Every time I try to write a normal story it ends up infinitely pretzeled.

Please, let me help you find your voice. In an hour I can get you to find the middle register. In six hours I can get you fluidly moving between the high, middle, and low registers. I am volunteering this. I won't even mess with the language.

What if they're set in the same universe 🤯Ok. Yeah. I need to figure a narrative thread to connect my stories if I'm going to publish. I don't need the reminder, mom.

Love the vocal work you've put in. The high register reads as a call to action, the shift to the low register affirms the solution. Keep it up! Keep to it. There's another level to get to where you find the middle register (associated with emotional vulnerability/honesty).

I have nothing to submit, but this is a great call.

But have you considered charging 99 cents? Seems to work at the grocery store.

Let your voice hit off the top of your mouth. It says you really care about what you're saying. Some might be concerned that it comes off as feminine, but I'd say it comes off as earnest and authentic. Vulnerable maybe. At a time when we have to be put ourselves on the line to protect one another.

Please. Please. Stop using the Obama voice. Whoever coached you to do it did you wrong. Obama sounded authentic in part because of his ability to code-switch.

Just want to say, when I was an English teacher, I taught your writing for years. Your essays in popular publications have hit that perfect spot of being both challenging and accessible. Thank you.

It's a father/son story. The father is a researcher and the son is a white collar dude in the status quo reflecting on these trips he took with his dad doing research. The story is kind of about our mingled personal and social historiography. In one version, the father can talk to the trees.

I feel you. I started writing a story about famous trees of Texas and things got dark real quick and now the project feels both imperative and impossible.

Why is his tie so askew? Is he drunk?

Big thanks to Ethan Canin's "The Year of Getting to Know Us" and Andrew Porter for first unpacking that text in my first creative writing class.

I ended up adopted a student writing goal rubric. We'd look at a good piece of lit, and students would identify and we'd unpack their favorite parts. And then kids chose a goal based on a writing feature they wanted to emulate. Transitions between scenes were always a big hit.

As a high school English teacher I saw this a lot and got stuck in the crossfire with the expectations of standardized tests. It took years proving again and again to admin (as admin cycled in and out) that good writing does better than formulaic writing even on a standardized test.

I have similar love for a short book. Have you had a chance to read Olga Ravn's The Employees?

Well, fuck. That was real.

Fantastic! Such a fun and thoughtful piece.

As an American who supported Kamala, I feel this.

Great scene. What was it Calvino said about classics? They're classics immediately and more so every day.

If you have a couple minutes, I'd love for you to read my flash piece in Lost Balloon. It starts at the end of the hero's movie and then tries to guess at what came next.

Absolutely not. But I did just come back from a trip to London, so I might be back at it.

Heads up, he used AI to help write his book according to a recent podcast.

Just so you know, Zach admitted to using AI to help write his book.

This is great. It's two people who don't know what they're talking about just talking about it. The lack of professionalism and academic integrity is turned up to 11.

Dude is using AI art and not supporting his claims with evidence. This is slop.

I think this is an unfair characterization. I recognize the associative leap you made, but the research here is seeking to help in the more timely and accurate diagnosis of SZ vs BP. The authors caution against misuse of this research in diagnosis and the public which could lead to discrimination.

The Great American Novel, by Philip Roth - not really a great novel, but a fun satirical one about a fictional baseball team

North Dallas Forty, by Peter Gent - Gent played briefly for the Cowboys and this takes you behind the curtains of being a Cowboy during the 60s in Dallas.

Mr. Hare’s Open Fields by Brandon Forinash Mrs. Hare kisses her baby Hares every morning and lays out their Hare outfits and makes them porridge and cleans their whiskers and Mrs. Hare tells them how important it is for them to try their best;…

today's Brandon Forinash folds in on itself in such great, fun ways

"And by now you probably know how this story will go.
...
What work would you have me do, to describe their lives and their burrow and their small hare dramas, that you cannot do yourself?"

https://www.havehashad.com/41aa4

Really happy for this story to be in
@librelit.bsky.social‬ for their cinema issue. It's part Truman Show, part Jury Duty, part every xennial sitcom. Enjoy the story, and the entire thoughtful issue librelit.com/issue-three/...