Archive (Page 2) • practice • Buttondown

whatever this is

December 1, 2020

I keep thinking of Tinyletters I could maybe write and then not writing them. It's hard not to feel like I've told you every story about myself and my life...

September 10, 2020

California is on fire; I'm having a hard time. I keep thinking about the opening pages of a novel I tried to write some ten years ago, now, which begins...

longer letter later

August 21, 2020

I O U more than this, Tinyletterers, but it's Friday and California's on fire, literally, and so is the rest of the country, metaphorically speaking, so all...

A very short one today, mostly just to remind you that I've gathered a few favorite LA YA authors for a virtual event tonight. Come see us talk writing queer...

I woke up on Monday of last week and saw that, on Twitter, a bad man was having his Day of Reckoning. I was not surprised by this; I had had a bad experience...

where I was from

In April, I wrote an essay for LitHub about trying to write contemporary fiction in a world that changes so rapidly & drastically; it was published today....

The problem with saying "I'm listening" is that you aren't: you're talking. That's something I've been trying to keep right at the front of my brain these...

Like everyone else in my demographic, I've been listening to the new Fiona Apple album on repeat for the last few weeks. It's good walking around music, and...

Friday marked my four year freelance-iversary, which means that this Tinyletter is also four. Which is crazy! Freelancing was supposed to be a stopgap...

suspended animation

I said to K the other day that the things I've been fantasizing about most frequently in isolation are a haircut, and getting to pet a friend's dogs. "Not...

So it's Passover now. I am on record-- maybe not internet record, actually, somehow, but if you know me you've heard me complain about this-- as Not Liking...

My third book comes out today, so of course I've written and discarded three drafts of this Tinyletter in the last 48 hours. Maybe eventually I'll send...

Like many clinically anxious people, I've been unnerved by how the realities of "all of this" (I believe that's what we're calling the state of the world...

muddling through

Hello from my bedroom-- specifically, from my bed. On more normal days I try to get up and work at the kitchen table all morning; eventually I make lunch,...

So none of that went as planned. Nothing is going to go as planned for a good long while, it seems like. God and science and fate and a lot of other forces I...

Recently I was talking to a friend about silent meditation retreats, which I'm morbidly obsessed with, because I really feel that I should try to do one, and...

February 6, 2020

One of the things about having been writing on the internet more or less continuously for uhhhhhh eleven years now is that sometimes I have a thought or a...

teachable moments

January 13, 2020

A few days ago Writing Workshops LA, where I've been teaching for the last three years, announced that it was closing its doors thanks to AB5, a well-...

January 3, 2020

Every time I think I've resigned myself to sending self-promotional emails during national or global crises, something bigger and sadder and harder hits and...

December 28, 2019

On Thursday I was on a family vacation, driving through the desert, when I got an email asking if I wanted to talk about the Kardashians on NPR's Weekend...

December 15, 2019

There is a viral tweet that goes "My take is: all 30 Under 30 lists should include a disclosure of parental assets." Not that I have ever been on such a...

what it's all for

December 4, 2019

Last week I had coffee with Rufi Thorpe, whose forthcoming novel The Knockout Queen you're going to want to read. We talked, of course, a lot about...

November 19, 2019

Last weekend I flew up to San Francisco for 36 hours-- just long enough to have dinner with A, go to bed, wake up the next morning, drive out to Bolinas to...

November 6, 2019

Almost exactly three years ago now, I started taking Lexapro for what had become an endless, unmanageable episode of anxiety and depression. Therapists had...

October 18, 2019

(Before we begin, let's all take a moment to pause and reflect on how, when I was a freshman in college, watching Da Ali G Show DVDs was still considered a...

September 25, 2019

A few weeks ago I was in Mexico for work and everyone kept saying that my job seemed pretty nice. It is-- it is (sometimes) very nice. It is very nice when...

behind the scenes

September 5, 2019

Last week I sat in beautiful rooms with very beautiful, very young women and asked them very simple questions. "Why did you want to partner with this brand?"...

August 14, 2019

I feel like I've been very moody on Tinyletter this summer, so I have to report that basically everything that's happened since the last time I wrote to you...

like no one's watching

There are a couple of stories about Comic Con that, if I told them correctly, I think would illustrate something about how power works. Like, for instance,...

My next book has a cover. It also has some flap copy, in case you were wondering about what will be on its pages: Things Lulu Shapiro’s 5,000 Flash followers...

I interviewed the author of a new book about Charles Manson and the summer of 1969 for Longreads. I am, in general, deeply over treating serial killers like...

pretty much all I have to say about vacation is that I wish I was still on it But I am back, and you can read a conversation I had with Glynnis MacNicol...

as we watch it melt

This sounds like something I would write in a book, but it happens to be true that I remember very precisely the first night I ever felt like a teenager. It...

wearing your cologne

I don't think Billie Eilish's music is good, per se, but every time I hear one of her songs on the radio I feel this thing that I realized, the other night,...

So I'm going on vacation in May. It's the kind of thing there's no way to talk about without sounding-- I mean, we're going to Paris, and then to a Greek...

That's the state of my brain right now, which has been on short deadlines for big projects basically since we kicked off 2019. So there's nothing in this...

February 25, 2019

Yesterday my car was in the shop again, for the second time this year. First thing in January it needed a new oxygen sensor and something else-- I forget...

January 20, 2019

A conversation I have pretty often is that someone asks what my books are about, and I say, "One is about a girl who falls in love with a guy in a band and...

January 15, 2019

Earlier this week I went bra shopping for the first time in years. I mean, years. Turns out I'm a D cup! Who knew, right? I spent a totally insane amount of...

January 9, 2019

In Joshua Tree I kept thinking, "when I write about this," and then, "I'm not going to write about this." I had left my phone in the glove compartment of my...

December 10, 2018

In the last week or so I've been seeing the edges of a conversation on Twitter about Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas, and how the lyrics "through the...

December 9, 2018

Probably the most important thing I read this year were three words at the end of my best friend's novel. Works Not Cited, she had written, and then a list...

December 5, 2018

Let me start by saying: thank you. If you sent me $12 thank you, and if you sent more thank you, and if you sent less, or nothing, thank you for not just...

that's what I want

November 27, 2018

I've been thinking a lot about money lately. It's the holidays; it's sale season; it's end-of-the-year accounting season. I'll do my annual update on what I...

November 5, 2018

Two years ago I wrote something joyful and fun about what women were wearing to the polls to vote for Hillary Clinton. (I decided on a Yale sweater, a red...

October 31, 2018

That was last week. This week I got a tattoo. It didn't take all that long-- nothing like the hours I spent in a tiny Brooklyn shop with Nozlee (whose Tumblr...

October 8, 2018

It's complicated how to figure out what I want to talk about online, so the rule I try to keep to is: either be funny, or be giving someone an action item. I...

September 24, 2018

I woke up this morning and checked the news; I saw all the shit we're all seeing. I spent most of last week off of Twitter but it's Monday and like any...

September 17, 2018

Part of the problem is that I don't want to be responsible for knowing how it ends. The essay's graceful conclusion, a novel's satisfaction, even just a...

August 14, 2018

Hi, sorry, it was August, and I wasn't writing. Or I was writing novels and not much else. Or I don't know what's been going on, but it hasn't resolved...