Many see writing as a process separate from thinking. As if, for a writer to write, some thinking had to have already happened. And then it became the writer’s job to report on the results of that process, the way a scientist documents his experiments. This is, as the...
I first read Meditations by Marcus Aurelius some three years ago, shortly after my wife had been diagnosed with stage IV cancer. The famous Roman emperor has been one of the few true philosopher-kings, an outspoken Stoic, and had to deal with the loss of his beloved...
How is it that the only time I become self-conscious about wearing a hat is when my father’s around? It makes no sense. I’ve been wearing suits, whenever I leave the house, for years, and hats—German Mayser fedoras—since last autumn. It’s the kind of outfit that makes...
I want to write. Write well and enjoy doing it. But writing well and enjoyment don’t exactly go hand in hand. Not for me, at least. The more I learn about writing, the more difficult it becomes. Each book on the craft that I read feels like opening a can of worms....
Each day, for the last month, I only worked until I got restless or distracted. So a couple of hours at most. And that’s it. No procrastination, no vegging out waiting for inspiration to return, nothing. Only a couple of hours of highly focused work each day,...
