There has been a recent discourse on Substack about the uses and disuses of an MFA. Do you need one? Is it, actually, bad to have one? Is MFA-literature a genre, in the same way that horror or fantasy, or romance are? Is there a cabal of evil MFAers who are strangling contemporary literature in the cradle by refusing to publish anything other than their narrow circle of friends? Does getting an MFA ruin your writing? And so on. The true answer—as true answers tend to be—is boring. Having or n...

This is not the essay I meant to write. A few weeks ago, after promising to write more essays, I immediately started on the next one: a summary of Dorothea Brande’s 1934 book, Becoming a Writer. I thought this might be useful to people (I found the book energizing when I read it in 2022 shortly after the birth of my first son). I wrote 6,000 words summarizing Brande’s argument—that genius in writing is explicable and, therefore, teachable. Three years ago, I believed it. Now I’m not so sure. ...

For six years, I've been abandoning successful writing platforms the moment they started working—not because they failed, but because it wasn't the specific success I was looking for. I thought I was chasing better opportunities. I was actually running from my natural form.

An exploration of the structural problems that keep artists financially struggling despite unprecedented tools for creation and distribution. From winner-take-all dynamics to the passion premium, this essay maps the many pitfalls that prevent creative work from becoming sustainable careers - and why tech platforms promising to solve these problems often make them worse.

Why do we happily consume endless nonfiction on our phones but reach for physical books when we want fiction? I explore the fundamental tension between how we experience digital content and how fiction works in our minds.

What if Farcaster isn't just another social network with crypto features, but something entirely new—like the automobile was to horse-drawn carriages? This essay explores how Farcaster could transform social media by enabling users to build their own contextual experiences while maintaining a consistent identity across the web, just as cars transformed not just how we move, but how we live.

In one of the most interesting books I've ever read, Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective, authors Kenneth O. Stanley and Joel Lehman dismantle the widely-held view that to accomplish anything of importance, you must first set it as an objective—a specific goal with clear, legible, preceding steps. Our reliance on objectives is everywhere, from education to business, government to finance, and even science, art, and technology. Even the word objective encompasses a dual ...

"Publishing" is a word that no longer makes sense. What is missing in the "creator economy" is a strong curatorial element. Good work must be created, and it must be identified, amplified, and stored for the future.

Instead of 10x Thinking, consider /10 Thinking. What if, instead of going 10 times bigger or 10 times faster, you went 10 times smaller? Or 10 times slower? What would you create?

A lot of writing advice boils down to the same idea: go fast. But writing pace, like voice, is an individualized component, and that exploring different paces can unlock your best work.