From the INTRODUCTION

In summer and early fall 2016, one page of thoughts on writing went out to readers, writers, and artists every day for a month. Cool Writing Tips, I called them, because the days were blowing our minds with heat. Other writers had to be melting and sweltering as they sat down to put words on the page—I just knew it.

Later I collected the month’s worth of tiny, digestible bits of advice into this little book.

The Tips were not written in any particular order. They are arranged just as they occurred to me. Some I wrote on the overnight AMTRAK to Utah. Some I wrote on the porch of a Starbuck’s that wouldn’t open for another three hours because I’d disembarked the train before dawn in Salt Lake City. Some Tips I wrote at home in Sonoma just as the sun caught the tops of live oaks up our hill.

READ MORE

The Tips expanded into philosophical takes on baseball and writing, rivers and writing, train rides and writing, and many other beautiful parts of life and writing. As one reader wrote, “They’re not just writing tips. They’re also what you’d call guidelines for living.” I like to think they’re “guidelines” in the best, pirate sense of the word.

COLLAPSE