Couple of fun things: 1. Over a quarter of a million people now subscribe to my newsletter. 2. I sold my next book: These things aren’t unrelated: over the past decade, the newsletter has turned into a wonderful playground for me: a place where I can work out my ideas, share what … | Continue reading
In today’s newsletter I open up my commonplace diary: You can read the whole letter here. | Continue reading
View this post on Instagram A post shared by Blanton Museum of Art (@blantonmuseum) The Blanton filmed me talking talking about the museum: I love to copy paintings when I’m here, because drawing makes you slow down and actually look at the thing… We spend a lot of time looking a … | Continue reading
Some friends of the newsletter at Demco made my book truck dreams come true and shipped me this yellow beauty. Inspired by the librarians at my local branch who give their book trucks names like “Shelvis Presley” and “Trolley Parton,” I’ve decided my new truck needs a name. You c … | Continue reading
I was interviewing Franz Nicolay about his book, Band People, and at one point I asked him, “Where do you think ambition comes from?” Before he could answer, I blurted out, “I think it comes from a big hole in you!” We laughed. He didn’t disagree. Here’s Tony Schwartz on the two … | Continue reading
Here’s another mixtape I made from a sealed, pre-recorded cassette I got for 99 cents at the record store. I tape over the cassette’s protection tabs and then I tape over the music and then I tape over the artwork. I’ve made so many mixtapes this year that I think I’m starting to … | Continue reading
My latest typewriter interview is with Chase Jarvis, who has interviewed me many times over the years. You can read the whole thing here. I guess this really is a series now? I’m sending out questions to a new batch of folks this week, so stay tuned. (You can read the others here … | Continue reading
I made this blackout last week and put it at the top of Friday’s newsletter about getting in and out of trouble. Unfortunately, it was prophetic, because I was up at 4 a.m. this morning… | Continue reading
I’m reading Amy Sillman’s Faux Pas and when I was searching her name in the Podcasts app I came across this conversation with writer Sheila Heti: SHEILA HETI: With my novels… at a certain point I just have to do the thing that I absolutely don’t want to do, that’s going to embarr … | Continue reading
Today’s newsletter begins: When I was finishing up James Kaplan’s 3 Shades of Blue, I was thinking how much I wanted to see a timeline of the lives of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, and Bill Evans mapped out on the page. Kaplan presents the jazz musicians’ 3 lives with the album Kin … | Continue reading
Here’s a scan of the collage I made for the “Autumn Leaves” mixtape at the top of today’s newsletter. What happened was: I’d been toying with making a new mixtape anyways, and I needed a top image for the newsletter, so I went over to my stack of sealed cassettes I’ve purchased f … | Continue reading
Here’s a mixtape I made from a sealed, pre-recorded cassette I got for 99 cents at the record store. I tape over the cassette’s protection tabs and then I tape over the music and then I tape over the artwork. I wasn’t planning on making a mix in September, as I considered the “Ma … | Continue reading
Today’s newsletter, “Human Resources,” is about what we can learn in art, business, and family life from how Duke Ellington ran his band, as detailed in Ted Gioia’s How To Listen To Jazz: “Almost every important piece Ellington ever composed was written to showcase the key skills … | Continue reading
I usually don’t make art specifically for the newsletter, but I needed a top image for today’s edition, so I cut out Words from ads in the April 1935 issue of National Geographic. Read the newsletter: “Verbify!” | Continue reading
First, off: “verbify” is a word. It means what it sounds like: use something as a verb. In 2015, the late comedian Norm Macdonald tweeted about the time he met Bob Dylan. According to Macdonald, they talked about all kinds of stuff. At one point, Bob asked Norm his favorite book … | Continue reading
Today is the release of Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr.’s monograph Citizen Printer. In the foreword to the book, I write: Kennedy’s work is evidence of the head, the heart, and the hands together at play. His is a physical process, done by a human body in time and space with the real mat … | Continue reading
One of the diary-like joys of the Friday newsletter is getting to sit down after a week and figure out if the things in my life have been speaking to each other in any particular way. Usually, the week is a miscellany — if not cacophony — but often a theme appears. That theme thi … | Continue reading
Today’s newsletter was about my shelves of diaries in the studio and my practice of keeping a stack of “on this day” diaries I can re-read when I have a spare minute: “Same but different.” | Continue reading
Just got word that Steal Like an Artist is in its 30th printing. Back in the day, I’d get these “REPRINT NOTICE” postcards in the mail: That stopped after the 10th printing or so. (LOL) | Continue reading
It can take a while when you’re writing to get to what you’re really trying to say. One of the most helpful marginal comments is “start here.” You can often cut to the chase in your draft by deleting the first paragraph or two. For example, here’s how today’s newsletter, “Same bu … | Continue reading
I saw a trackback to my blog with this quote: “The notebook is the place where you figure out what’s going on inside you or what’s rattling around. And then, the keyboard is the place that you go to tell people about it.” Who said that? I thought. That’s pretty good. It was me. M … | Continue reading
My friend Alan Jacobs writes in response to a piece bemoaning the fact that nobody reads Arthur Koestler anymore: You can curse the darkness, or you can light a candle. You can lament that people don’t know the value of Arthur Koestler’s work, or you can write an essay that seeks … | Continue reading
Friday’s newsletter, “Wondrous Variety,” started out with something I read in Clive James’ Cultural Amnesia: Humanism was a particularized but unconfined concern with all the high-quality products of the creative impulse, which could be distinguished from the destructive one by i … | Continue reading
Next Saturday, Sept. 14, I’m interviewing Franz Nicolay about his new book, Band People: Life and Work in Popular Music at the Austin Public Library. Details here. | Continue reading
Here is Meghan after performing another cactus surgery on Giuseppe, our crested Mexican fencepost cactus, who had once again sprouted an offspring keeping G from growing: In a newsletter from last summer, I wrote about cactuses and knowing what to leave in and what to leave out i … | Continue reading
Today’s newsletter makes the case that newsletters should be letters: People often ask me for advice on how to write a newsletter. I usually tell them some variation of what I wrote in Steal Like an Artist: “Write a newsletter you’d like to read.” I have a few more tips, like “Pi … | Continue reading
Today’s newsletter began with me dreaming about buying one of these library-grade booktrucks and thinking about the “recently returned” shelf at the public library: In Elisa Gabbert’s latest collection, she writes about the magic of the “recently returned” shelf at the public lib … | Continue reading
After having so much fun interviewing the poet Mary Ruefle via typewriter, I thought it would be fun to do it again. This time I interview another poet who writes essays that knock me out: Elisa Gabbert. | Continue reading
Today’s newsletter begins: It’s back to school season here in Austin. We dropped our youngest off at fourth grade this week and walked our firstborn to middle school. How is this possible? I’ve been keeping my mind off the inexorable passage of time by putting the finishing touch … | Continue reading
In today’s newsletter, I write about spending half of a flight to Honolulu drawing a comic while freeze-framing Tim Burton’s Batman: Planes are excellent places to work, but they’re also excellent places to zone out and to play or do “comfort work” — what I’m calling the creative … | Continue reading
Here’s a bonus August mixtape inspired by the music our family listened to while driving around Oahu last week. I made it from a sealed, pre-recorded cassette I got for 99 cents at End of an Ear. I tape over the cassette’s protection tabs and then I tape over the music and then I … | Continue reading
Today’s newsletter was really an excuse to tell you about my vacation (and mess around with recall): I’m adding the Windward Coast and North Shore of Oahu to my list of magical happy-making drives along the Pacific Ocean. Green mountains, palm trees, sunny beaches, swimming with … | Continue reading
We’re going to start a book club back up in the newsletter and I’m taking suggestions for what we should read. Now, of course, is an excellent time to join the club and become a paid subscriber. | Continue reading
Here’s John Gregory Dunne, in his introduction to The Studio: Writing is essentially donkey work, manual labor of the mind. What makes it bearable are those moments (which sometimes can last for weeks, months) when the book takes over, takes on a life of its own, goes off in unex … | Continue reading
Here is the reading shelf in our bathroom. For the past month or two, I’ve been reading a few pages of G.C. Lichtenberg’s The Waste Books in there every day. Here’s how Lichtenberg himself described a “waste book”: Merchants and traders have a waste book… in which they enter dail … | Continue reading
Here’s August’s monthly mixtape I made from a sealed, pre-recorded cassette I got for 99 cents at End of an Ear. I tape over the cassette’s protection tabs and then I tape over the music and then I tape over the artwork. I was going to save this summer fading fast vibes mix for S … | Continue reading
Here’s a photo of me at Bookpeople yesterday. A quick reminder that you can get all of my books signed and personalized and shipped anywhere from here in Austin, Texas. You can also order them and have them waiting for you if you plan on visiting soon. I usually go in on the firs … | Continue reading
Today’s newsletter began with this photo of Tacos Yo Soy on North Loop here in Austin, Texas. (Taken while riding my bike around.) It’s a dense Friday edition, full of good stuff. Read it here. | Continue reading
I will often map out a Tuesday newsletter in my notebook, forget I made a map, and write it without my notes. Then when I go back flipping through my notebook, I discover everything I left out! Today’s newsletter is about messing around with anticipation and recall to stretch out … | Continue reading
I don’t know how these Friday newsletters come together. Or maybe I do. They usually start with an image I want to put at the top, or a subject line. Today’s began with the subject line: “Listening is the whole deal.” I came across that line when I was reading The Work of Art, an … | Continue reading
Adam Moss in the afterword to The Work of Art: THERE IS A PHRASE, variations of which many of the subjects of this book ended up uttering at some point. As they were describing why they did this or that, they would say they “listened” to the work, or the work would “tell” them wh … | Continue reading
Yesterday’s newsletter, “Drawing Eno,” was inspired by seeing Gary Hustwit’s new film Eno and how I’ve been drawing Brian Eno lectures and interviews for over 15 years. Here’s a drawing I made from the generated version of the movie I saw: You can read the rest of the newsletter … | Continue reading
Friday’s newsletter was inspired by our recent trip to New Mexico. It ended on this note about travel: I am a big believer that travel doesn’t relieve your problems, it throws them into relief. You see your life in a new light and new shadows. The desert light can be good for thi … | Continue reading
Four Tet’s Three is one of my favorite albums of the year, so I was delighted to come across an interview with Kieran Hebden on the Tape Notes podcast discussing its making. He rarely gives interviews, so before listening, I really knew nothing about him or how he works. It was a … | Continue reading
Here’s another monthly mixtape I made from a sealed, pre-recorded cassette I got for 99 cents at End of an Ear. I tape over the cassette’s protection tabs and then I tape over the music and then I tape over the artwork. This one started out a little differently than the others: I … | Continue reading
Today’s newsletter begins: Like many book nerds, I got sucked into the NYTimes list of 100 Best Books of the 21st Century. I am with Paul Ford that “Why Wasn’t I Consulted?” is the fundamental question of the internet, and so a list like this one is bound to get big clicks… One t … | Continue reading
I was embarrassingly pleased with myself when I came up with the subject line of last Friday’s newsletter, “Midyear in a mid year,” which began: My kids love to use the slang word “mid” to describe things that are “mediocre or of low quality” or “bad, boring, or inferior in some … | Continue reading
So many people had good replies to my letter “Working Titles” that I felt like I had to write a followup letter, “Title Matters,” which attempts to catalog some of the different methods for titling work: combining and rearranging key words, outright theft, bibliomancy, random cha … | Continue reading