74 Short Essays on Writing

My new book is out today!

Last weekend, I was on a writing retreat. I knew I wanted to put out a book this month. My first guess was that it would be finishing a romance novel for my pen name, a project that is already 30k deep and that I hoped to finish this weekend.

Nope. Wrong book. Even though I did everything right, and reread my draft on the train down, and took worldbuilding notes to make my new reference sheet, and listened to the playlist to get back into the world, still no luck. That book was not supposed to get finished this past weekend.

It was a different one. The book that comes out today.

Oh, by the way — you’ve been watching me write this book all along.

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I’ve always treated my newsletter mini-essays as craft dispatches that can stand on their own. I always hoped they’d be helpful, re-readable, and lead to genuine shifts for writers. In the back of my mind, I always hoped that they might eventually live in their own collection.

I pictured it as a handy reference book for writers, with a variety of topics, themes, and advice on sustaining a writing life. I wanted it to be something writers could turn to for inspiration and support.

So last weekend, I decided to pull up my email archives, and start collecting the essays.

I had a vision, and imagined that I would end up with 72 essays. Then I thought no, I probably don’t have that many. So I made the working title of my new document “48 essays on writing.”

When I finished collecting all of the newsletters, taking out the too-short ones or the ones I didn’t find helpful, I had 74 essays.

I realized that I had a book.

I revised and expanded it to 210 pages. Many essays got re-written and fully replaced. (There are about 10+ brand new ones that only exist in this book).

It became clear that this book, if I stopped making excuses, could fully exist in its final form by the end of the weekend.

So, I thought about what the release date might be. Everything started to come together to support my self-imposed deadline. I typically put out new newsletters on Tuesdays. Also, books come out on Tuesdays. I realized that March 11 was a Tuesday. 11 is my lucky book release day — Witch House came out on August 11 (my birthday!) and Sidewinder came out on July 11 the following year. So, maybe I’ll just collect all the 11s in each month to be my book’s birthdays.

Also, Mercury retrograde starts March 14 so it felt like another layer of fate to release it before then (by the way, there’s a Mercury retrograde essay in the book!).

Now, because of the way uploading/approval works, the listed release dates for the ebook/paperback aren’t exactly March 11…but you and I both know that today is the true birthday of this book.

Without further ado:

A PORTABLE PRACTICE: 74 short essays on writing

You can read A PORTABLE PRACTICE in ebook and paperback today.

Thank you, readers, for being the reason I finished writing it! This book is for you.