The Lizzie Wade Weekly
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On post-plague disappointment
March 20, 2022
For my apocalypse book, I’m researching the Black Death. It’s probably the most stereotypically “apocalyptic” event I’m exploring, in terms of its sheer...
A round-up of your warm-ups
March 6, 2022
Thank you to everyone who commented or sent me notes on your writing warm-ups! No one does it exactly the same way, and the diversity of approaches was...
What’s your warm-up?
February 27, 2022
My husband is a musician, and I’m always learning new things about the creative process by watching him work. Lately I’ve been thinking about scales, and the...
Finally some helpful book publishing advice
February 20, 2022
Writing a book is an emotional minefield. Not only are you doing the hardest intellectual work of your life, but also at regular but random intervals every...
Three ways writing a book is different than covering news
February 13, 2022
When I set out to write a book, I thought it’d be basically the same as writing magazine stories, only much longer. On the surface, I’m doing the same sorts...
What I’ve learned writing about apocalypses, during an apocalypse
February 6, 2022
I haven’t yet written much about my book here, aside from what I’m discovering about my own habits and patterns in the process of writing it. That’s partly...
My best productivity advice
January 30, 2022
I’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback on last week’s issue about stopping work even when you don’t want to or think you can’t. (Thank you!) I want to...
Why stopping work is just as important as starting
January 23, 2022
In my last newsletter of 2021, I included this note about recalibrating my work and rest schedules: When I was doing mostly news and feature articles, I...
A frontier double feature
January 16, 2022
Hi friends! I’m back from a holiday break that managed to be both relaxing (because I spent most of it cross stitching at my parents’ house) and stressful...
The Antihero Trilogy, part 3
December 5, 2021
It’s impossible to watch Breaking Bad in 2021 and not think about Donald Trump. At its core, the show is the story of a white man who thinks the world owes...
The Antihero Trilogy, Part 2
November 14, 2021
There’s a scene midway through season 2 of Mad Men (set in 1962) in which Don and Betty go to a Memorial Day celebration at a country club. Veterans are...
Quantifying colonialism
October 31, 2021
Another week, another news article. An unsustainable pace if I also want to write a book, so this is it for me and news for a while (I hope). I wrote about a...
Forensic anthropology’s race problem
October 24, 2021
I’m pausing the Antihero Trilogy to share a story I published this week, about a debate roiling in U.S. forensic anthropology. For decades, forensic...
The Antihero Trilogy, Part 1
October 17, 2021
Over the course of the pandemic, my husband and I have watched and/or rewatched the three antihero dramas credited with defining the Golden Age of...
How should a writer write?
October 10, 2021
I’m thinking a lot about how I want and need to structure my days. Not just my workdays, but especially my workdays. And most especially my writing days,...
On Indigenous voices and diverse sources in journalism
September 26, 2021
This week I wrote about a new paper on human footprints found in White Sands National Park, which possibly date to as far back as 23,000 years ago. This is a...
Against the American Dream
September 19, 2021
Hello! I took an unplanned late-summer vacation from the newsletter, because, well, I didn’t feel like doing it for a while. I’m trying to honor my own...
Simone Biles is our hero
August 1, 2021
You don’t need more words and thoughts from me, a person who knows very little about gymnastics or even sports, about Simone Biles’s decision to withdraw...
In praise of Schedule Send
July 25, 2021
I hate email. (I know, I’m writing an email newsletter. We contain multitudes.) I don’t even get that much of it. For me, email is not so much a time suck as...
My latest feature
July 11, 2021
I’m delighted to share what I hope will be my big story of the year (maybe of my life?): a deep dive into the history and future of the Morton Collection, a...
The conquistadors’ music
June 27, 2021
I spend a lot of time thinking about 500 years ago. In 1521, Tenochtitlan and the Triple Alliance fell to a few hundred Spanish people and tens of thousands...
Feel weird about your pandemic body? Read this
June 20, 2021
I hear rumors that some people are vaccinated and back out in the world. (Not me, yet! Fingers crossed for August.) Chances are you look a little different...
The gift of enough
June 6, 2021
Hello! I took a few weeks off from the newsletter to finish a challenging first draft of a feature story, and then to…not write for a weekend or two....
Why journalists are quitting
May 9, 2021
Today I want to share an article I’m so glad somebody finally wrote: “The COVID Reporters Are Not Okay. Extremely Not Okay.” The brave soul to take this on...
Burning up
May 2, 2021
Like every knowledge (or maybe just media) worker, I’ve been thinking about this article on the so-called YOLO economy for the past couple weeks. It’s about...
The easy way out
April 25, 2021
I don’t write much about yoga, because as proudly corny as I’ve become over the last year and change, I still have my limits. It’s also a part of my life...
The problem with self-help
April 18, 2021
I have a lot more work than I expected this weekend, so I’m just popping into share an article that’s relevant to our interests, and that I almost missed but...
A life you can cope with
April 11, 2021
Toward the end of Wintering, author Katherine May talks to a woman named Dorte who lives with bipolar disorder. Dorte struggled with the condition for many...
On Wintering
April 4, 2021
I’ve been circling an uncomfortable fact in this newsletter for about a year: I’ve loved quarantine. There are people and places I miss desperately, and I...
Deprogram yourself
March 28, 2021
I often say my best productivity hack was going to therapy. I started because I’d reached a point where work should have been going more and more...
I’m addicted to this show about French spies
March 21, 2021
We understand what makes a good astronaut all wrong. We think you have to be a daredevil, a rugged individualist, a macho, a cowboy of the skies. In reality,...
Yet another book recommendation
March 14, 2021
It’s hard to describe what The Glass Hotel by Emily St. John Mandel is about. Her previous novel, Station Eleven, didn’t have that problem, because it was...
How this Twitter thing is going
February 28, 2021
As you may remember, I overhauled my relationship to Twitter last September, and I thought I’d write a little about how it’s been going. Here’s what I said...
Three ways to feel something
February 21, 2021
Watch Trapped. There are many things to like about this Icelandic mystery show, including its intricate and satisfying puzzle-box plots, cello-heavy score,...
An old favorite
February 14, 2021
Harriet the Spy is one of those books I’ve read dozens, maybe even hundreds, of times. I had a handful of books I would always read when I stayed home sick...
Ancient history
February 7, 2021
This week I want to recommend two articles about something you’d think I’d care a lot about but, in fact, usually don’t: classics. Like many nerdy kids in...
A very short new story
January 31, 2021
I’ve been in domestic-duty hell for the past week (think: homemade dog diapers, and that wasn’t even the worst part), so I don’t have much time or energy for...
Big Magic: The Chat
January 24, 2021
Lizzie: Ok! Where do you want to start? Maybe why and when you first read Big Magic? I was surprised to hear you were already a fan long ago. Carrie: I read...
Happy new year
January 17, 2021
Hello friends! I hope you all had a restful and restorative holiday break, because oof. 2021 is not letting up at all, is it? In keeping with *waves...
The year of no distractions
December 13, 2020
At various points over the last nine months, I’ve felt an acute need to pull out and read all my old journals, which stretch back to when I was about 12. I...
The comfort of the multiverse
December 6, 2020
The parallel universes feel particularly close this year, don’t they? This whole thing was sparked by a series of random mutations and meetings, the still-...
Motivation comes after action
November 29, 2020
Today I’d like to share a piece of writing from the not-so-distant past that I think about almost every day. I’m not entirely sure how I first ran across it;...
Step away from your Instagram feed
November 22, 2020
I don’t know about you, but all this Sad Pandemic Holiday content is really doing a number on my mental health. I haven’t regularly celebrated Thanksgiving...
A quarantine recommendation
November 15, 2020
In Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, a man lives in a house he believes is the world. To be fair, the house is massive, perhaps infinite, and it contains the sea,...
The spell
November 8, 2020
Once upon a time, a boy was born, and his father didn’t love him. The boy had all the toys in the world, and he always got everything he wanted, just the way...
Remember fun?
November 1, 2020
This week I’d like to share an article that made me feel seen: “What Was Fun?” by Rachel Sugar in Vox. “Are you fun?” I wonder, staring at focaccia recipes...
My favorite election movie
October 25, 2020
No, directed by Pablo Larraín and released in the U.S. in 2013, is a movie about the 1988 plebiscite in Chile, in which people could vote “yes” or “no” to...
Big news
October 18, 2020
Friends, I’m so excited to tell you that I sold my book proposal, and I’m officially writing my first book! It’s tentatively titled Apocalypse: Rediscovering...
The joy of being a snob
October 11, 2020
As part of my current turn toward being Extremely Offline, I recently went back and read the best piece of writing about the high priest of internet...
What a time to be off social media
October 4, 2020
One of the greatest tricks the platforms have pulled is making it seem like saying something is the same thing as feeling something, or doing something, or...
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