Special Features

Most issues of this newsletter follow more or less the same format: I look at one individual’s creative process, seeking clues into how they got their work done (or didn’t get it done) and insights that we can all apply in our own practices. But I’ve also experimented with a few multi-part series and other special features that paid subscribers can read below.

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Worm School

My summer 2024 course on wriggling through a creative life. Read the whole thing here or via the links below:

• Introducing WORM SCHOOL

• Week one: THINK SMALLER

• Week two: FORGIVE YOURSELF

• Week three: FIND SOME ACCOUNTABILITY

• Also week three: WORM ZOOM debuts

• Week four: FOLLOW YOUR ENERGY

• Week five: LEAN INTO RITUAL

• Week six: SEEK FUNNY LEAPS

• Week seven: KNOW YOUR CREATIVE CYCLE

• Week eight: FINISH WHAT YOU START

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Worm School Extension

A summer 2025 mini-series on the five things that helped me finally, actually, for-real get my long-overdue book project done, going out to paid subscribers June 10th–July 8th (parts one and two below).

Write a letter to your project

Step into your heroic period

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#Blocktober

In October 2022 and 2023, I devoted the newsletter to a multipart exploration of creative blocks. What are they, why do they happen, and for god’s sake how do we break out of them? Read all six posts here or via the links below:

2022

• #Blocktober begins here

• The perfect conditions for a creative block

• How to solve a creative block

2023

• Power doesn’t answer to the will

• Louise Glück on writer’s block

• Is the solution to a creative block ... sympathy?

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Subtle Advice

The advice column, which I ran from 2020–2022—and which I may pick up again if I receive a juicy enough reader dilemma! Feel free to email me yours here.

Advice on:

• Starting projects (and sticking with them)

• Sharing your work

• Writing and love

• Writing, fear, and shame

• Creative growth

• Fear of commitment, and six other creative dilemmas

• Building creative stamina

• Marketing and fame, with guest columnist Ron Hogan

• Insomnia

• Art paralysis, with guest columnist Beth Pickens

• “Deep impostor syndrome and the procrastination it fuels”

• Post-project depression

• Jumping off the deep end as a new freelancer

• Finding “energy, energy, energy” in your creative life

• Worrying that your ambition exceeds your talent

• Creating a routine when no two days are alike

• Gaining control of your time as a people-pleaser

• Feeling “intense envy” of your more successful peers

• Choosing between thrill or discipline as a writer

• Figuring out what your “thing” is

• Establishing your creative workflow as a student

• Feeling like your creative work is a waste of time

• Writing a book about . . . well, something

• Doing the hardest thing first so you can’t avoid it later

• Trying to create when life is literally falling apart

• Having trouble focusing on a new project

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