December 2025 Update
“A writer who is worried about his career is also fighting for his life.”[^1]
— James Baldwin in “The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy”
Well this is the last update of the year. That went fast. Time moves faster and faster as one ages. That is not a very original observation, is it? When I think about where I was last year I suppose I am most definitely in a better place, mainly because I don't have pneumonia, but I guess I have grown a bit as a writer, and a husband and a father and a friend. I feel that I have been tried much more in my personal life than in my artistic life. When I say personal life I do not mean there has been anything especially dramatic, I mean I have been tried in those secret places of my pride, that only those with good marriages or deep relationships discover in themselves. I have been tried, and found wanting, and broken down, and improved. That is, I suppose, evidence that I am walking with Jesus. I have a lot to be thankful for.
Writing
I decided to start publishing on Medium again. It is my way of “fighting for my life,” for what Baldwin means, to me, is that a writer who is worried about his career is worried that he will be able to keep doing it, or whether it will always be a hobby. The writer who is worried about his career is worried that writing can be a career at all, and I am certainly worried about that. Querying. Querying. Querying.
I will always be writing, but I do have to provide for my family at some point. Medium is really just a way for me to get exposure. It is where an audience is, and it harms my conscience much less than YouTube (not to mention all the extra work of video production). Write.as will always be the definitive home for my words, and my major essays will always be free, but I will be putting things on Medium because it is the only place where I have ever been paid for my work, and because I do not have the time or emotional energy to find and submit to magazines. It is also, as far as I can tell, funded by real people and not ads. I do have a suspicion that most of those people are also writers, but that is fine with me. If they are writers then they are more likely to read long form content and poetry and the other weird stuff I like to write. I am going to try very hard to stay true to my voice and not adopt the bloggy one sentence paragraph phone friendly sort of style that seems to be in vogue.
He says as he is writing on his blog...
If you'd like to support me over there please feel free: https://medium.com/@hdansin
Music
Started playing guitar again, and while my wrist is not all the way there yet it is getting better day by day. I don't notice it much when I am playing. The most exciting thing for me was working on a soundtrack for a friend's project. It has been really fun to do, and finally gave me the motivation I needed to learn how to do some MIDI stuff with our old keyboard. It is kind of astonishing how many instruments are available for free out there. Really impressed by Decent Sampler and many of the sample packs, particularly Lichen.
Reading
Standouts for me this past month were The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt, and Nobody Knows my Name by James Baldwin. I had started Anxious Generation in September but finally got around to finishing it. It is a good book that is worth reading, but it was a frustrating read for me because I do not like sociology. I respect it as a worthwhile science, but I also resent the way it turns people into numbers and makes ends of means. Thankfully, I agree with the end of Anxious Generation, and I hope that it will inspire people to finally reject social media and Big Tech as we know it. In the very least, I think it is an important book for any parent to read. I know I will be referring to it and some of the resources he lists, especially Let Grow, for the next couple decades.
James Baldwin has become comfort reading, and more, for me. I was thinking today about “life writers”, writers that we develop deep relationships with over our lives, and Baldwin is definitely one of mine. I'm slowly (maybe not so slowly) reading through his body of work, and it has been a real staff to lean on. He has shown me that one can be both objective and soulful in an essay, that the use of one's personal life (as long as it is presented with unflinching honesty and humility) can be a noble source for both fiction and non-fiction, that I should never be ashamed about the length of my paragraphs or the complexity of my sentences, that race in America goes far deeper and wider than I could've imagined, that we have come a long way, and yet have so far to go. Here is a long quote, just because I love it:
“I do not think, if one is a writer, that one escapes it by trying to become something else. One does not become something else: one becomes nothing. And what is crucial here is that the writer, however unwillingly, always, somewhere, knows this. There is no structure he can build strong enough to keep out this self-knowledge. What has happened, however, time and time again, is that the fantasy structure the writer builds in order to escape his central responsibility operates not as his fortress, but his prison, and he perishes within it. Or: the structure he had built becomes so stifling, so lonely, so false, and acquires such a violent and dangerous life of its own, that he can break out of it only by bringing the entire structure down. With a great crash, inevitably, and on his own head, and on the heads of those closest to him. It is like smashing the windows one second before one asphyxiates; it is like burning down the house in order, at last, to be free of it.”[^2]
Thank you
This marks a year of doing these updates, so if you have kept up with them, thank you. I still have not received any coffees from anyone, but it has been very helpful to give myself some accountability. I think, after a year, I am actually starting to have fun with writing again. My new project is a real departure from my dark, gritty, serious, fantasy series; and it is also fun to have these spaces on the internet. So thank you to Write.as for making a platform with a conscience, and thank you reader for giving me someone to write to.
[1]: Baldwin, James (1961). Nobody Knows My Name: more notes of a native son. “The Black Boy Meets the White Boy.” 216. https://archive.org/details/nobodyknowsmynam0000unse/page/216/mode/2up
[2]: Baldwin, James (1961). Nobody Knows My Name: more notes of a native son. “The Black Boy Meets the White Boy.” 239. https://archive.org/details/nobodyknowsmynam0000unse/page/238/mode/2up
Thank you for reading! I greatly regret that I will most likely never be able to meet you in person and shake your hand, but perhaps we can virtually shake hands via my newsletter, social media, or a cup of coffee sent over the wire. They are poor substitutes, but they can be a real grace in this intractable world.
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