The best writing advice I’ve ever read comes from Robert Frost.

On Writing #3

Periodically I like to gather various observations about writing, and share my perspective.

Toward a durable writing stack – Writings and rehearsals by Nathan Schneider

I have benefited over the years from others who have documented their writing setups, and so I feel some obligation to pay the favor forward by doing so with my own. The stack I’ll describe here is one I’ve been iterating on for about twenty years, starting from when I began discovering the pleasures of plain-text writing. Every aspect of it has changed over that period, but the some basic goals and flows have been with me through the writing of my college thesis, five books, and hundreds of articles. I am quite happy with where I am, and others might benefit from what I’ve come up with.

How to be useful

What’s your go-to piece of advice in life?

help! my husband is addicted to Claude Code.

the first, and possibly last, writerbuilder advice column

Geoffrey Litt

Here’s a very incomplete list of people whose work I’ve found inspirational. If your taste is similar to mine, maybe you’ll get some inspiration from their work too.

Guidance on Authoring Lexicons

At last weekend's Atmosphere Conference, there were a lot of questions about how author Lexicons. I thought it would be a good idea to share some guidance.

Today · Standard Reader

Fresh writing from the publications you subscribe to, every day.

How I draft stories

I discovered that trying to write one big blob does not work for me. I can get as far as 2000 words before the volume overwhelms. As with many things in life, breaking it down into pieces helps a lot! This is where most outlining writers suggest a big bulleted

The Essential June Jordan, Jan Heller Levi, Christoph Keller, eds. - Copper Canyon Press

The Essential June Jordan honors the enduring legacy of a poet fiercely dedicated to building a better world. In this definitive volume, featuring an afterword by Pulitzer Prize-winner Jericho Brown, June Jordan’s generous body of poetry is distilled and curated to represent the very best of her works. Written over the span of several decades―from Some Changes in 1971 to Last Poems in 2001­―Jordan’s poems are at once of their era and tragically current, with subject matter including racist police brutality, violence against women, and the opportunity for global solidarity amongst people who are marginalized or outside of the norm. In these poems of great immediacy and radical kindness, humor and embodied candor, readers will (re)discover a voice that has inspired generations of contemporary poets to write their truths. June Jordan is a powerful voice of the time-honored movement for justice, a poet for the ages.

A home for the writing you love · Standard Reader

New writing from the standard.site publications you subscribe to — calm, chronological, and yours to take anywhere.

Umberto Eco's Guide to Writing a Thesis

A funny and unpretentious guide by the illustrious novelist Umberto Eco, for his favorite audience: teachers and their students.

Introducing recommendations: simple cross-promotion for writers

A new way for writers on Substack to recommend each other and discover more great work

Writing With and Beyond AI: Fieldnotes from Computer-Mediated Poetry

Apr 10, 2026, 12:15 pm - Large language models can make writing mind-numbingly efficient — but the point of writing with AI should be to write what we couldn’t have written alone (without generating bland, derivative “slop”).

Writing by Hand is Good for your Brain - Here's how to do it

Because I am known to write using a fountain pen on paper, a number of people have pointed me to this post and its underlying research. I won’t rehash what is said in those sources, but the gist of it is that when you write things down by hand you’re recruiting more of your brain, which is a good thing.