Subtle Maneuvers | Mason Currey | Substack

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Jul 25, 2024 •

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Jun 16, 2024 •

Subtle Maneuvers

Subtle Maneuvers

A twice-monthly newsletter on the creative process, with lessons and insights from novelists, painters, poets, filmmakers, and musicians delivered to your inbox every other Tuesday. From the author of Daily Rituals: How Artists Work.

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Recent posts

Give something up

Worm School Extension, week 3

Jun 24 •

Courtney Love’s excellent advice for young artists

"It's really the truth."

Jun 24 •

Step into your heroic period

Worm School Extension, week 2

Jun 17 •

Write a letter to your project

Worm School Extension, week 1

Jun 10 •

Filmmakers

The Fassbinder Method

“So: completion come what may.”

Dec 16, 2024 •

David Milch’s disembodied writing process

“I lie there on the floor and I talk and the words come up on the screen.”

Feb 5, 2024 •

Get rid of what your project needs

A peek into Céline Sciamma’s desire-driven process

Jan 22, 2024 •

Mike Leigh’s gloriously inefficient filmmaking process

“I can’t tell you about the character because there is no character.”

Nov 13, 2023 •

Musicians & composers

Get a new issue every other Tuesday

Novelists

Françoise Sagan on the power of laziness

A timely reminder from the author of Bonjour Tristesse

May 27 •

Gary Indiana’s controlled uncontrol

The late writer on stumbling through projects, putting things in proximity to one another, and how not to write about Warhol

Nov 4, 2024 •

Kathy Acker was against creativity

“I set up this task, this nutty task basically, and I’d do it!”

Mar 18, 2024 •

Jane Bowles was vulnerable and strong

“I’ve got to do it my way and my way is more difficult than yours.”

Feb 19, 2024 •

Painters & sculptors

Faith Ringgold’s exuberant pragmatism

Portable paintings—and a very expensive mistake for artists

Apr 29, 2024 •

Melly Shum Forever

“Every city needs a monument to the problem of hating one’s job.”

Mar 4, 2024 •

Living with art stops one wilting!

Letters from the late Austrian artist Maria Lassnig

Aug 21, 2023 •

Van Gogh’s advice to a young artist

“In order to write a book, do a deed, paint a picture with some life in it, one has to be alive oneself.”

Aug 7, 2023 •

New issues are free for all. Paid subscribers get Zoom coworking sessions, the group chat, the book club, subscriber-only bonus posts, the full archive of 150+ back issues, and my sincere gratitude for your support—thank you!

Poets

My Baudelaire Summer

“How difficult it is to do as one ought every day.”

Sep 9, 2024 •

Petrarch got up every morning at midnight

“I regard sleep as a kind of death, my bed as a tomb.”

Apr 15, 2024 •

Sharon Olds’s huge archive of thinking and feeling

“Clouds of meaning were rolling this way and that.”

Nov 27, 2023 •

Louise Glück on writer’s block

“I think everything good in my own work I owe to endurance.”

Oct 16, 2023 •

Making art is like setting a trap

Philip Larkin on constructing “the device”

Sep 18, 2023 •

Henri Cole on the enemies within

And why they’re a gift

May 1, 2023 •

Alice Notley on getting things to come easily

Here’s the secret, if you can bear it

Mar 20, 2023 •

Bernadette Mayer will give you ideas

On the late American poet’s irrepressible confident weirdness

Mar 6, 2023 •

“Productivity”

John Cage on the true meaning of discipline

I've been thinking about it all wrong.

Jun 10 •

Totally insane and truly helpful

The best creativity advice I've read in ages—plus, enroll now in Worm School Extension 🪱🎓

May 13 •

The Fassbinder Method

“So: completion come what may.”

Dec 16, 2024 •

The Complete Worm School

My summer course on wriggling through a creative life has now concluded—read the entire series here.

Jul 23, 2024 •

Writing is bouldering, bouldering is writing

On “eking out a delicate gift laboriously”

Apr 1, 2024 •

The dumbest and best productivity trick

And why I’m rebelling against it anyway

Dec 11, 2023 •

Samuel Johnson and the art of procrastination

Or how to write 1,800 words an hour

May 30, 2023 •

Three tales of creative slowness

“A week is nothing, one thinks one can do so much in a week”

Apr 3, 2023 •

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