7 things worth sharing this weekend

+ what i've been consuming

Hey, I’m writing this from the nice confines of my friend’s porch in Nashville and I’m not used to green grass or the quiet hum of a lawnmower.

Spring!

I’ve been traveling and seeing family this week so I missed the mid-week update.

But I read some stuff…

1. No such thing as a waste from

   Austin Kleon

   • Believe that there is no such thing as waste. Creative work is the residue of time “wasted.” Of materials “wasted.”

   • I also try to encourage my kids to keep working and creating drafts no matter if it’s a “keeper” or not

2. MY COMMENTS ARE IN THE GOOGLE DOC LINKED IN THE DROPBOX I SENT IN THE SLACK at McSweeney’s

   • Perfectly captures the boondoggle of the modern work experience

   • h/t to my friend Russ for sending

3. No one buys books from

   Elle Griffin

   • I would’ve written about this during the week if I would have had the time, some stats:

     • The DOJ’s lawyer collected data on 58,000 titles published in a year and discovered that 90 percent of them sold fewer than 2,000 copies and 50 percent sold less than a dozen copies.

     • Most acquisitions are for celebrities and politicians

     • 96% of books sell fewer than 1000 copies

   • Keep writing (lol)

4. In defense of trad publishing (Twitter thread from Nat Eliason)

   • On another note, Nat adds his 2 cents about publishing with a traditional publisher

   • This is a non-fiction finance memoir, not fiction, so it’s different than a lot of the stats above

5. Here’s an interview with Justin Taylor &

   Lincoln Michel
   about Justin’s new novel & Justin is one of my favorite writers. I’ll definitely be buying Reboot.

   • “Reboot is a hilarious and thoughtful romp through our culture of endless rebooting—with detours into toxic online fandom, climate change, conspiracy theories, and more—following a wash-up actor who is trying to simultaneously reboot his life and the teen TV drama he starred in.”

6. The Virtuous Mean Between Time Drunkenness and Work Martyrdom by

   Peter N Limberg

   • Work should neither be demonized nor overly glorified but wisely seen as a necessary aspect of life that offers an opportunity for timelessness, allowing us to serve those who matter most.

7. Maggie Nelson on the conversations she wants to be having at The New Yorker

From the archive

Notes on Consumption

• Enjoying The Biography of X after re-starting it a week or 2 ago. I understand the story better now that I’m reading it in print

• My parents live in Shreveport, Louisiana, a dying(?) mid-tier city kinda holding on to dear life, but the library had this book about New York by Colson Whitehead which I feel like I read part of the last time I was in New York??? Anyway, Colson Whitehead = good writer, and good reflections on the city eats you up in a weird way

• I may go see the Alex Garland movie Civil War tonight while I’m in Nashville. Nice!

• Here’s my Spotify On Repeat playlist if you want to know what I listened to while driving 9 hours from Shreveport to Nashville in a rental car that I got at the last minute b/c my previous reservation fell through (adulting!)

What are you reading? LMK

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Last thing

“Every act of creation is first of all an act of destruction.” ― Pablo Picasso

Keep going-

Josh Spilker