A bird doesn’t sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.—Maya Angelou     On October 1st 2016, I walked down Mass Ave next to the Central Square T stop and found a smiley, old man sitting on a bench, singing I Feel Good by James Brown. He gently… Continue reading Singing My Own Song

In August 2014, on a rainy afternoon when I was living in Denver, I walked—aimlessly— down the 16th Street Mall, discovered the famous Tattered Cover Bookstore, and found what has become my all-time favorite book about writing: several short sentences about writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg, a book with a Ron Swansonian title, voice, and overall disdain for… Continue reading Everything You Notice

  When I was three or four, I was so squirmy and restless falling asleep that my dad would lie down and wrap his comparatively huge arm around my comparatively tiny torso to keep me still and point me towards sleep. Because I couldn’t physically move with this tree branch on top of me, I… Continue reading “If You Go Ahead And Do It”

Every summer, from when I was 7 til I was 10, I went to the same sports camp with friends from school. We played sports: dodgeball, kickball, eat-the-orange-popsicle-as-fast-you-can-and-try-not-to-get-a-brain-freeze, tennis, basketball, reenact-the-chase-scene-from-The-Sandlot. And we talked sports: about how we’d make our favorite movie, Space Jam, even better, about who really won the Nomar/Jeter rivalry. It was all paradise for a… Continue reading Warm and Fuzzy

People call those imperfections. But no, that’s the good stuff. — Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting   Last week, I rewatched Good Will Hunting for probably the 14th time—the first time in 18 months— and was so moved, so smitten, so inspired to get back on the screenwriting train, so wonderfully wrecked by it all that… Continue reading Desert Island

I started grad school three weeks ago and am just now catching my breath. It’s mostly been great. It’s great community for such solitary work. It’s the most energized I’ve ever felt from school work (other than two classes I took in college called The Creative Process and The Advanced Creative Process —hey, Penny!). The… Continue reading So He Won’t Trip Himself

Last year, I made this list in late December, celebrating The Things That Especially Spoke To Me at the end of the calendar year. This year, I made this list in late August. I think a September-August timeline could be a fun, new framework for this sort of listicle now that I’m about to start… Continue reading 17 Things That Have Especially Spoken To Me In ’17

My junior year of college, in what felt like a seismic life shift for me at the time, I changed my internet homepage from ESPN.Com to Kyle Mooney’s YouTube channel, making the world’s most lovable awkward-street-interviewer—a PG Sacha Baron Cohen—my electronic home base. Instead of starting my nightly homework procrastination on ESPN, with old, loud, white… Continue reading Ball Champions

I have no idea what I’m doing. But I know I’m doing it really, really well. —Andy Dwyer   The only thing I’m worse at than keeping secrets is keeping secrets about projects I’m working on that I’m really pumped about: last week, I started working on a Boyhood-inspired video of my neighbor and longtime pal,… Continue reading They Don’t Age

My mom and I were recently in Italy for eight days, visiting my little sister who’s working and living on a pig farm in Tuscany. We ate gelato, checked out thousand-year-old churches, wandered around Florence, Siena, and cozy, hill towns, and attempted to speak Italian. Linguine! Fettuccine! De Niro! DiGiorno! (We also saw locals wearing… Continue reading Snorah Jones