Welcome to my new Netflix show!

It’s called:

CLUTTERING IS GOOD ACTUALLY: IT IS LIKE A NEST MADE OF STUFF BUILT TO PROTECT YOU FROM FEELING FEELINGS

It’s a 13-episode season, each with a vital lesson at its heart!

Lesson One:

If an object sparks nostalgic regret and instills you with a curious mix of shame and forbidden pleasure, that object goes on a special shelf and that special shelf is called “your bed.”

Lesson Two:

If you can’t remember where you got an item or why you even have it that’s an opportunity to become friends with this mystery object.

Keep it close!

No, closer.

NO, CLOSER.

whispers: let it touch your skin

whispers: let it inside you

Lesson Three:

If you throw out an object someone gave you, they’ll know.

They’ll fucking KNOW.

And they’ll STOP LOVING YOU.

Lesson Three-Point-Five:

Never throw away a child’s drawings.

Not even the shitty ones.

Every time you throw away a child’s artwork, a child’s pet dies.

Lesson Four:

You only have enough books when you can build a castle out of them.

Yes, with a moat.

OF COURSE A MOAT, JUDY, STOP ASKING STUPID QUESTIONS

Lesson Five:

Clothes naturally move toward the organic superstructure known as “a pile.”

This is science.

Nature abhors a vacuum but fucking loves a pile.

Lesson Six:

One day you will die and the best gift you can leave for your loved ones upon passing is a house full of dubious objects containing questionable value, the kind of objects that would earn a sour face from any curator on Antiques Roadshow. Collecting things is sometimes about creating a physical burden to pass along to your family members BECAUSE THEY DESERVE IT

THEY KNOW WHAT THEY DID

THAT’S RIGHT I’M TALKING ABOUT YOU, COUSIN MARY

WHERE’S MY CHAFING DISH YOU HARRIDAN

OH OH I’M NOT GETTING IT BACK

WELL FINE I JUST LEFT YOU 20 SHOEBOXES FULL OF CABLES COLLECTED WITH UNCERTAIN POINTS OF ORIGIN

THEY MIGHT BE PRINTER CABLES OR RCA VIDEO CABLES OR THE CHARGING CORD TO SOME KNOCKOFF PALM PILOT FROM 1998

MAYBE ONE OF THEM CHARGES A SEX TOY

YOU JUST DON’T KNOW

THAT’S FOR YOU TO SORT OUT, MARY

YOU RAT

Lesson Seven:

Oh, yeah, you’re going to need more skeletons.

Lesson Seven-Point-Five:

Remember, if you can’t afford skeletons?

You can always make them.

Your house is a home and your home is a trap to any wayward soul or feral animal that finds its way in there! All a tomb needs is four walls, after all.

Lesson Eight:

You’ll fit into that sweater someday.

Remember, we all become skeletons in the end, and skeletons can wear most clothing without concerns over size or fit. Death is slimming!

YES JUDY WE ARE TALKING A LOT ABOUT SKELETONS

SKELETONS ARE IMPORTANT JUDY

GODDAMNIT

Lesson Nine:

If you throw something out, that creates waste.

But if you keep it, it contains value.

As compost, eventually.

Eventually we all become compost, Judy.

Lesson Ten:

Yes, MORE books, who the fuck ever said to STOP buying books

Lesson Eleven:

Break is now officially-officially over for me — like I was kinda back last week, but our child remained off of school for the week so we were still half-assing it, more or less.

It was a good break.

We saw Bumblebee, which was actually a lot of fun — a G1 Transformers adventure which really, more people should’ve seen. It’s like A GIRL AND HER PONY, except, her pony is a Transformer? Whatever. It’s a blast. Also saw Mary Poppins Returns, which was also a lot of fun and full of the light and whimsy and goodness I sorta needed to get my 2019 started — it drags maybe a little in the middle, with maybe one song too many, but overall, a joy to behold.

Christmas was good. New Years was good. Nothing particularly exciting — I mean, sure, we accidentally cooked Santa in the fireplace (ha ha my bad) and on the New Year I fired a rifle in the air in the ANCIENT WENDIG WAY, and the rifle bullet took a chip out of the moon? But that’s okay, I’m pretty sure that’s where the secret Nazi base was, so, for reals, YOU’RE WELCOME.

There is, of course, news.

First, if you were looking to pre-order Vultures and you wanted a signed copy with a customized death prediction, well, once again Let’s Play Books has you covered. Click here and they’ll get you set up. (You can actually order any of the books in the series this way, btw.)

I should also note that Vultures — out January 22nd! Two weeks (and a day)! — is in some people’s hands already in ARC form, and a head’s up to those people: the book ain’t right. It’s the wrong version of the book, pre-edit, and though I don’t think it’s dramatically different, it’s got enough errors and such that I’m kinda disappointed people might be using it for review copies.

Be aware, regardless.

Wanderers, on the other hand, has a longer road to publication (July 2nd!) but that book has already begun to collect fancy blurbs from a series of wonderful authors — I’m sitting on a very nice collection of very kind comments, and the publisher has posted a few of these, so I’m going to post the first three here, too —

Usually, I do a writing-related resolution for myself and other writers if they care to borrow it — but this year, all I got is:

Persist, writers.

Your stories will outlast this peculiar, fucked-up moment in history, but for those stories to outlast, you first gotta write ’em.

I don’t know who you are or what you write: maybe what you need to write is raw escapism, or maybe your form of resistance and persistence demands you use your stories to tackle the hinky fuckery going on. But resist, and persist, with art, and with narrative.

You can do it. But it won’t be easier. I expect it’ll be harder this year just as it was harder in 2018 — harder than it feels like it should be. But that makes it all the more worth doing. Don’t let your stories be lost to this bullshit. Save them. Write them.

Persist.

Persist. Forgive yourself. Write despite — or better yet, write TO spite. Embrace the game of inches and understand you won’t always sprint for miles. One word at a time, one sentence, one paragraph, one scene, a house built a brick at a time.

Some days will be harder than others. Turn away from the news when you can. Save time for yourself, give it to yourself as a gift before you give your time to anybody else, or to anywhere or anything else. Art hurts. Stories are squirmy. We live in strange times. Persist.

You need to do it. We need you to do it. Your stories are yours. Full of you. Full of what you believe and what you fear, brimming with your notions both conscious and unconscious, tied to all you’ve known, you’ve loved, you’ve hated. The world needs you and your tales.

PERSIST.

There’s no map but the one you draw. No process of anyone’s you can borrow. You gain your groove by wearing it into the floor one micrometer at a time. It’s erosion. Water on stone to find its path. It makes it harder in times like these because we want it to be math. PERSIST.

You don’t know you can do it. You don’t know that you belong. You can do it. You belong as much as anybody. You’re an impostor, sure, because we’re all impostors, we’re all here unasked for, unbidden, uninvited, wearing our masks.

Persist anyway.

I worry for those just starting, just trying to begin — what a difficult time for you to try to start off on a creative path. But it’s vital you do it. We need your voice, your energy, your ideas. It won’t be right out of the gate. That’s hard. But true. And yet you persist.

Throw some of the fucks out of your fuckbasket. Autonomous functions get harder when we overthink them. Sleeping. Breathing. Writing is like that, too. Write anyway. Write without thinking too much, too hard. Offload your worry to Future You. Just write. And persist.

Bleed on the page if you gotta. Sing and scream. Be angry there. Be vigilant and sad and unsafe. Write madly and with undistilled fury. Write with love, too. Love for yourself even if you can’t see it. Love for the story and the process — even if you can’t feel it.

Persist.

There’s no one way forward. Forward isn’t always forward. Sometimes it’s sideways and sidesteps: hinky, wonky, janky-ass backroads and short-cuts and getting lost in dark forests. Sometimes you go BACKWARD. That’s okay, too. Whaddya do?

That’s right, you persist.

Sometimes writing isn’t even writing, sometimes storytelling is about thinking, about chewing on something, it’s just you revisiting it again and again, slow-roasting it over hours, days, weeks, months, even years. Recognize that. Persist through it.

And writing is rewriting, too. It’s getting it wrong before you get it right. Sometimes it’s getting it wrong, then even WRONGER, then fucking it all up before you can see it, lined up like a line of crystals in crepuscular beam of sunlight. That’s how it is, sometimes. Persist.

You got this. You won’t feel like you got this. I don’t feel like I got this. I feel overwhelmed by it. I worry I’m not good enough or that I don’t belong. Every book is harder than the last. But I keep on.

And so will you.

Persist, persist, persist.

Into 2019. And past it.

Merry happy fellow word-herders, ink-slingers, penmonkeys.