Finn Schubert

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Not Writing Advice

Creative Process Manifesto

We deserve to put work out there that is still in progress. This is still in progress. We deserve systems for sharing and archiving our work that are weirder and wilder than a chronological list of every newsletter we've ever sent. We deserve rest. We deserve to re-examine

What's your weird writer thing?

One of the core beliefs of this experiment is we deserve actual tools to get unstuck, not advice on what worked for whatever famous author or some cis white business bro telling us how to have better habits. But I am sort of fascinated with the overall fascination around famous

The Coffee Mug Theory of Writing Process

This is just a little thought I've been playing with. I'm not sure if I'm ready to commit to this theory, but hey, that's what a theory is, right? I looked it up just to be sure. A theory is "a

Visuals, layout, reader experience, and you

When I published my essay collection Even the Cemeteries Have Space Here, I made the layout choices very intentionally to create a sense of spaciousness for the reader. Shea in the Catskills contributed artwork that further deepened the reader's spacious and reflective experience. I was asked about an

Does a computer give your drafts "too smooth a gloss"?

In November, following the publication of his presidential memoir, it emerged that Barack Obama wrote the entire 760-page tome by hand, on yellow legal notepaper with a pen. A pen!? "I still like writing things out in longhand, finding that a computer gives even my roughest drafts too smooth

Are templates running our creative lives?

We need to talk about templates. These days, if you'd like to communicate an idea to another person, other than perhaps in casual conversation, there's a template for you. There's a Powerpoint template. There's an Instagram template. There's a website

A writing approach I'll never use

I have a confession. Judge if you want. I have always hated index cards. I have hated them since fourth grade when we were taught some irritating method of organizing our "bibliography" by tediously writing various information about books in specific places on the index cards. The directive