The Column of Disquiet- A Slight Grip, A Gentle Hold

I was having coffee with my editor last week, and we were talking about how stupidly verbose my column can wind up being. I'm paraphrasing here, but he said something to the extent that I send him these things that are, like, 5,000 words long, and he opens them up thinking, 'Oh I can probably cut some of this out,' but by the time he's done reading it through, he's like, 'I can't cut any of this at all.'

I never set out to write anything long. Maybe that's not true. I don't know. I think sometimes I go into something knowing it's going to get weird and long; other times, that is just what happens when I begin to tell the story. It takes as long as it takes, you know? It all unfolds very slowly and deliberately, but every word I use is important for one reason or another.

It's like "The Wire."

My latest column for The Next Ten Words is now live and direct; this one means a lot to me, and it was extremely difficult to go back to this place. This was going to be about one thing. It wound up being about a lot of things.