I've Found That My First Drafts Are

[lincoln In The Bardo] Is Not A Long Book. And That Meant I Could Obsess Over It And Live In It Both Backwards And Forwards And Hyper-control Everything.

In A Certain Way, We're Always Toggling Back And Forth Between The Absolute And The Relative, If That Makes Sense.

Stories, As Much As We Like To Talk About Them, Retrospectively, As Emanations Of Theme Or Worldview Or Intention, Occur Primarily As Technical Objects When They're Being Written. Or At Least They Do For Me. They're The Result Of Thousands Of Decisions Made At Speed During Revision.

When I'm Explaining Something To You, If I'm Being Long-winded, And Twisty In A Non-productive Way, I Could Make You Feel Vaguely Insulted. And You'd Have A Right To Be.

Compassion Doesn't Have To Be Weak Or Enabling; It Can Also Be Quite Bold.