I’m about to have an idea. Don’t ask me how I know it, I just do, and I’m super excited about it. I’m also about to have a nephew, and my vocabulary isn’t deep enough to express how thrilled I am about his new human who is about to be my favorite human who has ever existed. I’m actually excited about a number of pending things, which shouldn’t be an unusual thing to confess, except that it is. Because it’s not just that I’m excited about things that I’m waiting for, but also that I’m actually enjoying waiting for them. And that is new.
Writing words that matter: “Everyone needs a god who looks like them”
I recently became the last person on the planet to read Sue Monk Kidd’s Secret Life of Bees, and fell in love with it in a way I haven’t fallen in love with a book in a long time. It was like discovering The Great Gatsby again for the first time, or To Kill a Mocking Bird, or A Prayer for Owen Meany. It became one of my favorite books, even before I’d read the last page.
As a writer, these experiences of falling in love with a book are particularly overwhelming. Not only is there excitement, infatuation and enjoyment, but also aspiration. I want to write like this. I want to make readers feel this way.
Tiny hypocrisies and better haircuts
Recently, I wrote about the phenomenon of writers complaining about not being paid for their work by saying if you’re a professional writer, producing professional-grade work, you’ll get paid work. Because we do, actually, live in a world where vocational aptitude can and will be rewarded (most of the time). Most people will brains prefer the work of professionals, even when a service technically could be done by an amateur.
Natalie Burg 