Friday 11/22/24 We'll return to the fiction of The Baffler for this prose off, as selected by editor J.W. McCormack. Here we have...

Thursday 11/21/24 Here is where some writing matters stand. Yesterday I finished the new eleven stories that I did more or less...

Thursday 11/21/24 I have felt like I am under siege lately. Everything is going as bad as possible. The few things that had not broken...

Wednesday 11/20/24 These are parts from some of the new eleven stories, which were done as a simultaneous undertaking while on the road...

Wednesday 11/20/24 Everything that hadn't broken down--which was already most things--is breaking down now. I still haven't heard from...

Tuesday 11/19/24 I was having a conversation with someone about Donald Trump, which was itself a conversation about people. I said that...

Monday 11/18/24 I wrote four stories this morning. I'm afraid they are rather dark. But there is life in them. The burning light of life....

Sunday 11/17/24 Back at it again with fiction from The Baffler as selected by editor J.W. McCormack . Reading these entries, it can...

Saturday 11/16/24 This is going to be a pasting. They're all pastings. I just wanted to say that here. I don't need to set this one up...

Friday 11/15/24 We'll start tomorrow morning with a prose off. To paraphrase a country and western song, who will the next exposed fool...

Friday 11/15/24 These are dark days getting darker, which seems impossible, but it's true. Harder to go on. Harder to see a reason to. I...

Thursday 11/14/24 I use a limited amount of images in this journal, because it's word-based. Like a book. It is a book. That's how I look...

Thursday 11/14/24 People are sure going to tell you about that thing they say they don't care about. I repeatedly see these claims...

Wednesday 11/13/24 We've talked about Conjunctions editor, pretentious-fop writer, veritable Sir Soporific, and Guggenheim winner--of...

Wednesday 11/13/24 People liberally apply the word "trauma" with a casualness that suggests they've never known real trauma at all. If...

Tuesday 11/12/24 I've written five new short stories since yesterday. These are their first sentences: A song was once played on...

Monday 11/11/24 In the past, we've talked about Wendy "Don't Call Me a Termagant Because I'm Actually a Mega-Termagant" Lesser, editor in...

Monday 11/11/24 Remember my Guggenheim application ? So over the weekend I get an email requesting materials. It's not like how this...

Sunday 11/10/24 A white knight--as per what that means in modern society--is really a sexual opportunist. Ours is a world filled with...

Saturday 11/9/24 We'll go back to The New Yorker for another one of these prose offs. This is from a story called "The Honest Island" ...

Friday 11/8/24 I sent my sister a large envelope for her birthday containing a card, a story, and a letter. As I think the letter...

Friday 11/8/24 Something cool happened Monday after I was done running stairs. It made me feel good and was a useful reminder to myself...

Friday 11/8/24 On Monday I ran 3000 stairs at City Hall and then 5000 on Tuesday and walked five miles. Wednesday was very lackluster--I...

Thursday 11/7/24 We've spoken before about Carolyn Kuebler , editor of the New England Review and writer herself , who once wrote to me...