Still, it’s time for a small break. The next two weeks I’ll be on a boat, completely offline. I’m hoping to spend hours reading, probably doing some writing (this is certainly not a requirement, but it’s hard to stop myself), and doing a bit of reflecting.

This past week Shayna and I, as part of the 60/40 Playspace initiative, gave a workshop on failure. The focus of the evening was, indeed, reflection. We asked ourselves and our workshop participants to think about the shape failure takes for them, individually, and how we either turn or embrace failure. Can we treat failure as something other than a roadblock?

I fail a lot. Even this year, when so much seems to be going well, failure is always on board. Every day when I sit down to write, something doesn’t work. Plans fall apart. Effort comes to nothing. And sometimes failure comes from outside pressure, things outside of my control.

In difficult times, these failures feel impossible to overcome. They become the only thing I can see before me. In the worst of times, those failures can really get me down. Failing often is a real bummer.

But when things are looking up, I remember that failure is part of the process. Seeing failure often means I’m reaching for something beyond me, outside of my ability. How else can a person grow, then, without failure?

Later this month I’ll share more thoughts on failure as I reflect on the boat, work through my notes on the topic, and prepare an interview I’m pitching with David Shields in celebration of his forthcoming book, Failure is the Only Subject. This post will be available for all my (lovely) paid subscribers. You make all this work possible.

Upcoming workshops and talks in Amsterdam

As usual, Shayna and I will be giving workshops at the wonderful Supermercator art space every Thursday evening this month. Information on the workshops are available below.

As a note: Collected Beauty in August is part one of a three part series which will continue in September. During that month, we’ll be revisiting two of the workshops we’ve run previously (with some variations): Self-Portrait as Soul Revival and Oblique Strategies for Writing. Here’s that schedule:

Tickets are available for all the events over on Ticket Tailor..

In addition to the 60/40 Playspace workshops, I’ll be giving another talk for the Think and Drink lecture series on September 18th. The talk, titled Auto fiction: Blurring the lines between myth and reality, will dive into how writers use the raw materials of their lives to create work close to them, but also othered by the imagination. We’ll explore the work of Olga Tokarczuk, Ben Lerner, Rachel Cusk, and more in our exploration of “the authentic” fictional experience. Order tickets here.

Lastly, on October 9th I’ll be at yoga studio De Roos to facilitate a new workshop, Writing from the bones: An embodied writing workshop. This two hour session will explore movement, how to listen to what the body is already processing, and methods for translating that raw energy into text. More details to come!

Whew. Well, that’s about all for now. I hope to see some of you in the flesh very soon. If you’re not in Amsterdam and want some personal coaching, remember you can always drop a line.

See you in a few weeks with some notes on failure.

I’m trying to locate during these long, hot days time to relax, reflect, and strengthen my creative practice.

One conversation that I’ve been having with myself and with my students is the need for play when creating art. It sounds simple, play, but it’s a very powerful way of approaching imaginative work.

It’s easy to get lost when we getting “serious.” Seriousness can be a good thing. It can come from a desire to create impactful work. It can come from wanting to finally finish something. It can also arise from a perfectionist attitude.

This past year, I found myself stuck more often than ever before. During this period I was trying out new forms of fiction that required a very high level of technical skill. I wanted to get better at realism. I hoped to create deeper characters. And I created a lot of work during this period, some of it (I think) very good, but much of it felt flat and emotionless. I scratched my head and wondered why.

The problem, I realized, was that while trying to perfect a certain set of skills, I was no longer interested in the stories those skills created. I wasn’t having fun. I wasn’t following the creative flow. Instead, was like I was practicing a newly learned scale over and over until mastered, but never playing with it to discover the right melody.

There really is such a thing as letting craft and technique take over the writing process and sacrificing the playful voice that might otherwise take shape.

I’ll talk a bit more about this next week, with some exercises for play, but first an announcement …

60/40 Playspace

Recently, I’ve been giving workshops with my friend and collaborator, the artist and teacher Shayna Schapp. These workshops have been one-offs—two-hour, bite-sized lessons in playing around to make generative work. We’re trying to build a space that has very low stakes, where people of any skill level can join in, have fun, and at the end of the night create something original.

What we’ve found is that when the pressure is off and there is space for people to explore without any expectations of what the final result might be, the art and the process becomes the focus.

So far, the workshops have been under the Honing House moniker. All well and good, but Shayna and I felt that this collaboration needs a name of its own. Something that spoke to the ethos of what we’re offering to the workshop participants.

We decided on 60/40 Playspace. This name arises from a chat about New Year’s resolutions we had back in January. Both Shayna and I, frustrated with our tendencies towards overworking things, decided that taking a 60 percent hard effort, 40 percent letting go approach would be a healthy ratio for creative play. We laughed about this tongue-in-cheek ethos at the time, but have found in practice that 60/40 is a great way to get the work breathing and keeping it alive.

Play. Keep playing. Repeat.

Upcoming 60/40 Playspace workshops

Under this new name, Shayna and I have a lot of exciting offerings in store.

Coming up:

On July 23, I’ll be running a workshop for writers called Oblique Strategies for Writing. This will be a generative session using Brian Eno’s Oblique Strategies as a jumping off point for creative expression and play.

On July 30, Shayna and I will jointly run Call and Response in Art. In this one-evening workshop, we will explore through writing and drawing how response can be a powerful form of generating new work and finding creative pathways. Participants will write or draw in response to famous works of art.

Finally, on August 6 we’ll be running Interesting Ways to Fail. How often have you wanted to draw, write, or try something new but stopped out of fear you’ll mess it up or worries that it won’t be “good enough”? What if we approach failure with a more playful attitude? In this workshop we not only learn from mistakes, we embrace them. We will work with failure as the construct it is, free to be reshaped or even destroyed. We’ll use creativity as resistance, taking the judgement out of failure and dubbing the idea of success as overrated.

All of these workshops will cost €20 and take place between 19:00-21:00 at Supermercator in Amsterdam West. It would be great if you could join us. Tickets are available here.

We’re also selling membership cards for people who want to join us at several workshops over the coming months. This “strippenkaart” is good for 6 workshops for the price of five. Buying a strippenkaart helps support us and the Supermercator space. Buy them on our store!

Much love to all of you. Keep playing!

This workshop, which we offered twice, was an opportunity for participants to explore perspective and introspection through several conceptualizations of the self portrait. Attendees explored the self through stick figure, auto-writing and meditation, as well as drawing. It was really amazing to see so many folks swing by and take two hours away from their devices and other obligations to make art in a supportive space. Shayna and I loved hearing from participants how the workshop environment allowed them to play, explore, and to approach themselves and old wounds in a way that isn’t always available in their day-to-day lives.

Shayna and I will be giving another edition of this workshop, this time oriented towards queer identity, at Amsterdam’s Queer Hub on July 14 from 19:30-21:30. Thanks to the generosity of the Queer Hub, this workshop will be free of charge! Information can be found on the Pink Nieuw West website.

Finding Your Creative Spark

Additionally, I’ll be giving a creative writing workshop on July 9 at Supermercator called Finding Your Creative Spark.

Finding Your Creative Spark is about learning methods and creative habits that get words on the page. This is a class that embraces what inspiration has to offer, but also offers methodologies for creating when inspiration is being elusive.

Nobody needs to seek a fancy degree to create, or spend tons of hours in a classroom to be able to write. Classes can help you get better once you have really embraced the creative process, but they do not provide permission to write. The permission to create is already yours to begin with.

This class is for anyone who wants to write, regardless of their ability or experience, but feels blocked from the creative process. This is a safe space to try things out, discard what doesn’t work for you, fail a bit (in a good way), and find pathways for creation.

I’ll be offering prompts and out of the box ways to get the creative juices flowing, and methods participants can take home to keep words flowing on the page.

Again, I’m offering this workshop on the cheap—just €20 for a two-hour session. Tickets can be purchased here at Ticket Tailor.

I just wanted to drop a quick note about a new workshop I’ll be giving in collaboration with visual artist and educator Shayna Schapp at the Supermercator art space. Here’s the info.

Self Portraiture as Soul Revival

How do we create a portrait of ourselves that expresses our inner life? How can we connect with an honest image of ourselves while we’re oversaturated with presentations of perfection and soulless AI slop? Visual artists and writers often dabble in each other’s practice, but there’s power in bringing the two together. In this one-day workshop, we’ll play with drawing and writing to discover a fuller portrait of who we are.

In this workshop, expect to:

• Get in touch with yourself in a device-free environment.

• Express interiority through writing and visual tools and discover the power and limits of each form.

• Tap into your imagination and inner life without the use of digital technology.

Walk away with:

• A visual and written self portrait or expression of yourself.

• New connections with local artists and writers.

• A better understanding of how to use writing and images together for more dynamic creative output.

Whether or not you have visual art or writing experience, this workshop is for any level: join us and have some fun!

Tickets are just €20, which helps support the space and future workshops. You can purchase a ticket here. Please share! All the support we can get truly helps.

Also, a quick reminder that I’ll be holding a pay-what you can prompt session online this Thursday from 19:00-21:00 CEST. If you’re interested in joining, send an email to:

daniel [at] honinghouse.com

Thanks again for your support!

This is not a normal response to the end of a busy school year. Like so many precariously employed artist-academics, each semester is a balancing act of triaging teaching duties, finding small money-making schemes to keep the lights on, and working on the art whenever the energy allows. Traditionally—for me at least—the end of the spring semester and the beginning of the long summer break is a time for orgasmic explosions of creativity, a moment when I turn to larger writing projects and otherwise sit still and meditate on what makes my creativity tick.

But at the end of this spring semester, I feel different. I am tempted to blame it on the eerily fall-like weather outside, but the sun has been shining a bit over the past few days, and this feeling goes beyond seasonal affective disorder. The feeling I’m experiencing is more akin to sitting on a fault line, waiting for the earthquake to come.

I recently read the intriguing Virtue Hoarders: The Case Against the Professional Managerial Class by Catherine Liu. In this slender book, Liu argues that the Professional Managerial Class (PMCs) who identify themselves as being progressively Left and organize themselves along those political lines, have shown that they’re more ready to embrace a certain distaste for the working class and the undereducated they proclaim to serve in their roles somewhere between CEO and gig worker than to do something useful in their position of power.

I’ve been writing and thinking a lot about the dilemma of the writer with the rise of AI, as well as considering the place of teachers within an economic ecosystem that seems to have little regard for the importance of the humanities and the liberal arts. Most recently, I’ve been thinking about the PMC—those high-level admins and Deans and Presidents who determine the direction of our institutions—and the whole mess of the commodification of a college education.

AI and globalized trends in collegiate economics and the power of the PMC all seem to be forces outside of my control. These are the manifestations of the blind march towards so-called progress, the arrogance of the West to continue to believe we’re on the right path (you know, the path that brought us the atom bomb, climate change, and billionaires like Elon Musk). This progress is what PMCs might whine about, but also call “inevitable.” But what is “inevitable” is more often than not that which is merely accepted. I’ve been thrilled to see students booing tech CEOs at their graduation ceremonies. I’m heartened that the voices are getting louder because what is sometimes proclaimed as inevitable can be driven off course by the mildest of winds. We often possess more control than we realize.

I’ve been teaching in various academies for over a decade. I’ve sat in on meetings with consultants and lawyers and various people who don’t teach and listened to them pontificate about the future of education. As if they have a clue. As if the market hasn’t already taken over the brain of the university like some zombifying fungus.

What’s the cure?

Catherine Liu calls for a re-engagement with working class concerns. Enough with treating students like customers. Enough with the double talk, the self righteous virtue hoarding that leads to nothing. And I agree. How can we align the educational system to values that are humanistic, that exist outside of market concerns and support those that truly need an education?

This has been my concern instead of greeting the summer holiday with a flurry of writing. I’ve been soul searching. The question for my soul is simple: What is it that’s under my control—as a teacher, as an academic, and as a writer—and are my actions in those territories of control reflecting the values I hold and wish to see in the world?

The short answer is yes, but I could be doing better.

For one, Honing House is under my control, and I’ve long been uncomfortable with the commercial aspect of this venture. Allergic to advertisements and wary of sounding salesy, I’ve let word of mouth make it what it is. This is a kind of engagement with the politics I hold dear, but doesn’t go far enough. It’s a passive engagement. What I’m not doing, creating virtue.

So, I’ve decided to take greater action. Over the coming months you will see a slight change to the offerings made by Honing House. I’m teaming up with local art space Supermercator to give affordable, in-person lessons to artists of all levels. More news on that soon, but there will be two workshops given in June for a modest price. I hope that the low price point of these workshops will get folks involved that might otherwise be barred from taking art classes. In the future, as we figure out a pricing schema, the goal is to also offer free places for those who do not have the means to attend otherwise.

Pay-what-you want generative workshop

Here, in the newsletter space, I want to continue writing about writing, art, and pedagogy in a way that has real world purchase. The humanities can have a real effect on the world and I want this to be a place where that’s explored.

To sign off from this long note, I’d like to encourage all of you to read this excerpt from Rene Gladman’s wonderful book, Calamities. Think of it as a bit of political inspiration.

You might expect that this will be the focus of a second newsletter this month, I’d like to do something a bit different. Instead, in the spirit of offering affordable educational and generative opportunities, I’ll be holding an online, donation-based prompt session on the evening of June 4th, from 19:00-21:00 CEST.

This workshop will be pay-what-you-want! One euro, 20 euros, whatever. All donations will go directly towards supporting my ongoing educational work through Honing House and the coming workshops at Supermercator.

Of course, the session will be complementary for paid subscribers (whom I will mail a link to) as thanks for your continuing support. For those of you who would like to join, just drop me a Substack message if you’re active here, or send me an email at:

daniel [at] honinghouse.com

Finally, for those of you in Amsterdam, please come see my talk The Lens or the Map? How Travel Narratives Shape Our World at the Book Nook on Friday, May 29. Just a few tickets are still available.

Thanks for reading. I love you all.

The first question we might ask is: why Lu Guin, and why a story from 1973? In my last newsletter, I talked a bit about how our position as writers (with our slow production and the necessity of meeting the current moment with timeless reflection), requires us (at times) to engage with the parabolic. This is not because we’re cowardly, hiding behind subtle riddles to hide our political stances. The parable, in fact, allows us to speak our truth , cutting through the noise of the current emergency (isn’t there always a fresh one?) by speaking in timeless clarity. Which is exactly what Ursula K. Le Guin does so well in The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas.

Read more

Or so we think. Benjamin argues that the disorientation we feel in the face of catastrophe can also be used to bewilder us, to take away our sense of power, which also makes room for authoritarian and fascist ideologies to slide in and take hold. Naomi Klein makes a similar argument in her wonderful, prescient book The Shock Doctrine, which I would urge each and every one of you to go out and buy.

So we find ourselves in 2026, a year already defined by catastrophe after many years also defined by shock and awe. And however much we may try to avoid the news (which I can hear some of you saying, through the screen, betrays a certain kind of privilege), avoiding the news and turning away from the apocalypse on our screens is nearly impossible these days. There’s a war on, after all, and everyone is talking about the war and worried about the war and though we’re all so very tired of the war and the many wars before it, we can’t look away. Each new bombing and every wild ultimatum decimates our ability to think of an alternative.

Which is all very depressing, of course, no matter how positive an outlook we try to maintain.

Share Dispatches from the Honing House

I’ll admit, since the start of this war, I’ve found myself somewhat disassociated from the conversation. Call it fatigue. Call it desperation. Or maybe, let’s call it a sense of deja vu. Didn’t we go through something eerily similar back in 2003? Haven’t we been involved in the same conversations for the last 25 years? Even longer?

Regardless, this dissociative approach isn’t something I’m particularly proud of. But I sense that this exasperation isn’t mine alone. I think I can go out on a limb and say that generally, people are worried there’s no out to all of this. That there will continue to be one catastrophe after another until we’re all under a mushroom cloud.

This can all be quite disheartening. Still, I know that this is not a time to lose faith, shut up, and turn away. But as a writer I often feel powerless and I wonder: What more can the writer say? How can we, as artists, effectively cut through the noise?

Well, there seems to be a simple answer. Writers—whether they dabble in fiction, non-fiction, academic explications, or poetry—have power. Our art requires stamina, which means we’re well-conditioned for the long haul. It’s the difference between a marathoner and a sprinter: When one is exhausted, the other is just getting started.

What we have as writers, by the very nature of our slow production, by the temporal requirements of our work, is an uncanny ability to keep on keeping on. And when we’re busy with a project, when we’re using the reflective voice of writing, we also have the additional super power of hindsight. As we shape narratives, as we figure out what makes each other tick, we’re also busy sorting out the past as an attempt to solve its dilemmas. By the time a reader has our work in their hands, our reflections are speaking from a past in which we’ve solved the typos, the structural issues, the complexities of dialogue—or, at the very least, have attempted to do so as an aspiration (which may, in fact, become inspiration for someone with greater ability than our own to finish the job).

The classic allegory and parable is a fine example of this in action. I’ve often admired these storytelling forms for their ability to hold the wisdom of the past while simultaneously asking the reader to solve the problem of its riddle in the present. This is unlike our contemporary, passive engagement with news in which outrage grows but little is solved. It is a salve and a solve. While it won’t stop war, perhaps it can grow hearts a little less inclined to seek warfare in the future.

Call me an optimist.

So in this month’s paid newsletter, we’ll take a look at a great example of the political allegory: The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin. As part of our craft discussion, we will look at how Le Guin uses totems of the past and deep symbols as a way to speak and critique the problems of the present and, in the act, ask us to look deeper, engage more, and make the change we want to see.

For our monthly stream session, I’ll perform a live reading of the story, followed by what I hope to be a lively discussion. I urge you to join the conversation as a paid subscriber, and help support my work.

Coming off the back of my recent AI talk as part of the Think and Drink lecture series, I’ve been thinking a lot about the center. Specifically, the cultural “center” and how, during various periods, the center moves or funnels towards an aesthetic tendency.

Our culture is currently in its conservative phase. Politically, that’s easy to see. Art too. Rebooted film franchises, nostalgia watches, fan fic rehashed as romantacy, genre mashups that offer little forward movement for any of the genres involved—It’s like art is stuck in an echo chamber of the 20th century.

But what’s the cause? Last week, I asked my students what’s at the center of this conservative cultural tendency. They, bless them, suggested that it all had to do with safety. Wasn’t COVID frightening? Aren’t our lives more precarious? Why take chances when everything seems so constantly scary and dangerous?

Regardless of where this tendency towards safety comes from, it’s a question I think many of us need to wrestle with as writers, especially if this art form is going to stay vital in a visual age of visual excess and distraction. How do we use our words with empathy while also shaking ourselves from the comfort of the safe forms we’ve become accustomed to?

Read more

IF WRITING IS LANGUAGE and language is desire and longing and suffering, and it is capable of great passion and also great nuances of passion-the passion of the mind, the passion of the body-and if syntax reflects states of desire, is hope, is love, is sadness, is fury, and if the motions of sentences and paragraphs and chapters are this as well, if the motion of line is about desire and longing and want; then why when we write, when we make shapes on paper, why then does it so often look like the traditional, straight models, why does our longing look for example like John Updike's longing? Oh not in the specifics but in the formal assumptions: what a story is, a paragraph, a character, etc. Does form imply a value system? Is it a statement about perception?

On Saturday the 14th of March, I’ll be speaking at the Book Nook in Amsterdam about AI and resistance. Writing this talk, I’ve been forced to think about hierarchical structures. Not in the sense of bosses and employees, but in terms of big publishing houses and those yearning to break through, copyeditors and syntactic rebels, tech oligarchs and those who value the power of language. I’ve been thinking of history and who gets to speak. And, more importantly, whose voice is lost in the din.

I had a student turn in a piece of work in these past weeks that wasn’t quite there. Even though it was nascent, it offered something really incredible in its unique use of content and voice. The student wrote about their struggles with sexuality and fitting in in a non-linear, rambling way that felt more like a feature than a bug (to steal the parlance of the marketing class). Stream of consciousness and foul language divested from that contemporary noise, and because of that, it was unorthodox even if it was ultimately undisciplined (in the sense that it needed more “work”).

I gave my feedback on the piece. The academy is based on hierarchies, and I do my best to not exert too much influence over my student’s work. I am always fearful I might break their imagination with rules—rules of what will succeed, what will fail, what is ultimately something monoculture. The student was receptive. They thanked me for my candor. But they surprised me when, with what encouragement, they apologized. They hadn’t had a chance to run the piece through Grammarly. That, they said, would even out the work’s deficiencies—as if that was the sum of the necessary work.

I can understand the appeal of AI programs like Grammarly. Facing hierarchal tenets of acceptance, one wants a magic eraser of struggle. But in the end, these so-called tools are homogenizers and nothing more. They are excuses for passive acceptance. If you’re a bad writer and ask it for help, it may just give your writing a boost. That may feel good for a time. It might be enough to find some modicum of success. If you’re a mediocre writer and you ask it for help, it stays the course, and well, you coast down that road forever. But if you’re a good writer, it has the ability to drain your writing of its potential, which is also your life.

What’s worse, is that if you’re a developing writer who is neither good nor bad yet, AI has the ability to steal your voice altogether—because what is your voice against the proof of an algorithm and the great democratizing effect of rules captured by limited data sets?

I think, at least in its current incarnation, AI is designed to take the best part of us and chew it up for its algorithm, prescribing the median value of our own creativity back to the artists eager for a shortcut to the brilliance they already possess.

Which is my concern for this month’s craft reading. For March, we’ll be looking at a short story that I believe defies expectations. A short story that spits in the eye of anyone who suggests AI is capable of real soul. This story is excellent because it exists in opposition to the rules of craft. It’s a story of spirit, and line, and how following those intuitions a machine can never possess can create something tactile … almost sticky.

The story is The Roads Amputated by the great Nate Liederbach. In our private discussion in the paid tier, we’ll talk about the ways Nate disrupts the norm to make something jaw dropping, and how we can follow his example of line level concern to the dramatic unexpected.

I hope you’ll sign up to support this newsletter and join in on the discussion.

Publication and public speaking news

First, I’ve got a new essay out in Effy Literary. If you haven’t heard, Effy is a great new initiative out of Jersey. They’re doing mighty things. I hope you like this little meditation on AI and art, and please read more of the great works Effy is championing.

Closely related, I’ll be giving a talk in Amsterdam as a part of the Think and Drink public lecture series. The Human Rebellion: Why Fiction is a Revolutionary Act will be a lively discussion on technology and how fiction writers champion what can’t be captured or commodified by big tech. There will be a lot of discussion about linguistic “irregularities”, cultural relativism, and Audrey Lorde. For those of you in Amsterdam, grab your ticket here.

Announcing online beginner writing classes and upcoming in-person classes in Amsterdam

As part of Honing House’s new year offerings, I’m offering newly revised beginner and intermediate writing classes. These classes will be running during the spring and early summer.

You can learn more about the upcoming class on the Honing House website and register on Meetup.

Advanced workshops will be available in the fall for writers who’ve attended the beginner and intermediate courses, or have applied with a writing sample. More news on that in the future.

I’m excited to offer more online and face-to-face instruction with brand new students.

Accountability Fridays

For the past 6 months (possibly more) I’ve been running a writers accountability session every Friday from 15:00-17:00 CEST. This (free) initiative has been a great success so far, and I’d love to see others join in. If you’re interested in a supportive group of writers meeting every week to work, drop me a line.

More posts, and trying (again) some new paid benefits

So, here comes the annual promise: more posts, but this time with feeling. Expect missives on the writing craft, teaching, and thoughts on why literature is more important than ever.

In addition to more frequent posts, I’m offering new paid tiers that expand on the things I’m doing in the academic classroom, with my private students, and in my own writing practice.

For supporting readers of the newsletter, I’ll be offering

• Paid subscriber benefits: Monthly and annual subscribers will get an extra post every month focused on a deep reading of a short story. We’ll focus on an element of “craft” exhibited by the piece and I’ll offer exercises that will help develop both reading and writing skills around that focus. In addition to an extra newsletter each month analyzing the piece and fielding questions from the comments, I will run an hour-long live video discussion where we’ll have a lively discussion about the piece in a welcoming environment.

• Founding members added benefit: For those looking for direct feedback on their work, but not interested in 1:1 coaching with Honing House, I’m thrilled to introduce The Feedback Club for founding members. For subscribers at this level, in addition to the benefits described above, I’ll provide a one-page editorial letter and line-level feedback on a piece of writing of up to 2000 words every … single … month. I think this is an exciting opportunity for anyone looking to workshop early writing, refine what’s almost finished, or get some insight into what’s working and what’s not for that tricky submission process. As my students will tell you, my feedback is worth every flinch and penny ;)

Thanks for reading the newsletter, and I look forward to sending more of these out again starting in March.

This is a quick missive to announce that I’ll be offering a one-night workshop in collaboration with The Story Lounge here in Amsterdam on November 20, 2025 between 6:30 - 9:30pm CET.

Here’s a description of what we’ll cover during Off to a Good Start:

Are you struggling to find the right start to your stories? Do you have the sense that your writing is being rejected because your stories refuse to hook editors?

We get it—starting a story, and getting it right, is hard. Luckily, there are skills you can learn to make your stories energized from the jump.

In this three hour class, writer Daniel J. Cecil will show you the tips and tricks you need to make compelling starts for your stories. You’ll discover how masters of the form construct explosive first paragraphs and how you can develop your own using three simple rules. By the end of this class, you will have learned the necessary writing skills for creating compelling beginnings for your stories and created or revised your very own beginning to make it really shine.

I hope some of you who are in and around Amsterdam will join me for this special masterclass—it’s a topic I’ve been working on with my students a lot recently, and I have PLENTY of tips and tricks to share.

If you want to attend, you can sign up for the workshop on Eventbrite. Subscribers to this newsletter and previous Honing House workshop attendees will receive €20 off the total price if booked in October (the discount is already applied when you click on the link).

Hope to see you there!

Other misc.

For those of you who enjoy personal updates, for those of you who remember reading about my time in Sardinia, I’ve taken a step forward and am now shopping my completed debut novel The Caves of the Mosel to agents and publishers. The lit publishing game is hard these days, so if you want to hear stories from the trenches, or if any of you out there have recommendations or connections, I’d really love to hear from you.

In the meantime, I’m finishing and sending out short stories and essays that were on the back burner while finishing the novel. It’s really exciting to pull out some of these drafts and see what’s good and what needs work. There’s a surprising amount of material to tinker with, and I’m tinkering a lot—finding ways to make my voice fresh again and surprise myself (and some editors or two). I’m sure you’ll see some of it in the near future. Stay tuned.

Speaking of seeing more in the future, starting in November this newsletter will go back into full swing with further essays on craft and the literary scene. More on that very soon.

Lastly, I’m a bit more active on Bluesky these days, which seems to be one of the least poisonous social platforms around. If you happen to be there, please give me a follow.

Keep in touch my friends,

Daniel

This newsletter offers a few updates on what I’ve been up to since my return from Sardinia, as well as new class and outreach initiatives for Honing House.

Elsewhere book launch

Two weeks ago I had the privilege of moderating the book launch of Elsewhere: A Personal Essay in Word and Photos by Katherine Oktober Matthews. During the conversation we discussed the essence of travel writing, how writers move journal writing into something public facing, and the importance of difference in creating tension and conflict. It was a really great conversation. If you’re interested, you can watch the recording below.

Announcing The Writers Co-op

At the recent American Book Center Summer Writers’ Night I had the privilege of introducing The Writers Co-op, a new collective of writing teachers in Amsterdam. The Writers Co-op was created as a collaborative effort to provide aspiring writers access to a wide network of learning resources. This initiative was spearheaded by Talia Stone, who runs The Story Lounge. I feel honored that Honing House is part of this initiative.

As a side note: The Story Lounge holds regular reading events, such as their upcoming Storytelling Night at Zoku. If you’re in Amsterdam and would like to be a part of the Storytelling Night, Talia is looking for readers! The deadline to submit your flash fiction on the theme “Lost and Found” is July 31. You can find more details on this detailed flyer.

Subscribe now

New Honing House class and writer accountability group

Finally, I’d like to announce that Honing House has a few new offers.

First, I will be running a one-evening class on submitting your writing. This class will cover finding lit mags and creating a submissions package, and will also offer tips and tricks for tracking your submissions, creating submission “hierarchies”, and cover common concerns around submitting (all with some lovely take-home cheatsheets). This two-hour class costs just €80. More information and tickets are available on the Honing House website.

Also, this week is the launch of the new Honing House Writers Accountability Group. The idea behind this initiative is to get people together for a few hours to sit down in a chair and write, free of charge. This community will be available online via Zoom, every Friday from 3-5 p.m. CEST. I’ll always be there, so drop on in. In time, I hope to hold this writing group hybrid, with a physical meetup alongside those dialing in virtually. More in the future.

Finally, In personal news, Renske and I got a puppy. Everyone, say hello to Dilla, my new writing companion.

I’ll see you all in a few weeks.

This is my final week at the Nocefresca artist residency in Sardinia.

The village I’m in (Milis) is isolated, quiet, and perfect for work. The solitude here has allowed me to turn away from the outside world long enough to discover a hypnotic frenzy of output.

Of course, the outside world still has its hold, and when I do check in on the news, society seems to be going to pieces: Protests in Los Angeles being broken up by militant cops; Greta and her brave cohort kidnapped; Two rich buffoons bickering as politicians make moves with real consequence.

It’s enough to make me want to run off into these hills and never come back. But it’s a temporary privilege to be here—it’s time to come home.

In Tarot (something I’ve been dabbling with while here as part of my creative routine), The Hermit is a seeker of knowledge who, in the Rider/Waite deck, stands on top of a mountain with a lantern holding the star of Solomon. The mountain is a visual metaphor for accomplishment, the lantern that of knowledge. The idea behind the card being that one needs to recede, temporarily, to achieve insight. But after that, it’s important to return to the world.

Making art full time, as I’ve been doing here, is a kind of magic. Maybe that’s why the novel I’ve been working on here is full of it. The magic that we call manifestation. The magic we call love.

This residency has been the creative space I’ve needed. Big shout out to the Nocefresca crew for facilitating the four weeks I’ve needed to finish this novel. I’m thrilled to say it’s finally ready to shop around to publishers. I hope it’s a book that many of you will enjoy reading

With this return: A few announcements

First, I’ll be moderating the online launch of Katherine Oktober Mathews’ new book Elsewhere: A Personal Essay in Photos and Words on July 1, 2025 at 6-7 p.m. CEST. You can learn more about this lovely book, the details of the event, and RSVP via the Eventbrite page.

Second, I will be giving a talk on July 2nd at the ABC Book Center Summer Writers’ Night. For those of you in Amsterdam, this event is a great opportunity to meet fellow writers and learn more about the great community of support we have in our city. More information will be available on the ABC website soon, but swing by that evening between 7-9 p.m. to participate if an update never appears.

Lastly, following this theme of return, Honing House is back from hiatus. I will be announcing a few one-off workshops (via this newsletter) in the coming weeks—everything from beginner’s creative kickoff courses to one-day workshops on more advanced “craft”. If you can’t wait for an event, or want more personal instruction, reach out to book a one-on-one coaching session.

Much love to you all.

I have a piece in the new Door = Jar Winter Issue. To celebrate, the journal is holding an online reading taking place December 12th, 2024, at 6pm ET (New York Time) via Google Meet. I’ll be in the mix, sharing my sonorous tone via bits and bytes. You can join the reading on the day via this link. Hope to see you there.

I’ll be back in January with more exciting writing news.

This newsletter is a hard one for me to write. When I started Honing House back in 2022, I was looking for an opportunity to teach creative writing in a country where academic programs for such fantastic, inventive work are few and far in between. About a year after starting Honing House I got a surprising call from a friend —he wondered whether I'd be interested in teaching travel writing at the esteemed Emerson College out of Boston at their Limburg campus. 

Well, friends, I jumped at the chance — these opportunities don't often fall out of the sky. As I’m writing, I've been teaching at Emerson for nearly two years. I've been overjoyed by the responses I've received in the classroom, the good reputation among students and faculty I've been able to achieve, and the challenge the curriculum offers. 

Luckily, over the past year I've been given more responsibility at Emerson. This is a good thing. It's stable, challenging work. But along with this blessing I’m beginning to find it  difficult to give Honing House — my private students and the workshops I’ve been developing and offering — the attention they deserve while also maintaining a writing practice of my own (as well as dealing with general day-to-day life needs). 

After some careful deliberation, including some sleepless nights and literal handwringing, I’ve decided to put Honing House on the back burner for a time. As such, I'll be stopping one-on-one lessons after December 15, 2024 and there are, at the moment, no new workshops planned for 2025.

This is a tremendously difficult decision — one I do not take lightly. I will likely return to giving workshops and lessons in the future, but I do not want to put a date on that just yet. And when I do, it will likely be in a completely different form.

In the meantime, I’m pausing any and all paid subscriptions to this newsletter. I will continue sending out missives for free, especially when I have news about my writing to share (and there will be a lot to share in the coming months — for example, I have a short story coming out in the Winter Issue of Door = Jar, which you can preorder now).

I will also share, on occasion, craft essays and my thoughts on creative writing pedagogy. I hope you’ll continue to read.

All the best for you and your writing for now, and you’ll be hearing from me very soon.

Love and peace,

Daniel J. Cecil

Thanks for your patience while waiting for this month’s newsletter. Last month, I had friends and family visiting Amsterdam, and anything outside of attending to them, or getting in what small amount of writing time I could, fell to the wayside.

I want to thank those of you who reached out. I’m still here, plugging away.

Speaking of which, a quick announcement: I have a new short story forthcoming in the Winter issue of Door=Jar. For those of you in the US, you’ll be able to pick up their Winter issue at Barnes and Noble or at select independent bookstores. If you’re in Europe, get in contact and I will wrangle one for you.

Also, if you missed the last newsletter, I announced that I had two flash fiction pieces appearing in the long-running indie lit mag Bull. Make sure to check those out too. These experiments in brevity have been a blast.

Now, onto this month’s rambling.

Listening to the characters talk

A running theme, a concern lately amongst my students: what to do with revisions?

The first draft is done. The writer, at this point, has taken some chances. They’ve made choices, one small one after another, and now there’s something. What could it be?

If a first draft is a good one, it offers a set of rules for moving forward. Maybe “rules” isn’t the right word. Perhaps what I mean is that the first draft draws borders. Here are the confines in which the action might take place. Here is the map for the war of conflict.

What a writer will often find, though, is that even if these borders are written strongly, in indelible ink, what exists inside those borders is murky. Inside the borders are character archetypes, effigies, straw men, buildings made of stucco and not much else, and fields without wildlife. The possibilities of what all this could become, beyond generic renderings, are as infinite as the thoughts within the writer's head and as plentiful as the people populating the earth and the lands on which they roam.

The writer, with the first draft, has attempted to tell a story that has come to them from somewhere else. Some artists feel it is just good old imagination talking. Some feel that it’s the universe speaking through their writing. Some might call the universe the muse. Regardless, the writer is an antenna, tuned to certain waves.

When writing down such ethereal transmission, the frequency is often full of static. What comes through the channel between the universe and the earthly vessel is unclear.

Writing the first draft of anything is kind of like playing a game of telephone with inarticulate kids. A phrase here and there might be right, but often the rest is a misheard word soup.

The greater problem: we live in a world of buzz. If you believe in energy forces and auras and telepathic chatter that’s nearly 8 billion voices competing with the frequencies we are naturally attracted to, those frequencies that create art. What’s worse is that the loudest of the voices—media and news and propaganda—creates suggestions that lead to a disruption of the wave we’re naturally attuned to. This becomes what we call the voice in our heads. This is the echo of capitalism. This is the critic. What if the ideas we’ve written down were someone else’s to begin with? How do we find our true voice?

All of it, a disorienting doppler effect.

So the main task of revision is to remove distortion from hearing what is truly being messaged by the creative wave. It’s about finding our true voice inside all the buzz. What are we truly interested in? What obsesses us? Which stories matter most? And who are the people we see in our heads, creating a story that conveys those messages clearly?

I’ve come to give similar advice to my students as I whisper to myself as I write these days: Let that first draft come out with all the distortion intact. There’s no need to fight it. Don’t fret it. Because as a revisionist, you become a codebreaker. You become an engineer of sound and distortion and clarity.

There’s this common saying among writers that at some point while revising, the character’s begin to speak. I think this is true, but it misses the point. If the characters are speaking to the writer at all, the important thing is that they’re right there, listening, ready to transcribe without distraction.

So, I’m a bit late getting the newsletter(s) out this month. Thanks for your patience.

I’d like to kick things off with a little announcement about my own writing: you can read two new short stories of mine over at Bull. I’ve had a great response already from those who have read them, and I hope you enjoy these flashes as well.

Now, onto the regularly scheduled programming.

Getting the writing done

I’ve got a small summer break from teaching duties at Emerson, and I’m using the spare time to get down to some serious work on my novel.

I’ve come to believe that writing effectively, and really finding the tempo for longer work, requires a period of intense focus—something the summer offers. But having too much time on your hands can be a problem too. Novels, unless you already have an agent and a publication date, don’t have deadlines. In terms of priorities, it can be easy to put it at the bottom of the to-do list.

Over the years, I’ve read extensively about the writing habits of successful writers to find ways to keep the creative locomotion going. Of course, there’s a lot of contradicting advice out there.

Do this. Don’t do that.

Even worse, reading so much advice, it’s easy to be lulled into the idea that what works for others will also work for you, especially when writers are prone to the hyperbolic or the completely fictionalized.

But I think some rules apply universally. There seem to be just two really, both of which I’ve used to build a solid routine for myself and to keep the writing prioritized.

Hopefully, these two rules will help spur you towards your next great written work.

Keep regular writing hours.

Marukami, a writer with over 30 novels to his name, has written extensively about his process as a novelist. He’s a bit fanatical about keeping regular office hours for his writing, claim to wake up at 4 a.m. to work for five or six hours. All before taking a swim and training for his next marathon.

In an old interview from The Paris Review, Joan Didion was quoted about her own writing process:

“I need an hour alone before dinner, with a drink, to go over what I’ve done that day. I can’t do it late in the afternoon because I’m too close to it. Also, the drink helps. It removes me from the pages. So I spend this hour taking things out and putting other things in. Then I start the next day by redoing all of what I did the day before, following these evening notes. When I’m really working I don’t like to go out or have anybody to dinner, because then I lose the hour. If I don’t have the hour, and start the next day with just some bad pages and nowhere to go, I’m in low spirits. Another thing I need to do, when I’m near the end of the book, is sleep in the same room with it. That’s one reason I go home to Sacramento to finish things. Somehow the book doesn’t leave you when you’re asleep right next to it. In Sacramento nobody cares if I appear or not. I can just get up and start typing.”

George Saunders claims routine is less important, that it’s crucial instead to break up old habits and remind ourselves each day why we’re writers in the first place. But once you’ve done that, you also need to sit your butt down in the chair and write.

What’s universal between these three approaches is that a writing habit needs to be consistent.

It’s probably too much of a luxury for most writers (myself included) to have the time Marukami does to work on a novel. Still, blocking out time each day to work on or think about your project ain’t a bad idea.

For example: I usually write for two to three hours in the morning after I hit the gym. This is my ideal scenario. But sometimes, given the nature of my teaching work, I can’t always write in the morning. When I was a young writer, any minor variation to this plan meant despair, which ultimately lead to not writing that day. The routine was broken! How could I possibly function?

Luckily, I’m older now. Wiser (or so I like to think). If my morning routine is shot, I don’t panic. Instead, I turn to my calendar, look for some space, and block out those 2-3 hours I missed. I treat that blocked time like a work meeting, or as if I have a doctor’s appointment. Meaning: I take the writing time seriously.

So much of writing is about touch and feel. Knowing, at the gut level, where things are going. Blocking out time each day—whether it’s an ideal morning scenario, or something else—ensures we don’t lose forward momentum.

Find an accountability partner.

Returning to the aforementioned lack of deadlines when writing a novel: having an accountability partner can light a fire under your ass when you’re prone to procrastination.

While I can’t find too much concrete information on famous writers who have used this method (though many writers have), I’ve found through personal experience that having someone you can regularly send pages to on a set schedule can be an absolute game changer.

Your accountability partner could be a writing group that has rotating submission requirements, an online fiction exchange, or trading work with a trusted writing friend (something I’ve done for years).

Or, you can subject yourself to something more brutal… a bit masochistic.

I’m a slow writer, one who’s extremely concerned with getting it just right. I won’t say I’m a perfectionist (we all make mistakes), but sometimes I can get hung up on the details. To get this current novel done, I know I need a bit more forward momentum—so I’ve set extremely strict guidelines on how much I need to produce during a week and found an accountability partner to keep me to it.

Here’s the deal: each Friday, I’m promised to send a new section of the book to my wife. This weekly deadline is on the calendar. It’s discussed at home. It’s a deal I can’t run away from. My brother in Christ … I live with her. There’s no hiding from my responsibility if I blow a deadline.

Talk about stress!

The thing is, it works. First and foremost, I have my incredibly supportive wife’s cheerleading to keep me going. To meet her expectations, I’ve pumped out more work over the past few weeks than I have in months. Best of all, the work is of much higher quality and it’s more focused than what I might produce working on my own deadlines. Why? Well, my wife is a tough (but fair) critic. I’m lucky to live with someone who is well read, and likes the same kind of fiction I do. So when the writing works and she praises it, I know I’m onto something. If it doesn’t work, and she stops reading, I know it’s time to double back and do better.

Since the writing is aimed at pleasing an audience I love and respect, the stakes are higher, and it makes me more eager to do my best and rise to the occasion.

Try it for yourself.

Upcoming class

Thanks for reading.

As a quick reminder: the start of our Introduction to Fiction Writing—Seven Week Summer Course is coming up on July 9. This introduction to fiction class will teach you the basics of fiction writing in seven, once a week modules. Here's what you can expect to learn:

Week 1: What is fiction anyway?
Week 2: Finding material and turning it into fiction
Week 3: Inciting incidents and common story shapes
Week 4: Creating characters and conflict
Week 5: Basics of perspective
Week 6: Creating compelling details
Week 7: Tactics for writing and revising your story
Week 8: Bringing it all together!

There are still spots available. If you’ve ever wanted to make the leap into writing fiction, this is the class for you.

The novel inhabits many forms—there are several essays in fragments, as well as segments in traditional story arcs blending together fiction and non-fiction into a slurry of competing genres.

There is a short section early in the book that I often assign to my students as a guide for paying attention. In it, Olga describes a syndrome she claims she is afflicted with when travelling, one that has an effect on her writing—recurrent detoxification syndrome. The symptoms of this syndrome include a tendency to repeatedly seek out and return to certain images. This ailment, she claims, can be “easily found in any atlas of clinical syndromes,” though it seems to be a term borrowed from literature on substance abuse, one adapted to her impulses as a tourist and a writer. The syndrome also describes the way Flights is composed:

“A syndrome is small, portable, not weighed down by theory, episodic.”

Olga’s recurrent detoxification syndrome revolves around things that are “spoiled, flawed, defective, broken.” She prefers to visit cabinets of curiosity over sterile art museums. She likes to see broken bones, the preserved remains of stillborn conjoined twins. It is in these cabinets that she finds “the rare, the unique, the bizarre, the freakish.”

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the 1990s. Perhaps I’m getting to that point in life when nostalgia for my teen years replaces the dull monotony of adult experience. Maybe it’s the sudden resurgence of 1990s fashion among my students that has the decade top of mind. Or perhaps I’m beginning to leverage the 1990s as a gritty alternative to the sheen of the contemporary now.

While the news is full of war reportage, coverage of trials involving corrupt politicians, and in-depth dives into the devastation of climate change, the city I live in seems to be getting a facelift. Long gone are most of the anarchist flags on the Spui. Bye-bye to hallowed cultural institutions and hello to the defunding of the arts in favor of barcades and bars with shiny surfaces. Electric bikes are everywhere, whizzing along carrying headphone-wearing zombies who ding on their phones rather than looking at the road. Botox lips and yoga pants. Dudes wearing overtly fascist haircuts, sharp against the soft silhouette of Gymshark sweatpants and hoodies. Disappearing are the cafes serving second-wave coffee with a little cookie on the side, places covered in posters of local acts playing to small crowds. In their place, sparsely decorated third-wave coffee shops with white walls, glistening machines, and coffees that cost €5 a pop.

I sound old. Kinda out of touch, maybe. But this isn’t a then versus now thing. This is about, like Olga, looking for the rare, the unique, the freakish. Where is it? Where has it gone? Is it a good thing when it disappears? Or is it something worth seeking after?

What I still love about living in Amsterdam is its small resistance to these changes, how the little details and history (for better or worse) persist. The beautiful cornices on certain buildings downtown that hide small statues of playful imps from pagan times. The rose bushes grown to incredible heights in the Jordaan, plants that have survived the people who planted them. The perceived chaos at busy intersections in the city, the way bikes and cars and mopeds all vie for first the moment the light turns, and how this chaos slowly unfurls into a freakish logic when stared at long enough.

Perhaps what I’m nostalgic for is more space for uncertainty. For surprise. For answers that arise from somewhere other than a boolean search. A different kind of uncertainty than the anxiety of always being on, always connected, always distracted, always “knowing”.

Back to my class: The assignment I give my students, along with Olga’s text on her curious syndrome, is to write down what they themselves find rare, unique, and bizarre. Many of my students have little to say on the subject. They don’t know. But it’s in that uncertainty that possibility arises. That’s where I tell them to start. And as scary as it might be, I tell them to turn off the phone, to leave it at home, and to go out into the world and get lost searching for this thing of unpolished wonder.

Honing House has a few upcoming classes before the summer that I’d love for you to join. Click the links below to find a full description of the course. Our fall agenda will be announced in late June!

May 27 — Two-Week Class: Revising Your Prose

June 4 — Four-Week Course: Make It Short—A Flash Fiction Class

July 9 — Introduction to Fiction Writing—Seven-Week Summer Course

I love to travel, but along with that, a certain anxiety always arises. Where will I find time to write? At home, I have a certain amount of wavering discipline that I use to instigate a writing practice. But on the road, I’m away from the routine I’ve built for getting writing done.

Writers are used to hearing from coaches and gurus and celebrated authors in fancy Paris Review interviews that if one wants to be a success, one needs to write every day without fail. Sure, there is a certain kind of wisdom behind the idea that writers should write as often as possible. Writing is an art of practice and duration—you learn to write by doing so, and it takes time (a lot of time) to create something worthwhile. But does a writer need to feel guilty if they aren’t always on a schedule?

I have long stretches of writing every day, and I enjoy these periods. There’s nothing like catching an idea and running with it. Hopefully, something comes from the effort. But the anxiety that I won’t be able to write while I travel, that I will have a short fallow period, bothers me. Why? Because it speaks to other intentions. When does writing every day change from an act of discipline and craft into something more insidious—that of production for the sake of creating commodities?

In the fabulous essay On Marble, Rachel Cusk examines the many ways marble has been used throughout history as a material for art and of tyranny.

She makes a very interesting observation about the difference between being an artist and a dictator:

The artist and the dictator stand at opposite ends of the concept of agreement, which is essentially the concept of storytelling. As a story does, the created object seeks agreement: unless successive generations agree with the statement the object makes, it will be destroyed by time. The artist makes a bet on that future perspective, even at the cost of dispensing with agreement in the now. By contrast, the dictator tries to stop time and control the future, by staking everything on the present moment.

I had this quote in mind while I was away. As a protest against my own tyranny, I didn’t write. I didn’t set the alarm for 5 a.m. (as I usually do). I didn’t write for a two-hour minimum. Instead, I set no expectations. If I did anything, I took notes. I observed. I tried to be in the present without worrying about the future. I’m not trying to make this out as a heroic act. It was lazy and indulgent. But by taking some time away, taking notes, and letting the world come to me instead of constantly grasping at it like a petty dictator, I’ve come back home ready to create better work. It’s very easy for an artist to become a tyrant. They bet everything on the here and now, produce for the moment, and chase quick publication. They create work that is formally compelling but lacking soul. And in an interesting way, working (or not working) against this tendency opens a conversation with the cultural moment—how do we create something true and lasting in a throwaway culture? How do we compose art worthy of future generations? And if that isn’t our goal, are we any better than a factory producing IKEA furniture?

Upcoming class

Just a quick reminder: Revising Your Prose, a two-week seminar on revision techniques, begins this month! Sign up if you’re interested in learning new methods for polishing your work.

Apologies.

There was quite a lot going on last month. I travelled a bit—to Terschelling for a weekend with my in-laws, and to Paris as well (but more on that later). I also moved from my old office in Bos en Lommer to a new one on the Amstelkade, right where De Pijp turns into De Rivierenbuurt. This is one of my favorite areas of the city—my new office is right across from the famous Okura Hotel. The new space is peaceful and quiet, and will be the perfect venue for taking on new coaching students and giving online classes, as well as finishing my new novel and a few short story projects I have on the go.

In other news, two of my short stories were recently accepted at Bull, which I’ll share as soon as they’re published. Exciting by these pieces of flash, and I hope you will enjoy reading them.

Annie Ernaux in Paris

As previously mentioned, I travelled to Paris a few weeks ago for an excursion with my Travel Writing students from Emerson College. The excursion was an excuse to give the students a walking tour from Notre Dame into Le Marais, to talk about the history of the city, and to explore observational techniques for creativity through collective exercises using active (and attentive) journaling.

The capstone of the walking tour was a visit to La MEP, located in the heart of Le Marais, where an exhibition celebrating the work of Annie Ernaux was on display. The exhibition, Exteriors—Annie Ernaux and Photography, is loosely based on her book Journal de dehors (published in English as Exteriors). The photos in the exhibit were selected by Ernaux as reflections of her own observational techniques and aesthetics. Many of the photographs were part of larger series that, when put together, create stories, mimicking the same collage style that Annie Ernaux uses in her writing.

Here’s an example from the exhibit, Shinjuku Station, Tokyo, Japan, 1962 by the Japanese photographer Hiro.

Here’s a short excerpt from Exteriors that weds nicely to this example of photographic collage:

At the Charles-de-Gaulle-Étoile station, a man in his thirties gets into a Métro carriage and sits down on a folding seat. He’s wearing a two-piece suit; there’s nothing special about him, except maybe his trainers, which look slightly out of place. Suddenly he leans forward and rolls one trouser leg up to his knee. You can see the alabaster skin bristling with hairs. He pulls up his sock with both hands, gives it a tug, then rolls down the trouser leg. He does the same thing with the other sock.

Later on, he stands up, leans against the wall, undoes his jacket and lifts his T-shirt. He scrutinizes his stomach for some time, then pulls down his T-shirt. Clearly, his intentions are not intended to provoke; they are the ultimate manifestation of loneliness—true loneliness—in the midst of the crowd. Besides him, there is a plastic bag, the trademark of the homeless. When someone loses their home and their job, how long does it take before the presence of other people no longer prevents them from doing perfectly normal things which, in public, are considered to be unacceptable? When do they start to drop the ‘good manners’ they were once taught at school and at home, over the dining-room table, when they used to fall asleep dreaming of the big bright future? He got off at Auber.

Notice the flat writing style, the lack of judgment and sentimentality. Here, we see Ernaux observe from afar, like a journalist, unimpassioned. Hiro’s photo and Ernaux portrait of a crowded train are similarly rich in detail, but isn’t a novelist (a term Ernaux doesn’t like to apply to herself) meant to reveal character and invent narrative arc? Why, then, does Ernaux write in this way, cataloguing details and nothing more?

From an interview in the White Review, Annie Ernaux states:

“For me the je (ed: meaning the I, in French) is not an identity, but a place, marked by human experiences and human events. That is what I try to illuminate through my writing. I say je transpersonnel because it is not the individual, or the anecdotic, that interests me, but that which is shared, whether that be social, or even slightly in the order of the psychological, in the realm of reaction.”

So Ernaux wants, in a way, to write so that she herself is preserved (as discussed in my last newsletter) but also so that she disappears into the subject matter. And in this way, a photography exhibit based on Ernaux’s work makes sense, and also reveals the reasons she writes. For a photo to be made, a photographer (a living being) must be present to capture the image. Still, the photographer is only there as an ethnographer. Their voice is unheard, their gaze objective. It is what is captured, what is shown, that tells the story. Similarly, in reading Ernaux, one rarely meets judgement (except when she writes about wealth disparity, or turns her observations on herself). Like the photographer, she is there to SEE and to translate what she sees into a record of our time, to show the connections so many of us miss. This is why she writes—to show our universal flaws, to disappear into it, to become the literature itself.

And perhaps there’s something quite noble about this approach to writing in an age of solipsism. When the writer fades into the background, when characters are removed and the naked presence of the world, without emotional quality, is presented, we can come to understand each other in a new way—as part of a series, a collage of events, that we piece together as best we can to discover a narrative whole.

Upcoming classes!

We have a few classes coming up that I’m really excited about, and I hope that some of you will join.

April 29: Turning the Private Into the Public: A Fiction(ish) Seminar

This class will touch on many of the topics I’ve already discussed here—how a writer can use their journals to create exciting, challenging work that blurs the autobiographical with the fictional. This is an extension of the work I’ve been doing with my Travel Writing students, and experimenting with in my own writing. This one-day class is a great entry point for people who journal but have never “written” before. There will be lots of generative exercises, prompts for journalling effectively, and more. The three hour class costs just €150 and will take place online. Capped at 15 students! You can read a full description of the class and sign up here.

May 27 and June 3: Two-Week Class: Revising Your Prose

For many writers, revision is where the work loses its charm, and where they often get stuck. This two week class will help writers learn techniques for developmental edits and revising prose on the line-level to get it publication ready. This two-week class is just €200 and is capped at 15 students so that we have plenty of time for Q&A. Sign up using this link!

A few final announcements.

Announcements, announcements—every month there seems to be a change, but even after two years of this newsletter, I’m always finding ways to tweak.

First off, I’m taking down the paywall. I want folks to support my writing, but I also want what’s here to be accessible for everyone. So, all posts in the archive will now be free for everyone. Paid subscribers will still get extra perks, including discounts on classes, free one-on-one sessions, and more, but the second newsletter of the month is now also free for all.

That said, if any of you are at all interested in supporting this newsletter and the efforts that go into Honing House (and my writing in general), please subscribe! Every dollar/euro keeps the hounds at bay and ensures that I never again have to write another word of advertising copy.

Join our Discord Channel! In an effort to keep the discussion going long after the newsletter goes out, I also want to facilitate a place to chat about literature and writing that doesn’t engage with the toxicity of Twitter and other social media. So, I’ve started a Discord salon that anyone can join, free of charge, no strings attached. I want this Discord channel to be a place we can all talk about the books we’re reading, ask questions about writing, and maybe find others to read their work—a kind forum, if you will, like the good old days of the internet when chat (and free stuff) was king!

Until next time.