Archive - A Writer's Notebook

The American Resistance

This, too, is here. It's been here all along, even if they mocked it.

Jan 18 • Summer Brennan

This WTF Moment

When history does not exactly repeat itself, but rhymes.

Jan 15 • Summer Brennan

Going Through Old Notebooks Part 15: Daedalus

In the ICU, everything beeps.

Jan 13 • Summer Brennan

Words and Their Meaning

On titles, relationships, misunderstandings, slurs.

Jan 11 • Summer Brennan

December 2025

Going Through Old Notebooks Part 14: Portrait of the Artist with a Carton of Raspberries

One does not have to have children in order to correct these quotidian lacks or discomforts that we have grown to feel we deserve.

Dec 7, 2025 • Summer Brennan

How (Not) To Get A Book Deal

Writers who want to publish their first book must ask themselves one question: do I have a book that is ready for the marketplace?

Dec 4, 2025 • Summer Brennan

November 2025

Going Through Old Notebooks Part 13: Trees and Their Absence

I felt an affinity for that space, where a tree’s branches had swayed for over half a century, if not longer, and now did not

Nov 25, 2025 • Summer Brennan

Going Through Old Notebooks Part 12: The Defining Moment of What Was Literary Twitter? Or "Discourse Person"

On empathy, fiction, plagiarism, the woman as artist, the short story that launched a thousand takes—and the lost world we writers once shared online.

Nov 23, 2025 • Summer Brennan

Going Through Old Notebooks Part 11: What The River Brings

I started taking long walks along the river every day in the spring of 2021, after something terrible had happened.

Nov 21, 2025 • Summer Brennan

Essay Camp Day 5

Enough talk. Let's make something.

Nov 19, 2025 • Summer Brennan

Essay Camp Day 4

Thinking about structure.

Nov 18, 2025 • Summer Brennan

Essay Camp Day 3

Nov 17, 2025 • Summer Brennan

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