joshua chamberlain

Category: writing

  • why we want mirrors

    I’ve written several times about Fran Liebowitz’s discussion of books from the Netflix series, Pretend It’s a City. The most striking of her comments, being of course, the moment when she says, “a book isn’t supposed to be a mirror, it’s supposed to be a door!” Jennifer Egan expands upon…

  • morning pages

    Some days you’re just stuck. There’s no blood flowing. It’s hard to come up with anything to say. That’s what the morning pages are for. You show up and write three pages long hand. It’s not art, it’s not even really writing. It’s thinking on that page. It’s allowing your…

  • write it anyway

    This morning, I committed to working on a project that scares me. It’s a story that isn’t mine to tell. It delves into a topic I’m by no means an expert in. It makes me nervous. It would probably get me “cancelled.” I’m writing it anyway. Bad things happen when…

  • one thing at a time

    For a long time, I’ve suffered from a kind of creative ADHD. I think it’s caused by a variety of things: promiscuity of interest, a broad range of influences, having too many ideas all at once, and the unconscious fear of bringing something to completion. Currently, I’m tinkering with an…

  • stuck

    Austin Kleon recently posted a great interview with Paul Simon, where he tells Dick Cavett how he wrote “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” There are many things at play here (art as theft, input influencing output, accessing the unconscious), but the thing that speaks to me most is the idea of…

  • portals to other places

    For some reason, the concept of the portal has been on my mind lately. It could be the hypotrochoid set I bought at a thrift store recently, but it was also likely brought on by this interview with Jennifer Egan, in which she says, “reading is always about finding a…

  • inflection points

    I’ve had a variety of creative pursuits: writing, drawing, music, photography. I’ve dabbled in a lot. But very few creative endeavors were much more than hobbies. It seems there’s always a roadblock when pursuing something creative, that hump that require practice to overcome. It’s the obstacle that separates the amateurs…

  • diving deep

    Normally as I read a book, I’m thinking about how it works. I ask myself what the sentences are doing, what’s happening with the characters, how is the storyteller drawing me into the story and what are they trying to convey. I think it’s asking these questions that prevents me…

  • an itch you can’t scratch

    I’ve done a lot of growing in the last year. So much so, my life doesn’t seem to fit quite like it used to. I’m sure you know the feeling: that sensation of having an itch you can’t quite scratch everywhere at once, like a snake shedding its skin. As…

  • bad ideas

    Ideas are easy, but letting go of them isn’t necessarily. You have have bad ideas, but more importantly, you have to let those bad ideas go. I spent eight years trying to write book once, only to realize I knew nothing about writing a book. I scrapped the idea and…