Write from the soul, not from some notion about what you think the marketplace wants. The market is fickle; the soul is eternal.

‘A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us’
– Franz Kafka

Dark Mountain Issue 18: Fiction

Every autumn we publish a special issue that takes on a particular theme: technology (Issue 8), poetics (Issue 10), the sacred (Issue 12), travel and belonging (Issue 14). In October 2020, for the first time ever, we will dedicate an issue entirely to fiction.

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You just have to be prepared to be wrong and understand that your ego had better not depend on being proven right. Being wrong is part of the process. Survival is the only road to riches.

‘Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. On the outside, babies, you’ve got a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies – God damn it, you’ve got to be kind.’

John Gregory Dunne once described what we call writer’s block as a “failure of nerve.” I try to keep that in mind because it de-mystifies it, and makes it possible for me to push past my resistance. It’s all about courage — which involves feeling the fear and doing it anyway.