joshua chamberlain

Category: life

  • keeping the main thing the main thing

    My roommate is an actor. He and I have had many a conversation about artistic work, the creative process, and maintaining personal integrity. One of his main tenants is “keep the main thing the main thing.” It’s easy to get distracted. For me as a writer, it’s easy to get…

  • “introduce a little anarchy”

    Leading up to the election last November, I put in the work. I made phone calls, I wrote letters to family and friends whose opinions differed from my own. I even coordinated volunteers for a local city council race. But on election day itself, I handed out salmon hot dogs…

  • breaking my schedule

    I’ve stuck to a pretty strict schedule for the last few months. Wake up, put on a pot of coffee, meditate, write a blog post, then onto the fiction work. If you look back at the journal I use to keep track of my days, almost every day for the…

  • build yourself a playground

    One of the things I set out to do in the last few years was make my living space a playground. Not so much in the literal sense, but more in the creative and artistic sense. A few years back, my roommate and I had a friend over. What started…

  • transitions

    I’ve never been very good at transitions. Seasons come and seasons go. The only constant is change, sometimes small and sometimes big. As a friend of mine once said, “It’s all temporary. It always was.” It’s nice to be back in Los Angeles, but it’s still a transition.

  • save it all

    I’ve started upwards of a hundred stories and plays. Most of them are in folders in my hard drive, abandoned and unfinished. This morning, I suddenly knew how to fix a play I haven’t thought about it three years. I was suddenly back in the room with the characters and…

  • nothing to say

    In her book, How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, Jenny Odell cites Gilles Deleuze’s Negotiations: We’re riddled with pointless talk, insane quantities of words and images. Stupidity’s never blind or mute. So it’s not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of…

  • missing the boat

    Most days, I begin by putting on a pot of coffee, practicing transcendental mediation, then writing three long-hand pages on a legal pad. From there, I open up the internet and write a blog post. Then onto working on whatever short story or play needs my attention. But some days,…

  • commissioning a new notebook

    I’ve carried a Moleskin notebook in my pocket with me everywhere I go for almost ten years now. It usually takes between six months and nine months to fill it with drawings, dialogue, bits of prose, and snippets of conversation. When it comes time to retire a notebook, I empty…

  • the way we work

    I just started reading Jenny Odell’s How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. Only twenty pages in and I’m already furious. The way we work must change. An example from my own life: As my sister was working from home last summer, she often lamented having her boundaries crossed.…