* Mailed a birthday card to my niece. She's turning six! * Finally got off my ass and ran stairs--3000 of them. I have only ran stairs...

Tuesday 4/26/22 * Pitched something on Sonny Clark. I have a lot of strong jazz pitches out there right now: The Penguin Guide to Jazz,...

Monday 4/25/22 People like to underwrite--that is, make an excuse for--their laziness, terror of risk--putting themselves out there at...

Monday 4/25/22 I worked at this hardware store once and there was this other guy who worked there, a Puerto Rican, who called himself...

Monday 4/25/22 I wrote a story last night called "Bitches," which is entirely about guys calling each other bitches. It's actually quite...

Sunday 4/24/22 A pointless day. Began writing an introduction for Glue God: Essays (and Tips) for Repairing a Broken Self, the computer...

Saturday 4/23/22 I believe we're done here. Don't hold me to it. Things happen, occur, develop, but I think I have There Is No Doubt:...

Saturday 4/23/22 She knew now. She had always known, maybe. What she was going to do. What she had done. Or what she was presently doing....

Saturday 4/23/22 I was a selfish asshole several ways over, and I found myself thinking about that Bobby Orr book I used to read. If we...

Friday 4/22/22 The one hour video of the talk about my 33 1/3 book on Sam Cooke's Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963 for the Arlington...

On the death of two right wingers linked for all-time. Even though I grew up in Boston, and was loyal to my hometown Bruins, there was no...

Saturday 4/23/22 I'm going to write an introduction for Longer on the Inside: Very Short Fictions of Infinitely Human Lives. You have to...

Thursday 4/21/22 Tears streaming down my face for the last half hour. Going through "Fitty" again. I had done the first two sections, as...

Tuesday 4/19/22 A day to get after things. I'll document what happens as it happens. Fairly late right now--about quarter after six in...

Tuesday 4/19/22 Do you ever think there’s a spot in nature that wakes up on a morning and says, “I think I’ll take a human today?” Some...

Tuesday 4/19/22 As I was writing that post yesterday, I checked the current short story in The New Yorker, knowing it would be the usual...

Tuesday 4/19/22 A man decided he was going to let it fly. “Enough!” of the stage-management of his words, he thought. All of that effort...

Monday 4/18/22 Patriots' Day. Easter, of course, was hard. I am alone every day of every year of my life, having no one, but certain days...

Monday 4/18/22 It's time to start making a new series in these pages, the title of which you see above. Let's call this the first entry....

Sunday 4/17/22 Worked on an 1100 word story this morning that I had begun the other day called "The Spot." It's about the unseen,...

Sunday 4/17/22 * The most important ability for any athlete is the ability to stay healthy. Everything else is moot without it. It's also...

Saturday 4/16/22 Not a great performance today. It's hard to do anything when you feel like there's nothing you can do that could change...

Saturday 4/16/22 Okay, look. I want to see novel work this week. This cluster of new stories finished. The longer story "Complete Set"...

Friday 4/15/22 I had this editor who was so bad at writing, and he wanted me to review his books. Everything at his literary journal...