Hey, you punks. If you want to write, you oughta read. Read this, you punks! is a jaunty list of recommendations directing you to creatively fulfilling pieces. These posts are usually only for paying subscribers. If you enjoy the newsletter, please consider subscribing. It helps a ton and gives ya access to more resources and chats to help you improve your writing craft.
This has long been my favorite piece of writing about writing. It's a great rundown of how memory functions when you mine your life events for your stories. Fun fact, it was written by André Aciman, who also wrote the original Call Me by Your Name novel.
"Writing the past is never a neutral act. Writing always asks the past to justify itself, to give its reasons… provided we can live with the reasons. What we want is a narrative, not a log; a tale, not a trial. This is why most people write memoirs using the conventions not of history, but of fiction. It's their revenge against facts that won't go away."
We will be discussing this more in-depth in a future letter.
Your Articles Aren't Getting RT'd Because Twitter Hates External Links
Historically, only my good pal Debbie retweets my newsletters (Thanks, Deb!). She's lovely and, in many ways, all I should need. From a career standpoint, however, I have been toying around with the idea of expanding my audience outside of the Debbie market. If you plan to use Twitter to promote your creative work, this is a very helpful guide.
"Do you struggle to get any traction on social media, even when you know you've written great content, with a grabby headline and a compelling image? You're not imagining things.
There's a very simple reason why: Twitter hates external links."
Seriously though, thanks, Deb, you're a rockstar of support.
This one's a hot ticket about the inclination to pump melodrama into every bit of personal writing. I referenced this piece in the last letter, but I wanted to give it its proper space here. To fit the image we have of what a personal essay is supposed to look like, I've often caught myself trying to inject drama into written stories where there isn't much. This piece well-articulated the broader trend that may cause this. Check it out if you have any interest in exploring the personal essay genre.
"This is why I find so much of recent personal writing tiresome: It's too often defined by melodrama, humorlessness, and excessive self-pity. I don't mean personal writing about traumatic experiences — the sort of thing typified by the XoJane years, about which much has already been written — but rather the fashion for intensely melodramatic depictions of experiences, or feelings about experiences, which just aren't that bad."
All this to say, I will eventually publish the essay I wrote about my experiences in the Black male scholarship pageant, "Shades of Mahoghany: A Male Showcase." It was ridiculous and ultimately not that serious.
My friend Peter who runs Batshit Times, sent me this piece a few weeks back. As he said, "It's essential reading for understanding where politics is heading in the next few years." I can’t help but agree with Pete's sentiment here. And likewise, it is just a great example of powerful reporting, framing, and writing.
It's a helluva piece to recommend in a letter with a picture of a cockatiel in a sweater attached. But that's how we roll in I love words and you.
Love him or hate him, David Sedaris is a very talented craftsperson. This essay from 2013 is perhaps my favorite piece of his. While article titles are rarely decided by writers, I find this to be a masterstroke in titling. It's a piece about the death of one of Sedaris' siblings. There were six Sedaris children. Now there are five.
"I recalled a father and son I'd met in California a few years back. 'So are there other children?' I asked.
'There are,' the man said. 'Three who are living and a daughter, Chloe, who died before she was born, eighteen years ago.'
That's not fair, I remember thinking. Because, I mean, what's a person supposed to do with that?"
That’s all for today!
See the last Read this, you punks!
Read this, you punks! #2
"Pity Me" hits at sooo many fears I have with personal essays, to the point that I feel a need to pivot away and inject as much humor and attempts at self-awareness I can because I don't want to come off as victimizing myself. It makes me avoid some subjects because the last thing I want is for people to think I'm seeking sympathy. I'm sharing for the sake of sharing. but I also recognize I'm young and naive and don't have any answers, I'm just going through life the way I do. It's not bad and it's not good, it just is. Thanks for the hyperfixation Jade!
I don't think I've ever been more fascinated and alarmed at the same time by writing than by "Look at What We're Doing With Your Money You Dick." Incredible writing, and an even more incredible way to induce crying about the state of the world lol. Reading "Now We Are Five" now!!! Although I mostly just wanna know who hates David Sedaris and why????