People often say that you can learn more about writing from reading books than from taking any craft class. While this is true, I also think it’s pretty shitty advice, especially to new writers.

I remember in 2013 (?) I received my first piece of feedback on my first novel. The conclusion of the report was: ‘You need to read more, specifically less Hemingway.’ Ok. But reading more is too abstract, because that’s something writers are always just … doing. It gives you examples, influences, a sense of what’s possible. But it can’t tell you how to find the story that’s actually inside you.

Writing classes are better because they give you frameworks, craft vocabulary, a way of thinking about structure, setting, sentence, and scene. But in those classes, you also hear people say: ‘It’s all about the execution of the story.’ Come up with a great plan, execute it well, and you’ve done your job. A ⭐️ on your assignment.

I think this is too easy, too simple. Execution implies a blueprint pre-exists and you’re just assembling it. Products need to be executed. Oh, capitalism. But at the very nascent stage of a writing project, your story is not a product. It’s art.

Reading can give you examples or models. Classes give you frameworks. But neither can render your story for you. Only drafting can do that.

Kind of like how a large photograph is rendered on a screen: first pixellated, then, as time passes, clearer, sharper. You can’t skip to the sharp image. You have to let it resolve pixel by pixel.

Similarly, a novel in early drafts is a mess. Wayward outlines, surface characters, wrong turns. But as I refine, refine, refine, the story becomes what it was always trying to be. Rendered in the way I’d intended.

Not executed, but rendered.

Think about a conversation with someone you’ve just met. At the beginning, basic questions — name, where from, etc. But as it progresses, you find your footing, and by the end you’ve created something fluid, flowing. You couldn’t have planned that conversation. You had to experience it first.

Drafts work the same way. At draft 0 or 1, I don’t know what I’m doing. I have a vague idea, and then it changes after sometimes tens of thousands of binned words. Once I feel the right story’s on the page, I go into the second draft to refine the structure. Make the images more concrete. Then multiple character passes, a settings pass, a motif(s) pass, and so on. If you want a practical framework for thinking through these stages, Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro from Blank Page to Book maps out the editing process in a way that connects well with this idea of progressive clarification.

Don’t think of yourself as executing a perfect story. Think instead about rendering the truth of your story. Reading more or less of Hemingway won’t get you there. Neither will the perfect outline or the right craft class.

Only drafting will. So, be a draftsperson.

Sue Klebold’s memoir A Mother’s Reckoning has given me one of the most precise accounts of wound-logic. It is worth reading not only for understanding grief alongside culpability and incomprehension, but as a study of how a wound operates. In the person who carries it, and in the people closest to them.

I. The wound creates a perceptual filter

Dylan Klebold, as his mother Sue reconstructs him across years of motherhood, was not a boy whose pain was invisible. It was legible. The criminal behavior existed. The distress was present and, in retrospect, obvious. What makes the memoir devastating is not the revelation of suffering but the revelation of how thoroughly that suffering was seen yet reframed by everyone around it, including by Dylan himself.

This is the first function of wound-logic: it does not simply generate behavior, it also generates interpretation. The wounded person does not experience their wound as damage. They experience it as clarity. They have a theory of reality — of what they deserve, what others feel, what connection means, what the future holds — and that theory is the wound expressing itself.

For the novelist, this is the engine. A character with a wound does not simply act in damaged ways. They act in ways that are perfectly rational given their particular distortion. From inside their logic, every choice makes sense. The reader can see the distortion; the character cannot. That gap between the character’s experienced coherence and the reader’s perception of the error is where psychological suspense lives.

II. The wound hides from its carrier

Klebold describes her own blindness with remarkable precision. She’s not writing about denial in the crude sense, as in choosing not to see what was visible. She’s writing about something deeper: genuinely not having the conceptual vocabulary to recognize what she was observing. Dylan’s wound, and Sue’s assumptions about who he was, produced an interpretive field that made certain readings of events simply unavailable. And it’s in this gap where tragedy unfolded.

She had learned, over years, to read Dylan’s affect through a particular lens. That lens was itself shaped by her formation, her marriage, her particular understanding of motherhood and adolescent withdrawal.

She writes about the toxic atmosphere and the bullying Dylan endured at Columbine High School. When he came home one day after what he called the “worst day of my life,” she reassured herself: Kids have disagreements. Whatever it is, it’ll blow over (p. 189). The tragedy lay not in a failure to see, but in a failure to understand the significance of what she was seeing.

This is the second function of wound-logic, and it’s more useful for fiction than the first: the wound is most powerful when the character cannot name it. Characters who can articulate their damage with precision are, paradoxically, less interesting than characters who are operating under a misapprehension about themselves. Sue Klebold believed she knew her son. She had constructed a coherent, evidence-supported narrative of who he was. That narrative wasn’t a lie. It was a wound wearing the face of understanding.

III. Writing it

What Klebold’s memoir suggests, as a model for craft, is not that we should write characters whose wounds are eventually revealed or explained. It suggests something harder: that we should construct characters whose wounds are present in every scene without ever being named as such.

This requires understanding what specific, falsifiable belief about reality does this person hold as a result of what was done to them? Not a vague sense of unworthiness, but something more precise: care is always eventually withdrawn. Vulnerability invites humiliation. If I need someone, they gain power over me.

Once you have that, you have the filter. Every scene passes through it. Every piece of dialogue. The character will notice some things and miss others. They will misread emotional cues in a consistent direction. They will make choices that are locally coherent and globally catastrophic. The reader, tracking the distortion, will feel both the rightness of each decision from inside the character’s logic and the terrible wrongness of it from the outside.

What Klebold’s book ultimately demonstrates is that the most destructive wounds are not the ones that produce visible breakdowns. They are the ones that produce invisible coherence, meaning, a life that looks, from the outside, more or less intact, while the interior runs on a set of premises that are slowly, quietly incompatible with survival.

I wrote four first drafts of my second novel. The first three were wrong.

For me, the second draft is always the hardest. A reckoning: what did I spend the last three months on? But also demands I answer: is this the story I really want to tell?

For my first novel1 in 2021, I was struck by how difficult it was to go from first draft to second. Everything—and I mean everything—was a mess. (For me, a draft means a complete manuscript—around 70-80K words.) So I worked for a year on editing. On deepening the story through eight further drafts.

For the second novel, I knew going from first to second draft would be difficult. But I had this gut wrenching feeling that no: this wasn’t the right story. I just knew it. I had to outline a new story, and write a new first draft. After doing so, I was like: no—this also isn’t right. So I did another first draft. And you know what? That draft was also not right, so I did another first draft and the whole thing fucking clicked. I knew when it clicked, because I just felt like it was the right story. Finally, finally, finally, I had a first draft I could work with.

For the third novel, I wrote a first draft and was like: no—this wasn’t right. So I outlined another version, and it also wasn’t right. Outlined again and again. Wrote seven different outlines. But it just wasn’t right, so I said to myself: don’t start this one yet. Wait until you’re ready.

So I started another novel, my fourth, and I’m thinking this will be a “cleaner” first draft, a faster one. I’m being more diligent about what feels true to the characters and the story. I won’t say this will be the final “first draft”. But a writer knows when what they have is kinda good, kinda solid and I think this is. Through four books, my instincts as a writer are faster—I hope. I just have to keep going to find out.

I’ve always hated the term ‘query trenches’. As if it’s a terrible experience you have to survive. I'll be querying in a couple weeks. For non-writers, querying is a time when we submit emails to literary agents, asking them to represent our books to publishing.

I’d previously queried a novel in 2021 after working two years on that novel. 4am early mornings, late nights, every weekend, vacation time. I gave that novel my all and it just didn’t land with the market—abstract hook, unclear stakes. After sending it to 21 agents, I got only two full MS requests and no bites.

Here's what I'm doing differently in 2026:

Focusing on the hook. Hook, hook, hook. How can I encapsulate my story in one short sentence? Mine has changed a million times, but I think I got it.

Good comps. Previously, I’d just comp with my favorite authors and be like “yeah, I’m kind of like them…’ but now: no, no, no. It’s about how each comp is specifically tied to my novel.

A synopsis with clear cause-and-effect. How does each event lead to another? Are the stakes clear throughout? The different character motivations? The synopsis isn’t officially a selling document, but it is because it’s going to agents who haven’t read your novel and checking if it has legs.

Research agents intensely. Being very diligent about who I send my materials to; looking at their authors lists and exactly what they’re looking at now. For US agents, I also look at what they’ve recently sold on Publisher’s Marketplace.

A solid MS. Character agency: Does my protagonist have a clear agency throughout the novel? Are they making choices—even if bad—for themselves? Solid momentum: Being ruthless with content that doesn’t push the story forward. Also, beta readers.

I’m more cautiously hopeful this time. Because of the reactions of my beta readers, because I believe in my hook. Because I know the market better. Because I know my MS is complete. And I’m also working on something new that genuinely excites me.

It reminds me of watching a cool, new Netflix show that everyone is raving about. I won’t say which specific novel I’m discussing, because that wouldn’t be nice, and besides, although the novel has a very Netflix-vibe, I’m quite enjoying it.

Some months ago a friend of mine read the second chapter of my current WIP and said: if I wanted to watch Netflix, I’d turn on my TV. She was saying my second chapter, while well-written, was trying too hard to be TV. She told me: let your story do what no TV or movie can do. Use the power of the novel as an art form.

That has stuck with me. What can a novel do that a Netflix series can’t?

It can go deep into the inner world of the characters. It can drop you into a character's stream of consciousness as they wrestle with whether to forgive someone who destroyed their life. (my novel Jonah) Or how grief really, never leaves the body via reiteration. (Yiyun Li’s Things in Nature Merely Grow)

These are the territories only novels can explore with this kind of intimacy, this kind of precision.

Let’s keep the form of the novel. Let’s exploit it. And let Netflix be Netflix.

I erased myself.

And published a nice, clean, professional design portfolio.

A refresher. A rebrand.

Over the years I haven’t been sure where I should put my writings. I’ve had so many blogs I’ve started and deleted. Should I delete a part of myself to satisfy hiring managers? Or do they like to see complexity, humanity, and a different passion other than UX?

Why risk it? The market is terrible.

But why should I not risk being myself? Isn’t it more risky to be employed by a company that doesn’t really know or get me?

But wait, you’re missing the point.

What is the point of a design/research portfolio? The point is to get a job.

The point of this blog is to write, to be fully myself.

I recently started listening to ’s We Need Your Art, and I am floored. Not necessarily by the concepts (which I’ve heard in various forms over the years), but the way she communicates them in a concise, beautiful, soul-enriching way.

She’s followed her path. Someone who has had to tell herself, over, and over again, ‘You’re on the path’. After more than a year of going through burn out and disillusionment, I did re-evaluate my path. My values. What I wanted to do with my life. Which is, tell stories. I am a storyteller. A world builder. A creator. An artist.

This is a recommitment to the soul-enriching. A commitment to knowing and believing not through lofty ideas but lived experience. It’s about trusting the ground beneath my feet, even when I can't see where it leads. There’s dirt there.

Use it to blossom.

The whole atmosphere was ridden with a Biblical splendor punctuated with the tinkling bells of the ponies, the reverberations of the poison song, the faint boom of the surf far below and an undefinable murmuring which was probably nothing more than the hammering of the temples in the high and sultry haze of an Ionian morning.

pg. 20 The Colossus of Maroussi Henry Miller

We both know this is made up. But we also know this is a role of a lifetime. I’m auditioning you to play a very difficult character. This will be the pinnacle of your career. Nothing you have done before or will do after will be better than this.

You have the right look. The right voice. The right body movements. You are perfect for the role. I think.

Just don’t fuck it up.

I didn’t know I was going to write a novel when I joined the online writing community The Novelry. Perhaps a memoir, perhaps some short stories. Then suddenly, a story blossomed. A plot. Characters. And I became possessed.

Writing the first draft took me three months, and was magical. I’d wake each morning between 4am to 5pm, stretch and meditate, and write at least 1,000 words, stopping at a point where I was just hungry enough for a little more, but not satisfying that hunger, so the next morning I’d be excited to go again.

I also kept a writing log, where I wrote how many words that day, a summary of what I wrote, and a summary of what I thought I needed to write next. After three months, I’d this nice chart:

After writing the first draft, I took three months off and relaxed and read, just getting some distance from what I had written.

Second draft

For the next draft, I realized my process had to be different, but wasn’t sure how. There wasn’t a uniform process, and I struggled a bit. I needed structure and knew that writing and revising the second draft would be messy. Here’s what I decided to do:

Each day I had a spreadsheet where I would write what I planned on writing, what I actually wrote, and what I planned on writing next. I used Airtable for this, as I found it was an amazing tool to use for everything related to my process, from organizing my characters, scenes, and plot, ideas, among other details (I’d used this for the first draft too).

Sometimes I needed a space for bigger thinking or more rambly thinking, so for this I used Dropbox Paper, and always kept my Moleskine notebook close at hand.

After draft two, I sent the novel to a freelance editor, who sent me back super helpful feedback and gave me confidence to move forward.

Third draft

I corrected all of this editor’s feedback which took me about a month, cutting about 10,000 words of needless dialogue, then sent it to The Novelry for their Ultimate Manuscript Assessment.

Fourth draft

I received super helpful feedback from The Novelry editors. All writing is subjective, so when you send it out to different editors they’re going to focus on different things. You must know your writing, know the story you are trying to tell, so you don’t get tripped up or swayed into directions that don’t feel true.

The next draft took me about two months, reviewing the editors’ feedback and focusing on different aspects. I restructured things, rewrote the second chapter, cut about 10,000 words, and added another 10,000.

Fifth draft

Put a special focus on different ideas in the story, made them more nuanced and real. Then, had a Big Edit session with a Novelry editor (Lily) on the first three chapters.

Sixth draft

Read through the novel and fine-tuned it. Sent it to the Editorial Director at The Novelry, and she approved it to move forward. With The Novelry’s help, we sent the query and synopsis to ten agents.

I got lots of initial interest, received two full MS requests, but no one bit.

Seventh draft

Did another read-through, correcting things I felt could be improved. You know those nagging things with your novel you just know aren’t right? Yeah? Well, fix those before sending the novel to agents. You’ll feel better about your work.

I then submitted the novel to another ten agents. No one bit.

Eighth draft

Sent my query letter and first three chapters to another editor. She returned most of my money, because she thought the novel was already there.

Now, I am taking a break from sending it out, mostly because I am deep into my new novel and putting all of my focus there. In total, I’ve sent the novel out to twenty one agents, and either get declines or no responses. Once I’m at a good draft stage with this new novel, I’ll start sending this novel out again.

❤️

"People first, then money, then things," Suze Orman used to say on her television show. This is a phrase I kept repeating to myself when I booked a flight for my mom to come to Europe. After the flights, train tickets, hotel bookings, and upcoming dinner reservations, I couldn't help thinking: "This is going to be expensive. I am not used to spending money like this."

Don't get me wrong. I have a good salary, I can afford it. But the poor college student won't leave, who still yells at me for spending over $40 on a book. But as soon as my mom came - this worrying about the cost almost completely disappeared.

Because she was here, in my home, at my work, in my Roman neighborhood. She was here, on the Venice canals, in Paris. I watched her every moment, looking at her eyes, watching her dazzled at what she was seeing. 

Like a small child, she took it all in. Like a sponge, learning about the world. She was discovering.

"What a gift!" I thought. "What an awesome gift!" To give her the chance to see a part of the world she never would have otherwise.

My mom lives in the Midwest. After working at the same company for 27 years, she recently went back to school and became a nurse at 54 years old. Now she spends her work weeks from 7pm to 7am in one of the most dangerous parts of the city, taking care of the poor and minorities; people who've lived very hard lives.

Of course, my mom and I have a complicated relationship. She gave birth to a boy who would one day carve out his very own life - make his own choices, struggle to become who he really was. At a young age I rejected a lot of what was handed me by the world I was born into. Rejected the "default" sexuality that was not my own, the predetermined religion that was not my own, the city where I didn't belong.

But my mom and I are bounded. By simply love - she's my mom. So, to take her to Zürich, Lucerne, Rome, Venice, and Paris. Small drops in the bucket of a rich life that she gave me so readily, so lovingly and happily. A mom is a mom is a mom is a mom - I can never pay her back for what she's given.

And I am still thinking about her face, her expression as we went to Colosseum or took a boat through the Venice canals or walked under the shade of the Eiffel Tower. The wonder in her eyes; an immeasurable gift.

I turned around as soon as he started mooning a group of schoolchildren.

I couldn’t take it. Daniel was just too much to handle. I began walking ahead of him, increasing the distance between us. But two minutes later, he jumped on me in hysterical fits. “No, no — don’t be angry! Please! I love you.” Typical Daniel. One moment doing something completely egregious. The next, confessing his love and affection for you.

For every bad thing Daniel did, there was an equal amount of love, kindness, generosity, and affection he gave to everyone he knew. He would do anything and everything to make his friends happy, giving all he had and asking for nothing in return.

It pains me to write this in the past tense, but maybe someday this will become normal: his heart stopped beating on January 23, 2012, 23:29 Holland time. His death is impossible to accept, like an unfathomable reality I cannot comprehend.

When I discovered his heart would stop beating at any moment, I first went to the gym. It seemed like the only thing to do. “Just follow the schedule, Matti. Follow the damn schedule,” I told myself. And I did. I went to the gym and began running. But I had to stop. I couldn’t continue. It was as if someone or something was placing a white sheet over everything — all of the treadmills, weights, exercise machines, and my own ability to think. I had to do something else, but I didn’t know what to do — my best friend was dying.

Crazy. Lovable. Intense. Genuine. Impulsive. Creative. Attention-seeking. Sweet. There’s so many ways to describe Daniel.

We first met at a bar in Amsterdam called Prik. Daniel approached me because he thought I was 17 years old. After later discovering I was in fact 26, Daniel said: “The bar must have been very dark.” Shortly after meeting, Daniel introduced me to the rest of his friends. All of his friends were normal, unlike him. What a surprise! They didn’t sit on strangers’ laps, sing a show tune loudly at a random moment, or order four bottles of wine without having any money. His friends were level-headed and responsible.

We were all fascinated by his energy — an enormous ball of spectacular energy that made you his audience by virtue of proximity to him. Even at 5 am, after a long night of dancing and drinking — he would be bouncing off the walls while the rest of us could barely open our droopy eyes.

Most of Daniel’s life was an adventure in which every moment was seized.

On his 33rd (and last) birthday, Daniel smashed my face into his birthday cake. I grabbed a handful of cake and Daniel began running. I caught up to him in the next room and spread the white frosting in his hair like it was hair gel. The night before his birthday, Daniel took his glass of red wine and poured it over a friend’s head. On another friend’s white couch.

However, Daniel was not always causing trouble. He was one of the sweetest and the most intimate persons I have ever met — always hugging me, holding my hand, and wanting to cuddle on the couch. Intimacy was extremely important for Daniel, and whether you liked it or not you were going to be continually touched while he was around you.

Daniel’s level of intimacy made me initially uncomfortable, most likely because my dad is a former Marine. I was raised to believe intimacy between two male friends is socially unacceptable. However, Daniel forced me to become more intimate, as he did with the rest of his friends. How I appreciated those hugs! Those kisses! Those moments we had snuggling on the couch! How I would do anything to have those intimate moments again!

But it is not to be. He is now dead.

He had an epileptic attack on January 20th. I knew Daniel had had epilepsy. Vaguely. He must have told me he had it at some point or another. But I never thought an epileptic attack would kill him — cause him to not breathe and have a heart attack, and make him brain dead.

Daniel was a friend who danced, sung, twirled you around and around in circles, and told random people your dick size (or his best estimate of your dick size). Daniel detested boredom and mediocrity, and was focused solely on doing what he wanted. 

“It’s Daniel’s world,” we used to say. “We just live in it.”

For many, like me, giving Daniel the spotlight was no problem. I loved his crazy personality and his infectious zest for life. For others, he caused a visceral reaction that had the person looking for the nearest exit away from him. “Daniel is Daniel,” we used to say.

Now we try to say: “Daniel was Daniel.”

The night after Daniel died, I had a dream that he suddenly woke up in his hospital bed and said, “I was just kidding guys! The joke is on you!” After I woke up, I broke down crying because I realized it was a dream. I actually expected Daniel to do this, because it would be so typical for Daniel to do.

Sometimes, I daydream that Daniel is going to come around the corner, and begin laughing at me like I am a complete idiot for thinking he was dead. Daniel’s seismic personality makes it unbelievable that he really is gone, forever. 

He was not ready to die. Daniel was taken with his soul shrieking: “No no no no no no no!” Now everyone who loved him is crying: “No no no no no no no!” His death has been too much to handle, and all who love and loved him are coming to grips with a reality that is impossible to swallow.

A beautiful and raucous life, taken from us. No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no…