research today.

In the coming days you’re gonna see a lot of “people in red states deserve what they voted for” rhetoric, so just a reminder that there are a lot of us here in “red” states that didn’t vote for this, and will suffer anyway

So proud of the fiction in this issue! You have to check it out!

So thrilled that my latest story, “Animal,” is appearing in the latest issue of @5ptsmag.bsky.social ! Can’t wait to dig in to this great issue!

This is spot on and I think (ii) signals the lack to essential public resources to the population in general that universities have been tasked with momentarily supplying to undergrads as they are shoved through their professional training by the specter of rapidly accruing student loan debt

So thrilled that my latest story, “Animal,” is appearing in the latest issue of @5ptsmag.bsky.social ! Can’t wait to dig in to this great issue!

Checking in to a hotel yesterday, and the lobby was playing "Kiss Me" by Sixpence None the Richer, and I was so busy thinking about how long it had been since I'd heard that song, when I approached the front desk, instead of saying, "I'm checking in," I said, "I'm kiss."

Does the influx of p*rnbots mean Bluesky's finally made it?

This is THE thing incoming freshmen need to know and it is absolutely absent from all of the advice, prep, and guidance they are getting.

Writing can feel like such a solitary, cerebral process that I’m glad my summer writing class at my local art center got put into a graphics lab, with ink splatters and drawing boards. Gives a nice, messy, tactile vibe.

My plea to parents is to take your children to libraries as much as your complicated parenting schedule can possibly allow. Help your children understand that this resource belongs to them and to the community, and that anyone attempting to take it away is stealing from them.

Just accepted my first story for Issue 81 (2026) of @cottonwoodku.bsky.social 🙌 And our 60th-anniversary double Issue 80 is due any day now! Loved being able to bring twice the fictional brilliance to the world.

I am sorry, but I cannot read all of your Ghost and Substack(🤨) and Buttondown and PonyExpress and PreciousDispatch and RadicalTruth and CozyCurator and HeyGirlfriendKlatch newsletters. It's just toooooo muuuucccch!!!!!

Oh my GOD the research, the writing, that’s where the thinking IS, y’all. The book I am finishing now is very different than what I set out to write at any number of stages. Because of people, & time, & thought.