On green-lighting yourself.
Legitimacy cannot be bestowed. You have to take it. On the structural reasons writers wait for permission that isn't coming, and what it actually looks like to begin without it.
Episode pageThe Difficulty · Complete archive
Twice a week, plus the Working Publisher Thursday digest. Honest conversations about the choices that shape a creative life, for working writers, makers, and practitioners building real, sustainable practices.
Legitimacy cannot be bestowed. You have to take it. On the structural reasons writers wait for permission that isn't coming, and what it actually looks like to begin without it.
Episode pageA Saturday essay-format episode on internal conflict, the part of the work that doesn't go away, that you have to make a working relationship with rather than solve.
Episode pageThe launch episode for Crossroads Publishing Group. On Virginia Woolf, Sylvia Beach, the long tradition of writers who built their own publishing infrastructure, and the case for doing it now.
Episode pageA career trajectory conversation: Texas sportswriting, the pivot to stand-up comedy, and the through-line of a writer's voice across forms that look unrelated from the outside.
Episode pageReflections on co-founding C&R Press in 2006, running it through 2015, and the case for what a small press can be now, different from the model that produced the last generation of independent publishers.
Episode pageA Saturday Descent format episode on midlife, the ego's resistance to its own diminishment, and the work of descent as a different kind of growth than the upward arc culture trains for.
Episode pageWhy the work you most need to do is often the work you most resent, and what happens when you stop running from it. On the gap between the work that pays and the work that pays a different kind of debt.
Episode pageNew episodes Monday and Thursday mornings, plus the Saturday Descent essay format. Available on Substack and the major podcast apps.