protest
Often, at some point during high holy days services, someone sitting in the pews near me will turn around and compliment my singing voice. I am always...
well.
Earlier this year, it seemed, briefly, like I might get a job. In April, a woman emailed me out of the clear blue sky to say she worked for a website that...
archival material
Mostly just taking the occasion of the re-release of 1989 to remind you that I wrote a whole bunch of essays about the album when it was first released in...
on-field performance
I grew up in a sports-minimal household. This is in part because I grew up in a television-minimal household; no cable until I was twelve, etc. etc. I once...
IRL
That bad boy is my dad! And I'll be interviewing him tomorrow about his book at Chevalier's books at 6pm. Come see us banter! I'll even show you pictures of...
cruising
Ten years ago, I took my second-ever writing workshop. The format was simple: every week, we were allowed to bring in up to four-- later six-- pages of...
bodies bodies bodies
[Fair warning: this one is about death.] Last year, right around this time, three in a row: Amy (cancer, fast); Jess (cancer, slow), and Sparrow (brain...
rooms
I have seen Taylor Swift live twice, and both times I have burst into tears during the first five minutes of the show. The first time was eight years ago...
preaching to the choir
I have taught, let's say, a hundred+ aspiring writers over the course of the last seven years. I have taught beginning fiction classes, novel workshops,...
good bad days
I keep taking walks with my friends and painstakingly laying it out: the opportunities that have disappeared, the industries that are crumbling, the deep and...
sea change
This Tinyletter turns seven on Wednesday, which means my freelance career is just a few weeks behind. Seven years! (If it feels like all we're doing lately...
life-changing
My goddaughter turned seven on Sunday. Here's an essay I wrote about her just after she was born. Here's what I wrote about her in my Tinyletter on the...
bright, young
Twelve years ago, somehow, I published this piece in The Paris Review Daily. It got some notice from agents wondering if I had a book, but it also netted me...
evolution
I can't tell you how many versions of this Tinyletter I've written. I keep trying to tell a story about this year and how it was, but it never quite comes...
territory
Over the weekend I did one last canvassing shift. As it happened I had been assigned almost the exact same route a few months prior, but it would have been...
old haunts
A couple of weeks ago I flew to New York, and then B and his girlfriend and I drove to Binghamton for a friend's wedding. First, though, we drove to Colgate,...
rejection
(I wrote this a while ago, but it felt too raw to send at the time. Today I wrote a different Tinyletter that's still too raw to send, so now I'm sending you...
companions
Last September, I went to see a psychic. Or, well, I Zoomed with a psychic, technically, sitting at my desk in my house, but you know what I mean. She pulled...
revisiting
The problem with writing a newsletter pretty regularly for the better part of six years is that sometimes it feels like I've covered all the topics. Remember...
dreams
I grew up in Hollywood, and so I spent a lot of my childhood politely telling people that I had no intention of going into the industry. I had seen,...