I’ve scheduled an event at Manny’s in the Mission District in the evening of Tuesday, October 14. The event is on EventBrite. HOW COME? Well, Norma and I had a publishing business in San Francisco. I wrote the books and we shipped them out of our garage. It worked really great. Then we moved to Italy. I put the remaining inventory in a storage locker in Daly City. That was nine years...
In Finishing School people come together to help each other stay on schedule with creative tasks and get projects finished. And we always begin every new session by asking each participant to say a little about themselves and about the project. So this is a little online form to gather some information that will help us work together more efficiently when we start. That’s all we need for...
Dear Cary, I miss writing and I miss playing the ukulele. When I was divorced and single, I made a life for myself by working, going to school, caring for my son and mom. I took weekly writing and music classes and I learned how to be completely independent. However, I missed being in a loving, close relationship to share life with. Dating became like a part time job, but eventually I found my...
#NetNeutrality is an issue that will affect every single person here. It is not a partisan issue. We will never go back to a free internet.
— Kumail Nanjiani (@kumailn) November 21, 2017
I just read this Alif Batuman piece in n+1 from a few years back in which I found a kinship reading of “craft.” So let me get something off my chest, counterproductive and humiliating as it may be: Craft is awful. I hate craft! Instead of standing out there in the hot sun polishing and polishing your doomed anachronistic prose beauty why not instead, today! unleash the wild craftless being...
Hi. So here it is Day 3 of my 49-day project to finish this novel using the Finishing School method and talk about it as I do so. Today, what I am editing is a long solo performance by the main character in which she gives a rambling monologue that makes her sound faintly deranged, and then dumps the contents of two bags on stage, one an expensive Gucci bag and the other a cheap Safeway bag, and...
Cary’s classic column from Wednesday, Oct 26, 2011 Don’t get in my face! I’ve made enough compromises Dear Cary, I can’t do everything and I am pissed off that I can’t. I am also preemptively pissed off at your peanut gallery since they trend anti-artist and tend to take a sadistic glee in other people’s hard knocks. I just wanted to give them the middle finger before I get on with my letter...
We write and we write and we write on the Net, dispensing thoughts and advice. For what? Cary’s classic column from WEDNESDAY, FEB 4, 2009 Dear Cary, My problem is that we have a one-day cycle in our writing, in our lives. You read our problems; then people read our problems in your column. Then people read our responses, but then the sun comes up again, and all our writing goes down on the...
I fear I lack common sense in life, and this affects my performance. Cary’s classic column from THURSDAY, JUL 24, 2008 Dear Cary, How does one build common sense? I’m a 31-year-old who has been plagued for most of my adult life with this problem. I’m a software engineer by trade, but I really love the theoretical aspects more than the practical aspects: algorithms and design as opposed to...
Dear … I thought of you just now. I am sitting in this renovated 13th-century Italian convent between Rome and Florence, a short walk up from the train station, and your face drifted into view. There were a lot of people here for ten days but they all left on the train today. I suppose suddenly being alone was one reason I thought of you. There had been little time to really think. Now I am...
I don’t know how to settle down. But I’m almost 30 and don’t want to waste my life! Cary’s classic column from FRIDAY, OCT 3, 2008 Dear Cary, I’ve written to so many advice columnists and no one ever answers. I am plagued by problems — for years. In general, what the hell is the deal with me? I was so blithe and great and happy in childhood — but ever since I was, oh, 15, things have gone...
[button link=”mailto:[email protected]” newwindow=”yes”] Write for Advice[/button] Cary’s classic column from MONDAY, NOV 23, 2009 I’m getting sick of being “the editor’s girlfriend” Dear Cary, I’m a college student and a reporter for my university’s paper. I’m a good writer — my work has shown up in publications beyond the university, and since arriving here I’ve...
[button link=”mailto:[email protected]” newwindow=”yes”] Write for Advice[/button] Cary’s classic column from Wednesday, Apr 16, 2008 Now my life is all screwed up and nothing works. Dear Cary, I turn 31 in a couple of weeks, and I feel like I’m unable to get my life together. I thought I would’ve had things sorted out by now, but I don’t. I don’t feel a whole lot more...
So here is another thing. Seth Myers is interviewing Joe Hill and I am watching from my perch high and far away on my mysterious island of emotional distance and contempt and it is as if the older I get the more godlike I am because there is nothing that surprises me and I cannot be seduced by the son of Stephen King and I am charmed by nothing; I have attained the weary omniscience of a god ...
Dear Cary – My creative doubts have been simmering like a mild poison in my heart and mind for years and I’m starting to hate myself. I need to do something about it. Nine years ago I was living on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. By age 31 I had accidentally become a loudmouth, performance-arty, punk-rocky type person. I say accidentally because as a dull-witted, privileged...
The June 2012 issue of The Sun features a generous excerpt of Citizens of the Dream, my book about creativity. It runs after a fascinating interview with painter Ran Ortner and a lovely poem by Alison Luterman, and right before a poem by Tony Hoagland! What humbling and awe-inspiring company! It says quite a lot that The Sun saw fit to showcase the book. After you read the excerpt, I suggest you...
Rooming with Sy Safransky. We got to talk under the stars Friday night about this and that. Talking with Sy it’s never about this and that but it’s always kinda about this and that which makes it akin to the lightly ordered musings you find in the magazine. Writers giving workshops included poet Chris Burks, whose performances and performance-art-type gifts — a stone, a bell...