Low Volume, Medium Insight, Questionable Timing — #01
Writing, Links, and a Loose Relationship to Deadlines
I write things here on Substack. Some of those things go out via email. Others don’t. This is a weekly dispatch to catch you up on the ones that didn’t, along with a few other things that were interesting, irritating, or otherwise worth sharing.
The idea is to write pretty much daily. But since no one wants to get an email from me every day, and because intention and execution rarely shake hands, I’m sending this once-a-week catch-up instead. Fewer emails. Lower expectations. Everyone wins.
Things I Wrote (But Didn’t Email You About)
Jaws, Pop Culture Icons, and the Problem With Being Cool
Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Shark
Read it here.
The Sound of Appropriation
Recomposition, reinvention, and other polite ways of saying “this is mine now.”
Read it here.
Identity Collage
On reinventing the self, or why personality is basically a mood board duct-taped to a cracked bathroom mirror
Read it here.
The Ethics of Stealing Nicely
How to steal like you mean it (but not enough to get sued)
Read it here.
Things I Read, Looked At or Listened To (And Thought You Might Like)
‘When I read my sister’s stories I think, that’s not what it was like!’: Esther Freud on the perils of writing about family – The Guardian
A tale of two writers in one family
Read it here.
Sayaka Murata’s Alien Eye – The New Yorker
The author of “Convenience Store Woman” has gained a cult following by seeing the ordinary world as science fiction
Read it here.
That’s the roundup. If you read it, thank you. If you didn’t, well, you’re not reading this either, so that works out.
See you next week (or whenever deadlines and ambition intersect),
P