This Is Just To Say
I have turned off
the AI features
that were in
the update
and which
you were probably
hoping
to monetize
Fuck you
they were stupid
so unnecessary
and so annoying
I started keeping a blurbed books shelf! Feels dope, ngl
Couldn't be more excited to get to share that @amystuber.com's Short Story, Long story, "Swans," was selected for The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2026!
This was not only one of my fave stories I published last year, but one of my fave stories of the year, period. Congrats, Amy!!
one of my fave short shorts (and one of my first long, run-on, single sentence pieces)
"...and a guy brought me my edibles via curbside service because people were no longer allowed in most non-essential stores and some nights I’d eat one and relax into my big comfy couch and watch a movie..."
I don't even want to be able to edit social media posts!
we're all just on here on social media, doing what we do, a buncha ants marching ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
yes, YESSS!
quote from Jim Ruland's substack: "Did I just say that Aaron Burch just wrote his Aaron Burchiest book? I think I just did. As it turns out, when Aaron Burch is at his Aaron Burchiest he is a lot like Richard Brautigan. There were places where I thought, Can you do this? Is this allowed? which was immediately followed by, I guess it is, because Aaron Burch just did it."
writing prompt: write your “[your name]iest book”
One of my classrooms last week was 85° every day!!
“Song” memes literally always work. The best.
Couldn't be more excited to get to share that @amystuber.com's Short Story, Long story, "Swans," was selected for The Best American Mystery and Suspense 2026!
This was not only one of my fave stories I published last year, but one of my fave stories of the year, period. Congrats, Amy!!
photo of opening page to Patrick Radden Keefe's "Slammers" piece in The New Yorker "A criminal conspiracy involving high-speed crashes, crooked lawyers, and poor people desperate for cash."
This one was wild. Worth the long read!
"On one level, the slammer conspiracy was an amusing example of New Orleans chicanery at its most baroque, a tale of literal highway robbery so antic and absurd that it seemed like the plot of an Elmore Leonard novel."
portrait-oriented pic of big backyard with green grass and fresh mown lawn lines
A MOWN LAWN She hated a mown lawn. Maybe that was because mow was the reverse of wom, the beginning of the name of what she was— a woman. A mown lawn had a sad sound to it, like a long moan. From her, a mown lawn made a long moan. Lawn had some of the letters of man, though the reverse of man would be Nam, a bad war. A raw war. Lawn also contained the letters of law. In fact, lawn was a contraction of lawman. Certainly a lawman could and did mow a lawn. Law and order could be seen as starting from lawn order, valued by so many Americans. More lawn could be made using a lawn mower. A lawn mower did make more lawn. More lawn was a contraction of more lawmen. Did more lawn in America make more lawmen in America? Did more lawn make more Nam? More mown lawn made more long moan, from her. Or a lawn mourn. So often, she said, Americans wanted more mown lawn. All of America might be one long mown lawn. A lawn not mown grows long, she said: better a long lawn. Better a long lawn and a mole. Let the lawman have the mown lawn, she said. Or the moron, the lawn moron.
first mow of the year -> first Lydia Davis reread of 2026
I don’t read the word like that, but I see how you do. Mostly a reminder to me tho that writers almost never (get to) title their pieces, and instead an editor is usually gonna go with whatever might get it the most attention.
Spread of books, Tacoma, Aliens Attack, How to Write a Novel, Until it Feels Right, Out There In the Dark, If I Can Be Honest, and Frontier
Another year, another great day of writing craft lessons and book hauls from @barrelhouse.bsky.social's DC conference.
Thanks, toilet at the Sunn O))) show last night! 🥰
it doesn't UPSET me, but certainly confounds!
screenshot of essay; too long to fully alt text, full text at link No Longer There My students are working in groups and I’m standing in the front corner of the room, overseeing and keeping them on track, trying to intuit if and when they have questions but don’t want to speak up or even raise their hands, but then I look out the window — this room we’re in is located on the side of our centrally-located-on-campus building such that our view out these windows is what the student body here, and also everyone in town, calls The Diag, the central heart of campus that, where I went to undergrad, was referred to as The Quad, and where I got my MFA was Main Quad, these university landscapes of trees and grass sectioned off into smaller swatches of trees and grass by brick walkways connecting a handful of university buildings like arteries pumping students through the body of campus, lub-DUB, lub-DUB, keeping it alive — and I see two men working together, taking down one of The Diag trees; one man watches, showing the other man where to cut, how deep, at what angle, directing the other man, the one with the chainsaw, the man who takes his chainsaw and cuts where, as deep, and at the angle directed, pushing the chainsaw into the tree and pulling it out again, small cuts, and I stall, I tell my students to keep working because I’m hypnotized, I suddenly have this deep desire to watch these two men work, and I think about how I sometimes devote my classes to work days, gifting my students the time to get some work done with as little distraction as possible, and how much I enjoy the sight of a classroom full of students writing, being productive, getting work done, and often when I teach, I talk about the process of writing, how you have to take it a day at a time, one page at a time, paragraph by paragraph, word by word, not unlike, I realize in this moment, this man adding small cuts to this tree, he can’t just cut through it all in one go, it’s too big, he has to break t…
before that, here was my first long, single-sentence essay about watching guys work...
(the posting of which bsky tags as "adult content," and thus hides, because the preview image is an Yves Klein nude)
jellyfishreview.wordpress.com/2019/08/05/n...
love when I leave my phone in the other room and sequester myself to focus and grade... and then canvas requires me to two-step verify 🙄
A writer-friend asked, "Other journals that are "peers" to 𝘚𝘩𝘰𝘳𝘵 𝘚𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺, 𝘓𝘰𝘯𝘨?" and I have a couple faves but also wonder what come to mind for others? Most of my fave online journals focus on shorter stuff, and most journals pubbing longer stories seem to usually have different tastes that my own...
Was HOPING to finish this giant batch of grading today, and didn't, of course, but DO get to see Sunn O))) (w/ Gentry Densley opening!) tonight, so... you know. Some losses, some wins.
I think next semester (or next time I teach first year writing, anyway) I want to lean in to open discussions about AI more, and might assign this, and a recent NYTimes Shirky piece, and a few others, and see how the students respond to them differently.
Ha! That's fair. It just felt a little basic to me and I wanted something more from it. (But maybe that's more on me than it!)
I'm keeping in mind! Still haven't written anything in months and months, but last day of classes is Monday and then really hoping to figure out how to put words on the page again!
Another potential long, single-sentence essay in the works…
that was the line I grabbed! lol
