Hello Thursday!

I’ve just started reading Don’t Call It Art: 10 Ways to Create Like a Kid Again by Austin Kleon, and I’m loving it. (Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever not loved anything by Austin Kleon.) I was so struck by the following passage that I’m bringing it up to the top of the newsletter, rather than putting it down in “What I’ve Been Reading.”

   All stories become instructions for living: If you believe in art as tragedy, then in order to do creative work, you much be a genius or great talent, and you must suffer. You must be willing to wreck your whole life and the lives of others just to make your art.

   What would happen if we told the story as a comedy? In a comedy, ordinary people fumble about their lives, not knowing exactly what they’re doing or where they’re going. They get themselves into extraordinary situations. They fail a lot, but they remain playful and rely on their wits. They improve and adapt. They make the most of things. They keep a sense of humor and stick around, because the ending of a comedy is always a happy one — every ending is the beginning of the rest of their lives.

I think that’s a great way to look at things. The “starving artist” metaphor certainly doesn’t benefit anyone. No, strike that. The starving artist metaphor certainly doesn’t benefit the artists. It’s of great benefit to the patrons. So long as artists believe that it’s right and expected that they should suffer for their art, that they should be content with scraps, that any interest in money is a sign of lack of artistic integrity, it’s an open door for the managers, gallery owners, publishers, etc. to exploit the artists.

But even leaving aside the financial aspect, the idea that you must suffer for your art isn’t helpful. It discourages people from wanting to make art — barring masochists, who wants to suffer? And since the story of suffering for art also includes the idea of the “genius” or the “great talent,” it provides further discouragement. If people don’t see signs of genius or talent in themselves on their first encounter with art, the prospect of suffering ahead makes art completely unenticing.

I encountered a different but similarly pernicious variant of this story, and ended up losing ten years of fiction writing to it. I would often hear writers say — and I’m sure you’ve heard some variant of this — “I just had these stories in me that I had to get out.” And, while I did aspire to be a writer, I didn’t have this sense of stories inside me trying to get out. I’d sit down to write and have no idea what the story was that I was trying to tell. I’d try to learn how to write, and every “how to write your novel” book that I look at started with the supposition that I had a story that I wanted to tell. After hitting this wall enough times, I said “Well, I guess I just don’t have the talent to be a writer,” and gave up.

But apparently the idea of being a writer never entirely left my mind, because about ten years after that, I was talking with some people in the fanfic community online and I learned about slice of life fanfic. You just write about your characters going about their day, doing the things that they do, and maybe something happens to them and maybe it doesn’t. This sounded like something I could do. So I tried it, and it turned out that I could do it. And it was fun! Then, I made a discovery: If you keep doing this — writing about your characters going about their days, trying to get what they want, and things happening to them or not — eventually you end up telling a story. By playing around, following my little characters as they went about their little lives, I had found the back door into becoming a writer! Not a professionally published writer, but after seeing the headaches that my friends who are professionally published writers go through, most of which center around having to do things that aren’t writing and that take their time away from writing, I’m not sure I want that. Maybe I can take the Chuck Tingle route, so I can write what I want and publish it myself and not have to deal with a publisher saying my book is “too long, too gay, too sexy, too this, too that, WTF with chapter 12?” 

(”WTF with chapter 12?” came from a series of tweets I found about one of my stories. I read that reader’s reaction and I was like “You made it through chapter 8, which to my mind was much more extreme and much more likely to provoke a negative reaction, and chapter 12 is where you nope out?” Ever since then “WTF with chapter 12?” has become my personal shorthand for “You can never predict how readers will react, so don’t bother trying to write for them. Write for yourself and your characters.”)

Things to check out online

• TWICE’s Jeongyeon Pens Handwritten Letter After Leaving JYP — First of all, this makes me extra-glad that I was able to go see Twice in concert this spring. Even though both Jeongyeon and her new agency talk about her continuing to be active in Twice, from the previous examples of Mamamoo and Red Velvet, I’ve seen how much less active a group becomes once the members are no longer all signed to the same agency. Secondly, of the Korean members of Twice, Jeongyeon is the one I’m least surprised to see leaving JYP. While the agency has been publicly to some degree supportive of her medical and mental health issues, I’ve read things saying that behind the scenes this wasn’t so much the case, and at any rate, she seems to be the one who has had the most friction with the label. The fact that she’s moving to an agency that already represents her sister, an actress, is also a bonus for her. (I specified “the Korean members” here because looking at the non-Korean members, particularly Tzuyu, brings so many additional economic and political factors into play that I couldn’t even begin to guess. The only prediction I feel at all confident making about the foreign members is that if only one of the Japanese members leaves, I think it will be Mina.)

• Skull & Haha to donate entire festival fee amid Miryang drought concerns — First bit of background you need to know for this story to make sense: Korea has a lot of summer music festivals that use lots of water — water sprayed into the crowd, giant water cannons, etc. — and the people who run these festivals have a history of not calling them off even when the areas where they are to be held are suffering from drought. This sort of thing has been a recurring summer news story for the past several years. Second bit of background information you need to know for this story to make sense: Korean reggae music is a thing that exists, and Skull & Haha are a well-known Korean reggae duo. They’re talented musicians and based on what I’ve read about them they seem to be decent guys. Anyway, now to the story: Skull & Haha were engaged to performed at the 2026 Miryang Super Festival. As time for the festival neared and they saw that Miryang was in the middle of a drought, they asked if the festival was going to be canceled. It wasn’t. They tried to get out of their contract to appear. They couldn’t. So they played their set at the festival, as contractually required, and then donated their fee to drought relief in Miryang.

What I’ve been reading:

Since last week I’ve finished reading

• Bike Minnesota 2026 (from Minnesota Monthly)

• Mighty Real: A History of LGBTQ Music, 1969-2000 (Barry Walters) — If you don’t read anything else in this book, read the chapters on Madonna and George Michael. I already liked and appreciated both of these artists, but Barry Walters’s additional knowledge and insight took that to a whole new level. // After finishing this book, I definitely recommend it to you. The music recs I took down from this book will keep my ears busy for quite a while, and I learned quite a lot about both about artists who were unfamiliar to me and artists who I thought I knew well. The only complaint I have about the book is that I feel like the ‘90s were given too little attention — out of 60 chapters, the ‘90s get five. Since I can’t think of anything that I’d cut to add more ‘90s material, and I seriously doubt the publisher would have wanted the book to be longer (it’s already 428 pages plus an additional 50 pages of back matter), I would have almost preferred for Walters to have ended the book after chapter 55 (”Melissa Etheridge”) and to then use the material in the remaining chapters as the basis (to be expanded upon) for his next book. And I think that “to be expanded upon” is crucial: while the stories of Nirvana and Hole are inextricably intertwined, I think they each deserve their own chapter. (Mark this day on your calendar, as it will likely be the only time you will ever hear me say that someone didn’t say enough about Nirvana.)

• Lost in the Moment and Found (Seanan McGuire)

• Cells at Work: Baby!, vol.2 (Yasuhiro Fukuda)

• My Dress-up Darling, vol. 14 (Shinichi Fukuda) — There’s only one volume left in the series. Fortunately, it’s already been published and my local library already owns a copy. Four copies, to be precise. And I’m #11 on the hold list, so I’ll have a wait, but not too much of one. I’d say they’re ending this one in just about the right place — I think there are too many loose ends for them to have just ended it after this volume, but not enough naturally-occurring story for them to continue it beyond the next volume. This doesn’t mean the fans (myself included) won’t want more, just that it won’t be in the best interest of the story for us to get more. Everything after volume 15 would be a different story, even if using the same world and the same characters, and so would slide into the realm of sequel and fanfiction — not that there’s anything inherently wrong with that realm. I spend a lot of time there. Just that it needs to be clearly labeled as such.

I’ve continued reading

• Minnesota Monthly, July/August 2026

• In the Embrace of Dragons (Lyonne Riley)

• The Silver Snarling Trumpet: The Birth of the Grateful Dead — The Lost Manuscript of Robert Hunter (Robert Hunter)

• Flying Witch, vol. 14 (Chihiro Ishizuka)

• ArtForum, November 2025

and I’ve started reading

• Don’t Call It Art: 10 Ways to Create Like a Kid Again (Austin Kleon)

• Mislaid in Parts Half-Known (Seanan McGuire) — The ninth book in the Wayward Children series, coming just after Lost in the Moment and Found. I love this series and cannot recommend it highly enough. 

If you missed any past Thursdays, you can access the archives here.

And as always, THIS NEWSLETTER CONTAINS 100% HUMAN-CREATED WORDS.

Have a great week, and I’ll see you next Thursday,

Jason