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I’ve previously written in this newsletter that, since the advent of AI, I've strangely found more peace with the process of writing. Something I never really enjoyed in the past, despite it being my entire livelihood.
The friction, the frustration, the self-doubt, the introspection, the breakthroughs, they were always meant to be there. Hills to climb, rather than obstacles to remove.
Earlier in the week, I came across this article by Debbie Millman. It both deftly, and gracefully, encapsulated how I’ve been feeling about the process of writing in the post-AI era. (If you don’t have a subscription to the NY Times, then I wouldn’t suggest using a website like https://archive.is to get around the paywall.)
And then, just this morning, I opened my copy of ‘Writing down the bones’ by Natalie Goldberg, to the chapter titled, ‘Writing is not a McDonald’s hamburger’. A book first published in 1986. Little nudges from the universe, perhaps. Cosmic affirmations.
I know a lot of people that rely on writing as a profession are anxious right now. Sensing a foreboding feeling in the air, a thick, dark fog that seems as if it might never lift while prophesiers of doom circle the streets eager to pick at the bones. But underneath the masks of prognostication are something of a sad personal agenda. A feeling of power derived from taking away the one thing they’ll never have. A personality. A sense of humour. A way to relate to the world and the people in it. Humanity.
So, just remember, these are the kind of people we’re dealing with.
So, this ‘writing tip’ is going to be a pretty simple one.
Just write.
Dive in head first. Cast aside judgement. Throw caution to the wind.
Know that, just like burning calfs at the 4km mark and screaming hamstrings upon releasing a deadlift and the void-like plateau of pain as you push for an extra rep or two, that you are getting stronger.
Breathe it in.
Know that, just like the nickel-plated sting ringing in your fingers beckons for callouses to come and the weird small aching patches in your feet are kick-flip muscle memory being downloaded and the lingering tension in your palm is the scar of a new stitch pattern you no longer need a YouTube video to follow, that you are a different person retiring to bed this evening than the one who awoke this morning.
Drink it up.
There is no finish line. No cheat code. No secret recipe. There is only the futile pursuit of a perfection that doesn’t exist. There is only 85-year old Jiro the sushi master, walking past his three Michelin stars to attempt to craft the perfect sushi roll only to fail once again in his own eyes. There is only the centuries of luthiers attempting to scientifically recreate a Stradivarius violin that will never be because it is not 17th century Italy and they are not using his hands or his head or his heart. There is only the never ending chase of a destination or an end or a purpose that was elusively here all along. There is only the doing for we are never done.
Write something stupid. Write something clever. Write something dark. Write something for no reason. For no applause, no recognition, no award, no client, no likes, no metric, no form of measurement other than leaving the world and yourself a little different than you found them when you picked up the pen and pad.
Write something you know will make people laugh. Write something you know will make you cry. Write something you want the whole world to know. Write something that no one else should ever read. Write something about the shape of the patch of sunlight your dog has fallen asleep in. Write something about the tree out the front of your house and all the lives it has lived. Just write whatever comes out. There is no good writing, no bad writing, in these moments. Because even if you dislike the output personally, hey, at least it stopped you from injecting your phone into your arm for twenty minutes.
Here’s some random shit I wrote the other day. No one’s read any of it until now. I don’t know if it’s any good. I don’t know if they’re ‘poems’ or ‘pieces’. If you like them, use them as inspiration to write something yourself. If you think they’re shit, use them as permission to write something better.
Have fun. And don’t forget to laugh at your own jokes once in a while. You’re funny.
BAG SOUP
Whenever I leave a place I’ve visited, I mourn the places and people I hardly knew.
Even though they will have never thought of me again.
The Turkish man on the corner with whom I invented a language built solely of pointing and nodding as he cooked me strange and mysterious breakfasts on a cast iron plate the size of an aircraft carrier.
The table I sat by the soup cart down the alley where the locals would line with plastic shopping bags waiting to be filled with soup.
The one tired rickety old train line that pumped me around the veins of the city without once complaining.
Our togetherness, while brief, still felt like home.
A home built in a time and space that I’ll never see or feel again.
WRITER’S BLOCK
Writer’s block.
Creative drought.
Lack of inspiration.
These are all lies we tell ourselves about why we can’t think of anything to write.
But deep down we know it has nothing to do with ‘writer’s block’.
If we stare long enough into the mirror of our souls, the answer will reveal itself.
Jurassic Park.
A dude brings fucking dinosaurs back and puts them on an island and turns it into a zoo and then they fucking break loose.
There is no cooler idea than that.
That is sick as hell.
There is nothing more to write about.
There is no second Everest.
Fuck off, Michael Crichton.
FRECKLE
Every freckle on my daughter’s face,
A tiny piece stolen by the sun.
The entropy of the universe,
A speck of beauty in the decay,
Of our infinite impermanence.
180 DEGREES
I fear the casual nature with which the common man of today wields power once reserved for Kings and Queens and Popes and Pharaohs.
The air fryer is an affront to god.
No one was ever meant to be eleven minutes from fries at any given moment.
A power so close and so corruptable as to be incomprehensible, unimaginable even.
This was never part of the grand design.
We have flown too close to the sun.
And the wings of Icarus lay crisped.
(For four minutes at 180°.)
JEFF BEZOS
No matter how many billions of dollars hoarded,
super yachts anchored in Monaco,
and celebrity flights to space,
Jeff Bezos will never be you sat in a nice chair with a record playing while you write beautiful words or paint beautiful pictures or pat beautiful purrs from your cat while it curls in your lap on a Sunday afternoon.
Sucks to be him.
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