Stop fucking around and write the thing you need to write.

It is still wild to me that there is nonstop posting about horrific sexual predators and war and violence of all kinds on here, but this post was given a content warning because it is illustrated by a line drawing of human figures by Picasso and talks about modeling for artists.

Stop fucking around and write the thing you need to write.

Please, is there a browser extension that turns every use of "asked AI" into "asked a Magic 8 Ball"?

Just to give a sense of the insane scale of billions of dollars…MacKenzie Scott got about $38 billion after divorcing Bezos in 2019. She has become the world’s most generous philanthropist, giving away over $19 billion…and she’s currently wealthier than she started. Just. Tax. Them.

Tuck a few of my sentences behind your ears when you want to feel fancy.

I said what I said.

I love the genre of essay that comes when a writer writes about when and how a particular book found them and how it changed them. Here's my old friend and colleague Peter Orner on Absalom, Absalom!

What is your favorite multi-volume work of biography or history? What do you like about it, and why? (Asking for a student, many thanks!)

I think our generational breakdowns (Boomer, Gen X, Millennial, etc) are bad, actually. I once came up with my own parameters for generations, each lasting 12 years, and going back to 1867.

I wonder how much the deaths of the HIV/AIDS pandemic contributed to the missing Gen X liberals in this graph.

My latest book haul looking beautiful @chanda.blacksky.app @durba.bsky.social @profferguson.bsky.social

I too am weak on crime.

👇!

The anglophone person's French right of passage: when you try to ask your doctor about being "middle aged" and instead declare that you are a person from the Middle Ages.

21st century robber barons out of control.

I’ve been #influenced www.villainousnewyork.com/products/cri...

Oh, yeah, that was the Obama Iran deal.

"I was only twenty or twenty-one years old, but even so, I knew what was up."

The third installment of The Book Supplement is here!

Go on, do explain how LLMs can help me "get ahead" if - it cant edit well - it can't be used to search the web - it can't be used for research or facts - it can't be used to write prose (and it would be unethical to ask it to do this anyway) - it cannot reliably summarize or reference a document

Watch this man play the flaming tuba along to Edith Piaf.

For those who regret nothing, but still need a pick-me-up:

Being told that you've "won a prize" that requires you to do a series of tasks in order to receive it isn't really a prize, it's a job offer. Maybe you really want that job, maybe you really don't.

Am perfectly happy with the billionaires shooting themselves into space to seek other planets. Godspeed. Vaya con dios.

He wants to be Napoleon? May he, too, expire prematurely on a remote island far, far away.

Every piece of writing is really a pas de deux with the reader. Your words, their imagination.

“This is not a happy story in terms of the security of the U.S.,” said Tony Sager, who spent more than three decades as a computer scientist at the National Security Agency. “This is not security. This is security theater.”

Asking things of ChatGPT is not “research.”

Hello, do you like books? Subscribe to the The Book Supplement. It's free and you can opt out of other newsletter posts if desired. #Booksky

Was reminded today of this excellent Anne Enright story, delightfully read aloud by her as well. Every time I listen to this I end up calling up at least two people and asking them the turkey question.

This is not adult content, it's just a New Yorker story that uses an artistic photo of a nude woman swimming as the illustration.

Was reminded today of this excellent Anne Enright story, delightfully read aloud by her as well. Every time I listen to this I end up calling up at least two people and asking them the turkey question.

I wrote about some of my favorite spots in Paris 🥐🌸

I would like to put together a summer Book Supplement post with “trashy books for ladies and also gentlemen who don’t hate fun.” Think beach reads. Stuff to inhale in a cabin or on a boat. If you have any upcoming titles you’d like to review (pubs May-August 2026) please pitch me.

TBR pile? I have a TBR table.

I wrote about some of my favorite spots in Paris 🥐🌸

the leitmotif of my life

many, many years ago, there was a bar in LA called Residuals. People tacked their tiny residual checks on the wall rather than cash them.

Got my latest royalty check for a book I published seven years ago. I don’t mean to brag, but it’s in the high two figures 💅. Yay groceries. (Seriously, thank you for reading 😘.)

El Paso is one of the largest cities in Texas – but much of the country still misunderstands it. Journalist Jazmine Ulloa grew up there. After the 2019 Walmart mass shooting that targeted Hispanic shoppers, she set out to tell a deeper story of the border city she knows. buff.ly/f7MYWMQ

In “Salt Lakes,” Caroline Tracey asks us to reconsider these eponymous landmarks, which should be central to our understanding of the natural world. But with water levels dropping and lakebeds drying out, that might not be enough.

Caro Claire Burke, the author of Yesteryear, talks to Sara Petersen about tradwives and the performance of selfhood.

I mean it's not great, is it.

America is currently being run by a genocidal tyrant.

The threat itself is an impeachable offense. Don’t let it slide.

If you did not enjoy today, then call your reps and senators tomorrow and say this 👇

"We roll around this star, made entirely of drive and sunlight and sugar. The whole thing, this mirage that is our existence—what is it for?" www.awritersnotebook.org/p/if-there-i...

The big day is finally here: My long (long)-awaited book launch! Sprouting in a cranium near you...