Impractical Alphabet

Release judgement. J is not for judgement, which hinders creativity, a stick in the spokes of your wheel. And release meaning. J is not for jurisprudence or just so. Sure you want to write something brilliant that moves hearts and changes the world. But. This is also an art made of ink, sound, rhythm, imagery […]

There is only one reason to write. It’s not money or fame. I won’t say what it is: it’s your reason, singular and strong. Your job is to invigorate your writing practice with that underlying reason. And with support and reward. What nourishes the urge to write? I have a student whose weekly writing practice–which we touch

One day many years ago now, Angie said to me, “It doesn’t seem like you enjoy writing any more.” Perhaps she only wanted to stop my complaining and despair. Perhaps it was an observation she couldn’t hold back. She’s without guile; it was true, though it rose up in me to protest. Instead, silent, I

Nothing in this project is about Know with its secret K or Proselytize with its gristle and fake grin. This is guess work and wrestling, fierce wonder where the answers matter and you haven’t got them. That’s why it’s hard. Not the dishes and the salaried job and the demands of loved ones. Those squeeze time, sure, but this

Fail big. Fail soon. Fail right away and then often. This one is about risk, taking it, seizing it, insisting upon it–risking it. Failure is a creative necessity. We are all born strangers to this world we cannot understand. Crab our way into some sense of it, eyes round with wonder, then slick with scorn, then heavy

Give yourself whatever stretch of time is most elastic, the hours that open, the minutes that, spongey, give way to something below them, beyond them. That time where, pressed, the bookshelf swings open to become a door. It’s a different time for everyone. Don’t follow your ideal fantasy–what you wish you were–to some other rhythm

Dancing is hard, too, like writing. I mean the kind of dance you do at a club, a party, lights low or roving or flashing or spotted, music a pulse behind and current of words, a bottle rolling, a triangle of pool balls suddenly split. And you there, moving your body, an improvisation of flailing

The complete sincerity of the desperate cry. Urgency can’t ask please, can’t say excuse me, or might I, can’t make every sentence rise up at the end, which is a social bowing down. It’s time to be loud. Believe me. There are things besides beauty you can create. A distraction while the others make their

Our job is to ask, What if? And then to invent answers, to face the blank page and wonder. It’s not a job we can give up at this historical moment. Please don’t stop writing because you feel your voice is not being heard. Don’t join the effort to un-diversify American stories, American lives, American

Not the fraudulent, step-on-people, build enormous walls arrogance. The arrogance of the poet or of the child, who says, “Look,” and it’s something you’ve never seen or something you’ve seen a hundred times, but, “Look,” and the tone, the inquisitive pride of the discoverer makes it new and glorious. That’s what you do, what we