On Gathering

Ideas, rocks, words, and other things that settle in winter days.

My 2025 calendars are on sale // The winter edition of DIVE seasonal writing group starts next week and there are still spots open for Tuesday and Thursday cohorts // A percentage of shop proceeds + paid subscriptions this month will go to World Central Kitchen + Grief and Hope (organizing to help support artists in LA) // More resources for supporting LA here and here.

Hello friends,

I was serendipitously offered an additional week at my residency, which has felt very needed. It has also meant that my brain is largely focused on my book writing project and not much else. That feels good in a time when I can be a little more spacious, let a project stretch to the edges.

It’s also hard to allow for that without the sneaky little judgmental voice showing up and saying, “oh, is that all you have to show for it?”

My online writing career began in the days of blogging. I remember when I was offered a twice a week gig that paid $25/post and I was thrilled. A whole $25! It was more than the $10 or $15 a pop I was paid at a different gig.

I would try to calculate how quickly I would need to write the pieces to make it worth it. They inevitably always took much longer. Those years set a tone for doing more. The more pieces you could write, the more you would make. Just. Crank. Out. One. More. Gather up ideas, turn them into something, repeat. Those muscles had so many years of training, the tendency often shows up unwillingly. I have to work against my own muscle memory.

The thing about writing—like creativity in general—is that it’s not a production line. It doesn’t work by rules of input and output.

Sure, some days you can effortlessly whip together an essay, a newsletter, a painting. The kind of days when magical creations and beautiful sentences flow out of you. And others? It takes day after day of continuously doing a little bit here and there, hoping that if you just keep showing up something will build. Good, solid work that you are proud of requires sitting with it, letting it sink it.

I promised you some themes on creative winter this month, and I think that this is one of them: it’s a season of gathering, pulling the ideas down as they cross our paths, sifting through old ones, sitting with them all.

How do we do that?