The OP Is Correct about the Word "Chartreuse"

i wasn't supposed to write about roses or blood or silver
https://www.tumblr.com/inkskinned/728362794212343808/when-i-wrote-this-2-years-ago-i-put-in-the-tags

This is a grim but still fantastic set of posts about writing, and also about teaching. This paragraph really hit home for me:

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But anyway, concerning what the first post says about writing, I get the feeling that a lot of MFA programs are full of a very special flavor of exclusivity. If you take a group of people from the same age cohort and cultural background who all have the same financial ability to attend the same MFA program, of course you're going to see similarities in what they write. MFA programs therefore generate in-house standards about "creativity" and "originality" that no one who hasn't been through the program could ever be expected to understand, which is one of the many reasons why it's so difficult for the work of "outsiders" to make it out of the slush pile. I'm not throwing shade at the OP, whose posts are a critique of this mentality. I'm just saying that this is a thing, and it's frustrating.

On Anxiety and Feeling Lost

I want to talk briefly about another reason why I have so much anxiety recently, which is the gun violence in my neighborhood. Content warning for real-life homicide under the cut.

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