What's all this then, eh?

A loose guide at what to expect

I wrote my first magazine story five years ago. It didn’t bear my name because I compared my first employer to Nazi enablers. Last month, I attached my name to it (coinciding with the publication of a confessional essay in the Nation.)

I loved the writing experience so much that I gave up nights and weekends to keep doing it (as the most extroverted person I know, this was actually a pretty huge sacrifice!)

Five years later, for the first time in my career, I’m devoting all my time to writing. Previously, I always had some kind of day job. This had its advantages, namely that I didn’t need to figure out how to make enough money to support myself with my writing (spoiler: it’s very hard!). My paycheck allowed me to spend more time researching and writing stories than would otherwise be possible.

I probably spent around 200 hours on my Current Affairs feature on psychedelics, Make America Trip Again. The final piece came out to nearly 9,000 words (I cut nearly as many before submitting). I won’t tell you the hourly rate, but let’s just say the Beatles were still a thing when I would have been making minimum wage. (This isn’t a knock on Current Affairs and other left publications—basically no one in left media is making money).

The incredible art for Make America Trip Again by Nick Sirotich

I was also able to be more selective in who I would write for and on what I would write.

The main drawback is that I learned and produced more slowly than I would like. I also found it impossible to do certain kinds of deep research and reporting on my nights and weekends, e.g. I gave up on a project reporting on ibogaine, a Central African psychedelic that can break opiate physical dependence in a single trip, because reading tons of medical papers demanded more unbroken concentration than my schedule allowed.

And I didn’t get to spend all my time doing what I loved most!

Last month, I wrapped up a year-long, half-time contract as a publishing consultant at New York Focus, an incredible investigative news nonprofit covering New York state and city politics (they got a great writeup in the NY Times here). I’m immensely lucky to have worked with them and agree with former Times executive editor Dean Baquet that Focus does “great stuff.”

I’m finally throwing myself fully behind writing for the foreseeable future. I’m spending a few months on a big print feature about AI (when I’m not procrastinating with Substack posts).

Finding my voice

Writing as a freelancer is weird. You’re constantly pitching stories with a specific publication in mind. On the off chance one is accepted, you’re then writing for a specific editor, who will end up shaping (sometimes to enormous degrees!) the words under your byline. This can make it hard to find your voice as a writer, as you contort yourself into the shapes expected by the people ultimately deciding whether your story will ever see the light of day.

(Editing has value, to be clear. I’ve been fortunate to work with excellent editors who tend to improve my writing. A world where all writing becomes the unmediated ramblings of take-machines is not the one I want to live in.)

What to expect when you’re expecting (my Substack in your inbox)

I love reading blog posts. Not everything that’s worth reading will fit into the somewhat constrained box of “newsworthiness.” Sometimes, an idea is strong enough to not need a character or narrative arc or be particularly “timely”. Blogs can do a great job of filling the space between a Tweet and an article.

My way-too-long process of researching articles often leads to interesting, more in-the-weeds content that I cut for space. There are tons of cool ideas and facts that never make it out into the world because of the (often) legitimate publishing constraints. So maybe this looks like a few thousand words I wrote about what Winograd Schemas say about AI progress, or more obscure chapters from the history of psychedelics.

I also may embark on a long-term writing project soon, and publishing early stage bits could help refine my thinking and draw useful feedback, kinda like a comedian workshopping material for a special in tiny comedy clubs (except my mistakes will go onto the internet forever).

When I write for a publication, I try really hard to only include true, accurate things. I don’t expect everyone to agree with what I put out there, but I want them to believe that what I publish correctly conveys people’s positions. So far, I think I’ve managed this pretty well, in no small part because I’ve been able to go deeper than the economics of journalism lets most people go.

But a big drawback of this approach is that being publicly wrong can be really useful! People who know more may correct you or change your mind about something less objectively knowable. It can also be useful to be a bit more speculative or experimental, in the right formats.

For example, I’ve seen people Tweet something I thought was true, only to get corrected in a reply. If they hadn’t been publicly wrong, I would have gone on believing the same wrong thing. And while I’d love for media to be more accurate, reading bad takes can be generative—outrage is a powerful writing motivator!

Holding myself to quasi-academic standards also dramatically reduces how much and how quickly I publish.

I often come across such bad arguments or weakly cited claims made about topics I follow that I want to refute. Sometimes I’m halfway through drafting some long Tweet thread before I give up, thinking: what’s the point? But if you too get frustrated by seeing stupid bullshit on the internet, you may enjoy my exasperated responses.

And that’s my TED Talk.

Some content I’ve enjoyed that you might too:

• Sufjan Stevens released, Javelin, his tenth studio album, and it’s fantastic. Like my other favorite album of his, Carrie & Lowell, it was unfortuantely inspired by the death of someone close to him, in this case, Sufjan’s partner. (This is also how he finally came out.) Sufjan is my all-time favorite artist and I wish him all the best. IMO, no one turns personal tragedy into works of transcendent beauty as well as Sufjan

• Our Flag Means Death season 2 came out on HBO. I can’t recommend this show highly enough (like most of the things Taika Waititi touches). What began as an absurd sitcom premised on a nobleman trying to run his pirate ship like a well-funded startup has become a heart-wrenching black dramedy.

• I’ve been binging FX’s You’re the Worst with my partner. It’s another dark comedy that sneaks up you with the feelings.

• The first two episodes of Gen V are pretty good. I think it’s not as strong as the Boys (at least its first two seasons), but worth trying if you liked that.

• I saw Love Island for the first time and am honestly surprised it took so long for reality TV to crack the code. Big Brother and the Bachelor have been popular for decades, but no one thought to combine them and throw in an equal number of men and women until 2015?? The show is an obvious human rights abuse and extremely trashy, but the insight into British class politics and incoherent accents make it oddly compelling (this sounds like saying I read Playboy for the articles, doesn’t it?). I started with season 3, based on some Reddit thread.