Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | July | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec

5,223 words

March, 2026

Mar 2 The Shortcomings of Self-Editing

I coach writers to become better self-editors, because I believe that skill has an outsized impact on the quality of one's writing. Self-editing means seeing your own writing through the eyes of a reader, and there are two main facts working against you: the writing is not new to you, and the writing is your own. So, to adopt the perspective of your reader, you need to somehow enter a state of mind that simulates (1) reading your work for the first time and (2) reading it without any attachment to the words themselves.

These are difficult hurdles to overcome, and that's why editors are so valuable, even to the most talented and accomplished writers (like the writer–editor duo of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb).

Although I have trained myself in the art of self-editing, I can never quite get all the way out of my own head. I hired a friend of mine to line-edit the manuscript of the book I'm working on, and she pointed out my blindspots:

• Repeated sentence structures and subtle grammatical erros/oddities (like too many cleft clauses)
• Crutch-words (merely) and refining word-choice in general
• Typesetting ideas I would have never thought of (right-aligning the chapter headings of interlude chapters)
• Marking my darlings for slaughter
• Logical gaps in information or mis-ordered information

No matter how much I try to step into the mind of my reader, there are certain things I still can't see. So, I self-edit until everything becomes "blurry" and then send it off to someone who can help me see it anew, from a fresh and detached perspective. As important as self-editing is, it can only take we writers so far.

A Ride at Dusk

I couldn't track the sun all day; it was overcast so evenly such that the only indication of the sun's position was there being a brightest third of the firmament, flat, matte, values shading down to dark gray at the horizon. After sunset, the clouds were still alight, sharing the beams of light as they share lightning, like a lamp shade over my world. I had planned to go on a bike ride this evening but distracted myself with short-form videos as the sun set. I chastised myself for it: "Goddamnit!" I grumbled. Regardless of the quickly dimming sky, I went on a ride.

For some reason, it was magical, and after reflecting on it for a little while, I think I know why. I took the road out the back of our new neighborhood that winds sharply downhill to the Catawba. All the construction workers had gone home for the day, and being the first residents in our subdivision, and with Taylor having just left on a work trip, I was all alone at dusk. I left in a hurry, before I could distract myself again with something unhealthy or meaningless (as had been the trend throughout the whole day). I went in the clothes I'd been in all day, working from home: shorts and a T-shirt with a jacket. My buttoning up my jacket was the only adjustment I made to shield me from the wind and, as I noticed while I was doom-scrolling, rain. It was just a spittle; after my 30-minute ride, I wasn't wet at all.

I had driven down this rode with Taylor when we first visited this neighborhood in November, the weekend we put in our offer. It's a dead-end lane of beautiful homes that all have docks right on the river. I took one straight-away downhill at nearly 30 miles per hour, and that's about when the magic started. I hadn't seen any other cars, and on either side of this winding road were messy columns and rows of tall pines. They only branch out at the top, which makes looking into them deceiving, the same way it's easy to see through a wire when you look at it head-on. I felt like I could see for half a mile through the trees in either direction. Up ahead three deer blocked the road. Wow, three deer, I thought. It's rare to see so many. As I approached, they turned back uphill into the woods, and as I passed them, I heard twelve more hooves start pattering on the dead leaves: four more deer. As I rode past, I saw more bushy white tails than I'd ever seen at once, scampering away together, in the same direction of me, along the wood-line, toward the end of the Catawba's little inlet.

I had forgotten how much I used to love solo bike rides. When I was a kid, I would just ride around our neighborhood, down every street and around every cul-de-sac. I was a completionist about it and felt weird and out of place until I had a mental map of my entire surroundings, until I could navigate it all easily. When we moved here this week, I had the same sorts of feelings. I was drawn into the woods on my run on Tuesday to explore the mountain biking park. And once we picked up our new-resident-perk free e-bike, my first instinct was to canvas the area and commit it all to my mental map. This ride was so magical, because after a day of distraction and discomfort following a week or more of stress and overwhelm, I did something that made this place feel more like home.

The only other beings I encountered on my ride were the deer—fifteen or twenty in total, and their patters were the only sounds I heard besides the whirring of the e-bike's motor and the buzzing of the new tires' tread along the asphalt, with the occasional audible raindrop crunching into a pile of leaves. Coming back uphill, I saw the wide-spread tops of the tall pines agains the backdrop of a dark, matte gray, the end of another of my first days in my new home.

Mar 4 There's this sort of odd narrative I've noticed among entertainers, particularly in LA media–culture, that goes something like this: "The art we make is important, because it brings people joy and relief in a time that is unprecedentedly fucked, as we are forced to face the misery and impending doom of our species and the world." (I've seen this a little bit with Dropout, for example, even though I love Dropout.) It's odd because "bringing people joy and relief" is enough of a reason to do the thing, or—even better—one could just create art for its own sake and consider it an inherently good, valuable, and worthwhile thing to do.

I think this stems from our masculine American values about productivity, and this is the entertainer's way of justifying their work as productive. Not only that—this narrative is an argument for why their work is essential (in times like these).

No, it's not essential, yet it is desirable and good regardless. I would love to see more entertainers just do their thing because they enjoy it, and enjoy it while they do it without having to feel like it matters on a global or eternal scale. Art is important. Full stop. Just cut the qualifier "in times like these," and stop trying to make art feel more important than ever by making the world out to be more fucked than ever. That's simply not the case. Let is just be a culture at play.

Mar 5 Cleft Clauses/Sentences

Ever since my editor flagged these in my manuscript, I've developed a much more scrupulous eye for them in my writing and in others'. Beware cleft sentences, because they tend to feel convoluted and too many will certainly lead to reader-fatigue: “It is you I love” [cleft] vs. “I love you” [not cleft]. A cleft sentence uses two clauses (usually by adding "it" + a "be"-verb) when one clause would do (see above “It is” and “I love”). This construction is useful for shifting focus or creating emphasis, but can feel cheap and be distracting depending on the context.

Here’s an example:

"It was on a late Tuesday afternoon that Jordan’s phone buzzed on his desk.”

There are two possible ways to rewrite it: - Subject–Verb–Object + prepositional phrase: “Jordan’s phone buzzed on his desk on Tuesday afternoon.” - Dependent clause + SVO: "Late on a Tuesday afternoon, Jordan’s phone buzzed on his desk."

I prefer the second option, because it emphasizes the right words: “Late on a Tuesday” and “buzzed on his desk.”

(Another way to describe cleft sentences is that there is a copular clause added to a sentence to "pause the action" and highlight the subject or object.)

Riffing on Phrasal Adjectives

Bryan Garner is a genius and must be protected at all costs. The following excerpt shows exactly why I have his GMAU (2nd edition, the one DFW used) on my desk at all times as a reference. Here is just a few-line snippet of his multi-page mini-essay on phrasal adjectives:

Readability is especially enhanced when the hyphens are properly used two phrasal adjectives that modify a single noun—e.g.: '24-hour-a-day doctor-supervised care. . .' Some writers—those who haven't cultivated an empathy for their readers—would omit all those hyphens. Following are examples in which enlightened writers or editors supplied the necessary hyphens. . . .

Even in the middle of a multi-page entry, Garner is still flexing and delighting with his prose-style, both authoritative and inclusive from a vantage that reads as principled yet objective (neutral, unbiased, non-dogmatic).

Perhaps because of my enlightened empathy, in the case of the noun modified by two multi-phrasal adjectives, I would add a comma to further delineate and designate them as such: "24-hour-a-day, doctor-supervised care." Also, whenever I get a hint that there could be a MISCUE for the reader, I hyphenate phrasal adjectives that appear after the modified noun, for adding a hyphen to a phrasal adjective almost never causes a miscue.

Revisiting & Revising My Custom Story-Structure Framework

Act I: Out of the Light

1. Disturbance: The ordinary world is changed,
2. Departure: and the hero lets go of what he knew (opens himself to the mystery).

Act II: Into the Dark

1. Commitment: The hero makes an irreversible decision that sets him on a path toward transformation,
2. Triumph: a path wrought with thistles and obstacles that the hero overcomes.
3. Reprieve: Yet the hero doubts he is capable of making it through and rests to gather the strength to continue. (In this stillness, when the hero is most vulnerable and open, he meets the Goddess.)

Act III: Into the Light

1. Ordeal: All is lost, and thus, all is found.
2. Resurrection: The hero returns to the ordinary world (which is also extraordinary), having changed.

The ordinary world is changed (1. Disturbance), and man lets go of what he knew, opening himself to the mystery (2. Departure).

Man's world is changed (1. Disturbance), and he lets go of what he knows, opening himself to the mystery by embarking on an adventure (2. Departure).

Mar 7 Usage Note: "En Masse" vs. "Writ Large"

"En masse" refers to people's behavior and means "all together," whereas "writ large" refers to a concept or pattern and means "in the same way but on a bigger scale."

Example:

Netflix's business model is Blockbuster's old Total Access subscription writ large, and when Netflix created a digital library, customers switched over en masse.

Mar 8 Usage of 'Whether'

"Whether or not" is a redundant phrase; the single word whether implies "or not"—e.g.,

I don't know whether or not [read "whether"] it will rain today.

And if is often misused in place of whether. If something is to happen in one case but not the other, use if. But if a thing is to happen in either case, use whether. There are cases when both words would be correct, and in those cases, the decision of whether to use if or whether determines the meaning—e.g., "I'll let you know if I can come" vs. "I'll let you know whether I can come." The former suggests that the host should assume that the guest is not coming, unless she is notified otherwise. The latter means that the guest will RSVP with either "yes" or "no"; the guest will get back to the host regardless of whether he can come or not. The former can be rewritten as "If I can come, I'll let you know," whereas the latter cannot be rewritten as "Whether I can come, I'll let you know."

That may be a bit convoluted, so here's a super simple example, and hopefully a good mnemonic device:

Let me know if you have any food allergies and whether you like steak.

Mar 10 To really round out my office supplies, I'd like to get a monochrome laser printer, maybe Brother brand—something optimized for black text, so that I can quickly and easily print out entire manuscripts for manual editing. This printer should also support shipping-label printing, as that will be my other main use case for a printer. Thinking about it now, I'm excited by the idea of printing out my manuscript and doing the next full round of edits analog.

I just watched the latest from ABQ's own, and America's most-loved, typewriter hobbyist Joe Van Cleave: "Thoughts About Typing Paper". He is pen-palls with other typists and received a letter in the mail recently that was typed on construction paper. So, he started experimenting with construction paper in his typewriters and found it took ink well, was think but still flexible enough to move easily through the machine, and—here's the kicker—served as it's own backing sheet. The problem with old typewriters is that the platens have become hard, and the way to remedy that is to write with backing sheets, to soften the blow and help with each letter's imprint. But that's a hassle and not an easy option when using odd-sized sheets, like half-letter cuts of U.S. letter pages. With the construction paper, it seems, you can cut it down to any size you'd like and just feed it in on its own, and come out with a clear, crisp print. Joe featured some white Tru-Ray brand construction paper in his video, and I just found some of the same brand for cheap on BLICK. The only odd thing is that they are sized at 9" x 12", but that means that they will be perfect for letters as 6" x 9" half-sheets. So, I just ordered 50 pages of White and 50 pages of Ivory for a total of $18.65.

Mar 13 As I was drifting off to sleep a couple nights ago, I thought of James Cameron's Avatar, specifically about the name of the Na'vi people's deity: Eywa ("the Great Mother" of Pandora). I wondered for a second about how he came up with that name and what it might mean, and then realized that it is just "Yahweh" with the syllables reversed around the 'w'. Things can be simple. As a writer, when you go to decide what you want to call your God in a story—even if you're the top-grossing filmmaker of all time—you could just make the name an anagram of an existing word for "God."

Looking it up now, it seems like "Eywa" was intended as an anagram of the Yuroba goddess Yewa. So, I guess "Eywa" is sort of a double-anagram. Maybe those phonetic syllables, regardless of place or culture, have inherent connotations of divinity.

Mar 16 Mind the Uncompahgre Gap: One Billion Years of Mysterious Geological Action

• My trip to Box Canyon in Ouray, CO
• Learning about the "Uncompahgre Unconformity": one billion years of geological action that is unexplainable, frozen in vertical strata for all to see but for none to comprehend
• Using it as a metaphor for memory or trauma or faith or something

Mar 17 One future parenting challenge: How to teach my kids to keep their bodies private without them becoming ashamed of their bodies. I think the best (maybe the only) way to accomplish this is to teach my kids that their bodies are sacred, for nothing sacred is shameful, and everything that is sacred must be protected.

Mar 20 New tagline for The Intronaut (rebrand):

Introspective essays inspired by Nature

The more you travel, the more "Where are you from?"—the single most natural opening line with a stranger—becomes a genuine conversion-starter.

One of the best and most common pieces of writing advice is to "write with nouns and verbs," but rarely is that advice explained. In most cases, it means "use figurative comparisons, like similes and metaphors, rather than modifiers, like adjectives and adverbs."

Mar 21 I'm editing my "Horseshoe Crab" essay for Michael's Best Internet Essays 2026 anthology, and rereading this sentence, I realize it may be one of the sentences I am most proud of and one of the best I've ever written. It comes at the climax of the essay, as the penultimate beat:

The final analysis of Nature will not dispel mystery but rather corroborate it by failing to account for Her total scale and intricacy.

[[My Theory: The Preeminence of the Penultimate]]

Take sure-footed steps, my son.

Mar 22 On our way from CB to the Montrose airport, I just saw the most philosophical (?) and ambiguous roadside warning in one of those temporary orange-pixel-light construction signs:

Slow down for the unknown.

The Nymph Character Archetype

I've been thinking about my Muse/Siren dichotomy lately and have been feeling like there may be an equally common third archetype for female characters that I haven't yet accounted for.

And now, once again, I find myself wondering how to classify Sylvia from The Truman Show. She's not quite a Muse, because Truman isn't inspired by her to change himself or create/achieve something. She isn't quite a Siren, because she doesn't lure him "down"; she doesn't even lead with her sexuality. Rather, she leads with her playfulness (and freedom). The character of Sylvia is neither a Muse nor a Siren but a Nymph, and that seems to be my missing archetype.

This conclusion is supported by the fact that Sylvia means "spirit of the wood," and because all the names in The Truman Show are purposeful: Truman is the only true man in his world, and Christof is like God (Christ).

Rather than drawing man up to the heights of his aspirations or down to the depths of his desire, the nymph draws man out into the wild. (This is the case for Truman's relationship to Sylvia, because she is his whole motivation for leaving town and the only reason he chooses to face his fear of drowning.) Now that I have identified this third archetype, many more examples spring to mind, which is a good sign—for instance, Nala from The Lion King.

Here's some more good news. As is common knowledge, The Lion King is almost an exact rip-off of Shakespeare's Hamlet. Nala's counterpart character, then, is Ophelia. Researching this just now, I learned that Shakespeare even refers to Ophelia as a nymph, including at the end of the famous "To be, or not to be" soliloquy in Act III, Scene 1 of Hamlet:

The fair Ophelia!- Nymph, in thy orisons / Be all my sins rememb'red.

Ophelia leads Hamlet out of his comforts and certainties and into the more difficult realms of human experience; the way Nala leads Simba back from the jungle to Pride Rock, to fulfill his destiny of becoming king; the way Sylvia leads Truman out of his perfect existence in Seahaven and into the real world that is no doubt more difficult yet also more true.

The feminine archetype of the nymph is similar to the male archetype of the mentor: both wise beings who are deeply connected to Nature (or the Force, as in Obi Wan), etc. The mentor and nymph can either (or both) help initiate or help fulfill the hero's adventure. \

Important Revision: Nala and Ophelia may not be Nymphs, because they do not lead the protagonist toward unstructured freedom. This archetype may be the most rare, which is why it has eluded me until now.

For the moment, these are the only absolutely true Nymph characters that come to mind:

• Calypso in The Oddyssey
• Sylvia in The Truman Show
• Clementine in Eternal Sunshine

I've never really known what Shakespeare's "To be, or not to be—that is the question" ever meant (since I have yet to read Hamlet—yikes!). But studying the passage just now, I learned how that famous soliloquy is Hamlet's contemplation of suicide. Reading the famous first line again, that's obvious. But the more interesting thing that comes to mind is how similar that line is to Camus's first line of The Myth of Sisyphus:

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

Here is a list of what I see as some of the purest examples of the three feminine character-archetypes I've identified.

Muse:

• Skylar in Good Will Hunting
• Rita in Groundhog Day
• Trinity in The Matrix

Siren:

• The Ring in Lord of the Rings
• Summer in 500 Days of Summer
• Mal in Inception

Nymph:

• Calypso in The Oddyssey
• Sylvia in The Truman Show
• Clementine in Eternal Sunshine

Mar 23 Most often, the words duality and dichotomy are used interchangeably. But when I use duality, I do not mean two things at odds, a subject–object, either/or relationship but a subject–complement, both/and relationship. When I say duality, I don't mean dichotomy, and I don't mean trinity. Yes, the two apparent opposites combine in harmony to create a third thing, but that creation is one thing, not three; it is one thing with two parts in different portions.

Mashup Idea: "The Stroke" x "Do I Wanna Know"

"You made me angry" and the like are lies. The truth: "My unconscious, conditioned reaction to you was anger."

I ought to start my days by reviewing the night (recalling my dreams) and start the night by reviewing (un-wind-ing) the day.

Why are there so many podcasts? Because having a podcast gives you a capitalistic justification for asking someone you admire to join you for a meaningful conversation (and a capitalistic reason for the guest to accept).

Notes on Peaky Blinders: The Immortal Man (7.5/10)

• I love how central the spirit world and Tommy's demons are to the story, especially the mystery of Arthur's death. But the reveal that Tommy killed Arthur because he was "full of booze and rage" was unsatisfying and didn't seem consistent with Tommy's character. At what point in the entire six seasons was Tommy Shelby not full of booze and rage? That's not a reason to kill Arthur. He "killed [his] brother to be free of him." That makes more sense, but why then, after all the struggle and loss he had already endured? It would have made more sense if Tommy had let Arthur kill himself, let him fall off a bridge or something, or let him get behind the wheel. He would still be just as guilty (or at least guilty enough to be similarly haunted) without the unbelievable, character-breaking detail of him murdering his brother. (The writers should have borrowed from the plot of Camus's The Fall.) Anyway, that was the biggest plot-hole.
• The next biggest blunder was the first gunfight between the Tommy and the Nazi at the mortuary. Tommy had the element of surprise and waisted it, making the fight even from the jump when his intuition and foresight had already given him the upper hand. And then, he even knew that the Nazi was out of bullets and didn't charge him, which let the guy loose the horses and escape. This would have been okay if there were some reason other than plot-armor why the main villain survived that gunfight.
• The dynamic between Tommy and Duke is fascinating and engaging. Duke's hatred of his father is justified, which is part of why his redemption-arc is so satisfying.
• Rebecca Ferguson, now that I've seen her in a film other than the Dune saga, is one of my favorite actresses. She absolutely nails the Gypsy Queen part, and her character is the most captivating of any in the film, and she is the entire engine behind the film's conflict and mystery. She gives the entire film its energy. Fergusons performance rivals Cillian Murphy's, which is a high bar, for he is my single favorite actor of all time.
• All of the flashbacks and dream-sequences are well placed and well executed. They are much more purposeful than most such scenes in other films. Each one progressed plot or character or both.
• I was completely engaged throughout and found the pacing and structure to be spot-on, save the couple times I was taken out of it because of the plot problems.
• Oh! One last weird thing: Tommy writes the dedication of his book on a typewriter while riding the canal boats to Liverpool, which is such a weird sight and completely unbelievable. First, Tommy has never had a typewriter with him, much less on a boat, throughout the whole series. Second, how did those pages get back to his house to be compiled with the rest of his manuscript? It was clearly just a device to input a voiceover for Tommy's inner monologue (essentially a narrator), to suggest that he knows his son may betray him. But that is already implied by his character! The boat-writing scene should be cut. The attentive viewer knows that Tommy has some doubts about trusting his son, and then it is revealed even before the mission that Tommy knows the Gypsy Queen's intention and that he may die by his son's hand that night.
• Also, it bothered me that Grace was never listed among the dead, or even mentioned once. All the other dead family were mentioned multiple times, like Pauley and Arthur and Ruby. There was a photo of Grace and Ruby in Tommy's funeral wagon but no mention of her. Why?! She certainly still haunts Tommy.
• It bothered me that Tommy sort of reverted to his brutal old self when he went to the Garrison. He killed an innocent man with a grenade. That was fucked. That grenade should not have gone off. Tommy should have done everything the same—finally putting the grenade in the guy's shirt, even—but it should have been a bluff. Tommy has changed. He's not that man anymore, and even that man wouldn't have killed someone who wasn't actually in his way. The guy posed no real threat. Also, that grenade appeared out of nowhere! It violates Chekov's Gun. We never see a single grenade in Tommy's house. Just add in a two-second shot of his armory. And instead of Johnny Doggs saying "You're unarmed." Have him say, "You don't have a gun."
• Now that I'm thinking about it, there were some real opportunities to improve this thing, and they didn't do it—demoted to 7.5.
• That said (to bring it full-circle), I loved how both sides of the Gypsy prophesy were fulfilled but in surprising ways: Duke becoming King and Tommy finding peace.

Mar 24 I want to live like a glacier. The glacier is still yet striving. The glacier is impenetrable yet always in flux. The glacier grows gradually, cumulatively over time. The glacier never strays from its natural path, and there is no obstacle on its path that the glacier cannot overcome.

Newest edition to my list of favorite words: aspen (the less-common plural form of the noun), for this irregular plural form communicates the fact that all aspen groves are a single organism with many trees (an irregular characteristic for a tree). All aspen are plural and also singular; they are many and are one. (The preferred plural for these trees should really be updated to this from aspens.)

Mar 30 If there is any magic in writing, it comes from editing.

Mar 31 I just had a beautiful impromptu conversation with a stranger named Monica about her faith. After seeing a beat-up, annotated copy of what looked like a scripture, I asked her what she was reading. She shared stories about how God has protected her and helped heal her cancer, and I shared how important I think it is for us to help each other look beyond the material world and connect with something greater. At the end of our conversation, she looked at me and said, "You are anointed. I see it in your energy and in your eyes. He has His hands on you," and I'm not sure I ever received a greater compliment from a stranger.

Writing Exercise: Retyping (Not Rewriting)

An exercise I recommend for finding your voice is to rewrite your drafts paragraph by paragraph, as if you're transcribing messy handwritten text. Lean into the spontaneity of it, and only reference the old version of the paragraph when you get stuck. You'll be surprised how new phrases emerge and how subtle changes to the content of a paragraph make it feel completely different.

Also, focusing on one problematic paragraph at a time narrows the scope and makes it all feel more doable, since rewriting in the "start again from a blank page" is the single most daunting thing. I never do that. The only version of rewriting is what I call retyping, where I reference my previous draft and "riff" on it. The typing process invites spontaneous changes that I wouldn't conceive of if I were just reading through an edit, yet I have to reimagine or recreate the essential and best bits of the previous draft; they're right there for me to copy over.

It's a good way to preserve the spirit of prose while making it better, and it's a good way to make prose better without discarding entire drafts.

Tonight, I defeated the Hand of the King for the first time in Dead Cells with a poison-synergy Survival build. I know that 0BC is "only the tutorial," but this win was my first time entering the Throne Room. After 22 runs and getting lost in all the DLC content, it feels good to be 1-0 against the final boss of this game I already love.

We Respawn at Dawn: What death-loop media teaches us about the day-loops of life

Every day is a life, and sleep is practice for death. We can either dread "doing it all again tomorrow," or, as death-loop media suggests, become grateful for the chance to improve each day and, thereby, to gradually change our circumstances.

Film references:

• Groundhog Day (spiritual enlightenment)
• Edge of Tomorrow (defeating the enemy)
• Source Code (altering the future)
• Eternal Sunshine (relationship death, respawning without memory)

Video-game references:

• Outer Wilds (solving the cosmic mystery on behalf of an entire species)
• Dead Cells (and the entire "rogue-like genre)
• Celeste (and the entire platform genre)
• [The meta-structure of all video-games: die, improve, win]

2026: Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | July | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec

2025: Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | July | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec

2024: Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec

2023: Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec