On Writing & Such

I’m a writer.

It’s strange how long it took me to feel comfortable saying (or writing!) that.

I went to school for design, but from high school onward I moonlighted as a columnist for school and local newspapers. Since 2009 I’ve written a blog that branched into several dozen books, I’ve freelanced for all sorts of magazines, papers, and blogs, and today I maintain my own small network of bill-paying, online publications.

I make my living from a combination of book royalties, paid subscriptions from those aforementioned publications, podcasts (which I write and read), and speaking gigs (which I write and present).

With the exception of the rare brand consulting project I do for a (very) few clients, every dollar I earn (and have earned for about a decade-and-a-half) is derived from my writing.

Yet it still feels ineffably wrong—maybe even performative or aspirational—to say “I’m a writer. I write for a living. Writing is what I do.”

I started this publication after much haranguing from friends and collaborators who insisted I might have something to offer, something worth sharing, if I were to start a newsletter focused on the subject of writing.

I deviated from their insistence a bit, opting for the titular hedge of “and Such” in part because I’m concerned I might run short of writing-exclusive-commentary steam, and in part because I believe that writing in inextricably connected to other subjects, like reading, like the business of publishing, like culture, ideology, and life on an ever-changing planet.

I haven’t made any firm plans as to what I’ll be publishing here, and though I have some ideas, whether any of them will be interesting and useful to anyone but me is still an open question; we’ll see how this goes.

Thanks for joining me! I’m genuinely thrilled you’re here.

And please do say hi in the comments: I’d love to know who you are, what you’re up to, and what you write (and/or read), if you don’t mind sharing :)