I’ve be chatting live with musician Walter Martin on Monday, April 7th at 12pm central as part of “The Substack Sessions.” (As a failed musician, I never expected to be on a list with some of these names, but there I am…) | Continue reading
Here’s another monthly mixtape made from a sealed, pre-recorded cassette I got for 99 cents at the record store. I taped over the cassette’s protection tabs and then I taped over the music and then I taped over the artwork. I wrote about the mix’s origins and shared some of my cu … | Continue reading
After I got back from New Orleans a few weeks ago we launched right into spring break mode, and pretty much all I wanted to do was listen to dub reggae and make block prints. In a Tuesday mailbag, “The point of this world,” I wrote quite a bit about music: Music is a form […] | Continue reading
Last Friday’s letter was a dispatch from New Orleans, and a few lessons I learned there. I don’t travel as much as I used to, but I find that some of my favorite newsletters come after I’ve visited a new place. (See: last year’s letters from Palm Springs, New Mexico, and Oahu.) | Continue reading
I made a new zine about the two things that motivate me: death and deadlines. | Continue reading
My friend Ryan Holiday and I had a fun chat about art, ambition, and why awful men need hobbies so they don’t spend all their time trying to ruin the rest of our lives. You can watch on YouTube or listen on the platform of your choice. | Continue reading
From Friday’s newsletter: The news is for the birds, so let’s have some news from the birds: Jackie and Shadow, the bald eagles documented by a live webcam in Big Bear Lake Forest, just had hatchlings. (Here’s a video of Jackie feeding the chicks before a big snow storm blew in.) … | Continue reading
Today’s newsletter is about the idea that sometimes writing (and art? and maybe teaching? and blogging? ) is just pointing at things and saying “whoa.” | Continue reading
Friday’s newsletter began: Last weekend I attended a retreat at Laity Lodge organized around one of my favorite topics: living seasonally. I got to spend some good time with my friend Alan Jacobs, made a bunch of variations of the linocut above in a workshop led by designer Dana … | Continue reading
Today’s newsletter is a typewriter interview with poet, writer, and student of joy Ross Gay. I really like doing these but they actually end up being a lot more work than just writing a normal Tuesday letter! You can read more here. | Continue reading
From today’s newsletter: On Instagram, a reader asked me in response to my collages: “How do you balance making fun stuff with doing business? Do you allocate time to simpl[y] make ‘pointless’ things?” I scribbled the image above into my notebook in response, and then I got so wo … | Continue reading
Today’s newsletter comes with a free zine and other love-adjacent items: “Love is not a gadget.” | Continue reading
I reformatted my Read like an Artist zine as a one-pager that you can download, print, and make for yourself or your bookclub, classroom, etc. Download here. | Continue reading
Last Friday I wrote a newsletter called “In The Soup”: It’s still soup season. Last month I tweeted, “Soup has a few lessons to teach us. One is: Sometimes things get better tomorrow.” A few days ago The Soup Peddler here in Austin, Texas posted an elegant edit: “Soup teaches us … | Continue reading
This is the first mixtape I’ve made with my brand-new Tascam deck, which was not cheap, but is pretty wonderful after a year’s worth of mixtapes on a somewhat shoddy deck whose record function was quickly deteriorating. (I made the last mix on my old Sony boombox.) I forgot how n … | Continue reading
I finished up a big draft of my manuscript and got to thinking about what’s really worked for me this time around. I thought it’d be fun to turn some of my pep talks to myself into posters you can download and print. You can download them here. The posters were drawn straight int … | Continue reading
I was delighted by how many people really liked Tuesday’s newsletter, “7 questions I ask myself” when I don’t know what to do next. | Continue reading
I do a lot of RIPs in the newsletter, and not to be grim, but this time of year… a lot of people die. Sometimes on a Thursday after I’ve finished the Friday newsletter and arranged it exactly how I wanted it, I’ll get the news that someone who merits an RIP has died and […] | Continue reading
Here’s how today’s newsletter about self-editing begins: My trouble with self-editing is that I’m too good at it. I self-edit before I even write! I’m really good at talking myself out of writing. I’ve talked myself out of many more books than I’ve actually written. In my head, t … | Continue reading
I think of my Friday newsletters like mixtapes. The latest one begins: “There are all kinds of mix tapes. There is always a reason to make one,” writes Rob Sheffield in his memoir, Love is a Mix Tape. “I believe that when you’re making a mix, you’re making history. You ransack th … | Continue reading
I thought my monthly mixtape project was complete, but I was wrong! Here is a new mix I really love: Spotify | Apple | Youtube I made it from a sealed, pre-recorded cassette I got for 99 cents at the record store. I taped over the cassette’s protection tabs and then I taped over … | Continue reading
I spent all of last year trying to write a book (it’s getting there) so a good deal of the entries in my commonplace diary were somehow related to writing. (When you’re writing, everything is related to writing.) I picked 100 of them and stitched them together for today’s newslet … | Continue reading
Today’s newsletter begins: Raymond Carver liked to quote Isak Dinesen, who said that she wrote a little every day, without hope and without despair. “Someday,” he wrote, “I’ll put that on a three-by-five-card and tape it to the wall beside my desk.” The poet Tess Gallagher said D … | Continue reading
In Tuesday’s newsletter, I wrote about my four notebooks: Before I get started, I want to say that this is my system, and I do not necessarily recommend it to others! Writing is my job, so it would make sense that I’d have a bunch of notebooks. My intention with this letter is to … | Continue reading
Riding my bike, not to feel like I felt when I was 10 years old, but to feel the way I wanted to feel when I was 10 years old. Getting the drop bars on Rocinante swapped out for straight ones. Meeting Marty at the crossroads. Riding to Manor with Christy. Riding to my PO […] | Continue reading
In yesterday’s newsletter, the last one of the year, instead of asking everyone their resolutions, I asked, “What worked for you this year?” A wonderful thread of responses. Ironically, after all my big talk about waiting until February, I went about January 1 with a sense of a f … | Continue reading
My last Friday newsletter of 2024 was a round-up of my favorite books, music, movies, TV, and newsletter issues: “Another year on the (notebooks).” So many people asked me about the photo of the stack of my logbook, my pocket notebooks, my commonplace diary, and my diaries that I … | Continue reading
“Reading is first and foremost non-reading,” writes Pierre Bayard in How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read. “Even in the case of the most passionate lifelong readers, the act of picking up and opening a book masks the countergesture that occurs at the same time: the involuntar … | Continue reading
My typewriter interview with designer Kelli Anderson is a delight. | Continue reading
My monthly mixtape project turned into a baker’s dozen (I made two tapes in August — one was a bonus mix inspired by our trip to Oahu) and is now complete. Each tape was made from a sealed, pre-recorded cassette I bought for less than 99 cents at the record store. I taped over th … | Continue reading
Here’s the last mixtape of the year, a wintry one, made from a sealed, pre-recorded cassette I got for 99 cents at the record store. I taped over the cassette’s protection tabs and then I taped over the music and then I taped over the artwork. I was feeling depressed, so I made a … | Continue reading
The subject line of Friday’s newsletter came from a postcard Warren Craghead mailed me that I turned into a collage. The first item quotes the late Nikki Giovanni: “Why shouldn’t I enjoy my own work?” she asked. “While I have always liked my career I have way more fun with it now … | Continue reading
In today’s newsletter I write about Bob Dylan and a movie I haven’t seen based on a book I have read: Dylan Goes Electric! The comments on this one are extra good. Fellow Dylan fans have much to say. In fact, the whole letter was an excuse for me to put this at the bottom: | Continue reading
Today’s newsletter includes a free downloadable zine called “More Light!” It begins: It gets dark so early these days I find myself sundowning around 3PM. I got so many wonderful notes about the gratitude zines, I decided to revive my creative seasons project and make an interact … | Continue reading
Today’s newsletter is a holiday gift guide that begins with my books: The book I think would be the most help to almost anybody in the next year is Keep Going, my guide to staying creative in chaotic times. The hardcover of my million-seller Steal Like an Artistand the matching j … | Continue reading
In case you missed them in previous years, here are some gratitude zines I made free to download and print. I’ve loved how people have shared their completed zines with me in Thanksgivings past. To help carry on the tradition, I’ve updated the page with a video explaining how to … | Continue reading
Last Friday’s newsletter began: On a bike ride last weekend I chanced upon a neighborhood stop on the West Austin Studio Tour. One of the potters who makes under the name Mud Alchemysaid about her work, “I just go into the studio and play.” I drew her words the next morning in my … | 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. This one started out with Human League’s “Love Action” playing on … | Continue reading
I had tacos with Chase Jarvis earlier this year and he asked if he could record part of our chat on voice memos. I’ve written more about a lot of the topics we chatted about and wanted to link to them here: “Comfort Work,” like “comfort food” and “comfort viewing,” comfort work i … | Continue reading
This afternoon I doodled while watching artist Jeremy Deller’s documentary Everybody In The Place: an Incomplete History of Britain 1984?–?1992. Acid house is often portrayed as a movement that came out of the blue, inspired by little more than a handful of London-based DJs disco … | Continue reading
This is how so many newsletters of mine begin: just a few doodled mind maps in a notebook. These pages led to the latest Tuesday letter, “Room To Think,” which was an excuse to mash up an Elisa Gabbert essay with my recent daily reading of Montaigne’s essays. | Continue reading
The subject line of last Friday’s newsletter “Don’t let your dreams give up on you” was something I heard a fourth grader say a few weeks ago. I immediately knew I needed to make it into one of my lifted type collages and it’s become a mantra of mine ever since. You can read the … | Continue reading
Today’s newsletter might be my favorite I’ve ever sent out: I figured a letter sent out on such a Tuesday better be full of delight. Luckily, today we have the marvelous Lynda Barry with us. To celebrate the release of the paperback edition of her masterpiece What It Is, she answ … | Continue reading
Last Friday’s letter, “Against Prognostication,” began with a collage I made around a drawing Warren Craghead sent me on a postcard and continued: In brain-scrambling times like these, I like to read old books. I’m currently reading one of Michel de Montaigne’s essays every morni … | Continue reading
My friend Dave Gray interviewed me way back in January for his “School of the Possible.” We talked about creative habits and making a life while making a living. You can watch it on YouTube. | Continue reading
My guide to staying creative in chaotic times is only $1.99 on ebook for the rest of November. | Continue reading
Today’s newsletter was an excuse to link these three books at my spot on the kitchen table — Roland Allen’s The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper, my late summer/fall diary (started on Oahu back in August), and Chris Ware’s Acme Novelty Datebook Volume Three, the final ins … | Continue reading
In the words of a reader, the newsletter is “super-juicy this week.” I had the most fun sharing a bunch of Halloween links: 2. Spooky reading: I really don’t think you can go wrong with the classics. I love Frankenstein, Dracula, and Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde — as wit … | Continue reading