The Reading, The optional notebook, 7/1/2026

• The practice is simple: write in your optional journal only when you feel the urge to say something. I number every entry, but you can easily separate them with dividers if you prefer... I usually write a couple hundred entries before I go back and reread, often finding seeds for new work that way. The key is not to read them or expect them to be any good later on. When they are, it is a surprise, and newly delightful as well as, yes, productive.
• It takes time and distance for those brief notes to sound good to my critical ear, especially when I first put the words down. Writing first, then figuring it out later, but truly waiting several months or even years, has only made it easier for me to put off the pressure that everything I write must immediately be publishable.

The Reading, Writing strategies for perfectionism, 7/1/2026

• In other words, write against the form of the end-product you hope to have. If you have almost illegible handwriting to yourself, like me, handwrite. Call your first drafts “pre-writes” and write them in a kind of non-prose. Some options: I have a friend who, before starting a book, creates an enormous file of run-on thoughts that may possibly have to do with that topic. It is enormous because she adds to it over a period of time. Every book of poetry I’ve written has been written one poem at a time, and with the belief that I’d never write a poem again, and that it wouldn’t matter if I did.

Andy J. Pizza, The Creative Independent, 6/29/2026

• We’ve entered a space where that’s what artists have to do. Instead of being at the center of culture, they have to start attacking culture. They have to start creating opposing spaces.
• The real challenge in career creatives is being able to unpick highly designed algorithms from their brain. Huge billions and billions of dollar companies are telling you how to make your art and they’re telling you for free. That’s weird. Why is Instagram calling artists? They’re actually having phone calls with artists. Why are they creating resources, free resources on how to make content for the platform? Because they are a TV channel and you’re making all the content for free. They’re making all the money, you’re making all the content.

Mateo Askaripour, The Creative Independent, 6/23/2026

• I think that you can work to put yourself in an inspired state if you understand what those levers are that you can pull. And if you understand that pulling the same levers all the time won’t work and you have to have multiple levers of inspiration to pull in order to get you into that place to create and flow. I have so many levers throughout the day, whether it is going out for a long walk, going to the park, going to the gym, watching a documentary, watching specifically a sports documentary, listening to an album, listening to a new album, listening to a certain song, going to the movies, just speaking with my parents, looking at a certain photo. These levers are endless for me.
• I read more, I wrote more, but beyond reading more, I started to consume a lot more art, whether film, TV, plays when I could, concerts, a bit more critically. Afterwards, asking, what did I like about that? What didn’t I like? Why did I like that? Why didn’t I like that? It was also at that time that I made the decision to write something that was so close to me that I didn’t really see it with the first two books I was trying to write.

Jaya Saxena, The Creative Independent, 6/17/2026

• One of the things I always do when I find myself stuck, realizing my writing seems a bit flat, or that I’m just explaining something and not really breathing into it or letting it have life is, I pull away from the computer, and I tend to just pace around my room and try to literally talk it out as if I’m speaking to a friend. I’m not always trying to be conversational, but it helps me shake out in my head, what is the actual point I’m trying to make? And then, I can add the language on top of that.
• Maintaining your voice is an act of trying to build and keep confidence whenever you can — which is a struggle, which is difficult — and trying to remind myself, I have built a career, or I have a specific voice, and it is worth it to try to do what I can do the best that I can instead of trying to mimic anyone else.

Mason Currey, The best book on writing I've ever read, 6/17/2026

• Vivian Gornick, The Situation and the Story
• In the book, Gornick provides an insightful and convincing answer to a question that has always nagged at me, namely: Why do certain pieces of writing “work” while others emphatically do not, despite the author’s best intentions and maximum effort?
• Gornick begins with a simple observation about selves: that all of us contain a variety of them. One person might be, for instance, “a daughter, a lover, a bird-watcher, a New Yorker,” among many other things. And a piece of writing succeeds when the writer invokes the best self to tell the particular story at hand.
• Gornick argues that every work of literature has a situation—“the context or circumstances, sometimes the plot”—and a story—“the emotional experience that preoccupies the writer: the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say.” The persona is like the bridge between these two: the vehicle for transforming a situation into a story.

Dig Site, Where'd all the time go?, 6/12/2026

• being an artist online is accompanied by this sort of present-tense anxiety... like if I’m not posting, I’m disappearing. The timeline moves so fast, and sometimes I fear that if I’m not contributing enough, then I’ll fall behind.
• I propose slowness as an act of resistance in reclaiming platform time. It’s alright to let things simmer, and maybe not be in the hyper-present online—in fact, I find it really helpful to refill my creative reserve. Now, I love social media, I love memes, and heck I love my Spotify daylist. And, I think it’s important to be intentional about where we give our undivided attention. Maybe reckoning with platform time is an opportunity to find joy in all the fleeting online moments, and an invitation to slow down and create where it feels right.

Roopa Vasudevan, The Creative Independent, 5/30/2026

• “Well, we’re in a really bad situation. But look at this artist, they can show us the new way forward.” That started to really frustrate me. That view treats artists almost as if they are exempt from all of the problems that plague everyone else in their relationships with technology, when in reality they’re just as susceptible to all of this. We really have to start reckoning with that idea rather than thinking of ourselves as somehow exempt.
• The whole idea of strategic transparency came from observing that tech companies use artists as a kind of clout. I really go into depth in my book analyzing the way that Google utilized the Arcade Fire project, the interactive music video they did for “We Used to Wait” in 2010. It was a really innovative, amazing project, but it was also a launch of Google Chrome, meant to show all the things Chrome was capable of that other browsers weren’t. The tech industry frequently utilizes artists as a way to legitimize or popularize their projects. I make parallels to gentrification—the first thing that real estate developers usually cite is, “Oh, look how many artists live here.”

Queer Writers of Queens, 5/27/2026

• "draw the house" - when you are describing something, think of if someone could draw it
• "over-editing" - can avoid this by viewing your work in different formats (using a different word processor, putting it in a spreadsheet)
  • handwriting is also important

Avigayl Sharp, The Creative Independent, 5/19/2026

• I felt like everything I wrote was wonderful, but [my teacher] was like, “there’s a lot here that needs work.” There’s a moment when you decide to do something for the good of itself. You’re like, “okay, maybe I really want to see what I can do. Maybe I’m really willing to work. Maybe it’s not going to come easily to me and that’s okay.” That was the beginning of my love of working, instead of just loving the praise.

Caro Claire Burke, 4/10/2026

• It's not nothing to make a decision that reinforces your own sense of legitimacy.

Min Jin Lee, Queens College reading/lecture, 3/25/2026

• I believe in throwing away drafts
• I like the idea that we are infinite, so you don't have to worry about losing something forever if you throw it away.

can't remember where I heard this, 3/5/2026

• respect for your own memory and specificity as a way to connect with other people

can't remember where I heard this, 2/10/2026

• Narrative writing where you create an ending is helpful for healing (even if you don't actually have closure with the person)

Alice Sparkly Kat IG post, 9/18/2024

• found this in my scrapbook
• "A writer's work is to give dignity back to ordinary people. Pop culture teaches us aspiration, telling us that the rich and famous lead such exciting lives. What is so exciting about industry?
• "The most interesting people are the people who notice what everyone else overlooks. To do that, you have to see people, really see them, and you have to let them see you. You have to find your precision by living, not by thinking. You have to become the type of person who makes social blunders, the type of person who embarrasses themselves everyday...
• "Pop culture will try its best to humiliate the ordinary but only because industry has no patience to look for what is real. Industry stands no chance against the test of time."