writing 11
Writing for the Common Good
I can relate the vice of envy most closely with my own writing, because that’s my profession, and I’ve longed to be a professional novelist since I was in elementary…
In Praise of the Inefficient
This year I’m renewing my commitment to the sentence.
The AI Invasion: For Humans, It’s Becoming Harder to Write
No question about it: For writers like me, who would like nothing more than to do our own writing and thinking with dignity and intellectual honesty, it’s becoming harder to…
Marking the Year on Two Calendars: An Interview with Matthew Miller
Knowledge is a path to love, and so I’m bound to say that the book did change my affection for the place.
Do-able Simplicities: On Letter Writing and Fountain Pens
Holding the letters was a delicate experience, noting the brittle nature of the paper, being careful not to let them tear at the aged folds, and yet the blue ink,…
Large Language Models and the Final Paragraph
Like the sonnet, the five-paragraph essay traps investment in truth felt in the heart and forged in the mind by means of its life-respecting limitations.
Working for the Life Beyond Words
In his brief and not altogether satisfying rejoinder to the question, “why write?” Berry says, “To serve that triumph I have done all the rest,” and he ends the poem…
A Conversation with Katy Carl on Place, Fiction, and Contemplation
Conjuring makes me think of force and manipulation, which as writers we have to forswear. Readers will either notice they're being manipulated and throw our books aside—or maybe worse, they…
Why I Wish I Didn’t Have a Smartphone and Computer (But Probably Won’t Give Them Up)
We can agree that many technological “advances” have objectively done more harm than good, in terms of the human condition as well as the Earth, and that we face a…
Of Dullards, Whales, Frustrations, and Shirts Like Fetters
What of those who have never once thought it their duty to amuse their readers?
On the Logic and Nature of Blogging
Phoenix, Arizona. Because of my involvement with this darn site I have been attending to the blogosphere much more than heretofore, and lately have been trying to get a handle…