Essays and field notes
Notes between the books
Occasional essays, reading notes and reflections on craft, written outside manuscript deadlines and shared as they are.
Recent work
Essays and dispatches
A small selection of published essays and recent working dispatches, with the date and an excerpt for each.
Essay
On revising the first line
Why the opening sentence is often the last thing I settle, and how returning to it changes the whole draft around it.
Dispatch
Notes from a drafting week
A short record of what was cut, what was kept, and the small decisions that carried the manuscript forward.
Reflection
Reading slowly again
On returning to familiar books with a pencil in hand, and noticing how much of a sentence is doing quiet work.
Series and notebooks
Reading notes, notebook entries and craft
Reading notes gather what I am taking from other writers, sentence by sentence. Notebook entries keep the unfinished thoughts that never reached a page of their own.
Thoughts on craft return again and again to the same discipline: write the sentence, then remove everything that is not the sentence. These pieces sit between the books and are shared as they arrive.