One summer during high school I took a job that required me to trap rats. The bank my mom worked for hired my sister, my best friend Dan, and me to clean up one of their foreclosure properties before they put it up for sale. The house was...
Below is the most authentic description I’ve ever read of the artist’s experience of creating. As I work on draft two of my novel, I’m reminded how incomplete even the best work can be, how tantalizing even the smallest morsel of...
No spoilers! The Fault In Our Stars is about love and death and sex and literature and cancer and Amsterdam and irony and infinity, and you should read it. I’m not going to tell you about the improbable radness and fragile beauty of the...
I hate January. I much prefer October. Yup, October is the sweet spot; I’ve spent nine months building up momentum! Whatever’s going to happen during this year is already set in motion. By the time I’m done lamenting letting...
After I sit down to write, but before my fingers type the first word, I say an incantation to focus my mind and spirit on the creative act before me. Incantation for Writing Today, I write to fill the blank pages I write to meet the unfamiliar...
In the fall of 2009, my band 7k toured the United States. We left mid-September and didn’t return until Thanksgiving. During those eight weeks, my experience of myself and my life changed. I watched the sun rise over a corn field in...