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What my dog teaches me about writing
The ballet of a suburban dog let loose in the woods is something magical to behold. It’s a like a scripted sort of chaos. And her ramblings always lead us somewhere, even if it’s just back to the car. It’s the perfect antidote to a sticky literary situation.
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Five toys for a more productive 2020
I admit to wasting hours online and in bookstores, camera shops, art supply stores and so on seeking the perfect tools to make me more productive as a maker of things. But really, I’m shopping for toys. It’s a form of procrastination that most creative types and dilettantes will understand. Kind of like writing a… Read more
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Beauty & Chaos: The American Art of Santiago Uceda
Few artists have produced work that feels as urgently American to me in the way that Santiago Uceda’s does. He’s got a brash, expressionist style with bold inky lines and that blends of cultures and landscapes tracing his life journey from Peru to California and up to the Pacific Northwest. To me his work embodies… Read more
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The Steeple Chase – part III
The final post in the series, here are tips for running a Steeple Chase Exercise on your writing in the real world.
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The Steeple Chase – part II
In this post we’ll break the Steeple Chase Exercise into its respective parts and show how its playful qualities are the perfect match for literary dilettantes.
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The Steeple Chase – part I
I’m going to share the best thing I learned in graduate school. It’s an exercise called the Steeple Chase and and it’s tailor-made for dilettantes.
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On dilettantism
Over the course of this project I will dig into the details of dilettantism and how useful it is for artists…
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Embracing your inner amateur
I’m a writer and a filmmaker. I can say that now without visibly cringing and with only a minor internal flareup of the old imposter syndrome…
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The Dilettante's Field Manual 