This week I took a Writing Co-Lab class with Amy Shearn called “Writing for the Internet.” Amy is fun and funny and I spent the second half yawning because it was past my bedtime but the whole thing was great and I highly recommend Amy as a teacher. (She also has an excellent Substack called How To Get Unstuck.)
I took this class in part because I wanted to try out Writing Co-Lab and in part because I am practicing some new forms — essays, reviews — and I guess you could call it writing for the internet, in that I’m aiming for publication in online magazines, though I have also been studying examples of both that were written for print. (Just arrived in the mail and now at the top of my book pile: The Next American Essay edited by John D’Agata.)
Also this week and related, I turned in my first book review and eagerly await edits.
Also this week and unrelated, I got some film developed and the photos my kid took were mostly better than the ones I took but I liked this one:
Also this week and semi-related, I finished the copy of Natalia Ginzburg’s The City and the House that I picked up at Northshire Bookstore when we were in Vermont earlier this month. I love browsing shelves of used books. I found this note scrawled in the back of the Ginzburg:
I thought it might be a quote from the book so I searched for it as I read, repeating it to myself like an incantation, but no.
I am still going to Morning Writing Club, every weekday morning, and have become very attached to this routine. Novel progress continues.
This letter is a mishmash. Some weeks they are.