Legacy Index
When I first started writing for journals, I experimented with lots of ways to approach and address the rather large existential topic of legacy. Here is an early attempt that never found a home.
LEGACY INDEX
LEGACY INDEX ENTRY #001 — WOOD, GRANT (ACTIVE MISINTERPRETATION SITE)
TYPE: Misread Patriotic Relic
RESIDUAL HARM INDEX: 4.2/5 (Chronic Nationalist Misuse; Recurring Folklore Infection)
DESCRIPTION:
Primary contaminant: American Gothic. Frequently misdiagnosed as a wholesome heartland tribute. In fact, a portrait of rigidity, repression, and emotional taxidermy. Stiff posture, clenched jawlines, a pitchfork standing in for anything they couldn’t say out loud.
Cultural side effect: The painting became a shorthand for virtue instead of a mirror of rot. We turned it into greeting cards, parodies, political cartoons, church bulletin covers. But it wasn’t meant to comfort. It was a warning. A portrait of tension so tightly wound it hums.
Wood didn’t correct the misreading. Didn’t push back. That wasn’t indifference. It was cultural fluency. He knew the Midwest well enough to recognize that silence is its most fluent language. The queer subtext, the aesthetic formalism, the emotional claustrophobia—he knew they were all there. And he watched the world ignore them with a straight face.
NOTES:
Some legacies aren’t whitewashed. They’re preserved like specimens. Still, sterile, untouchable. Wood’s paintings were crisp and meticulous, but the effect wasn’t warmth. It was cold-blooded control. We saw a barn and a pitchfork and decided it meant pride. He handed us a painting about pressure and we hung it in bank lobbies.
And still we call it Americana. Still we teach it like a tribute. The painting has outlived its own critique, printed onto postcards and positioned as wholesome when it was always about strain. There’s nothing nostalgic about the set of that jaw. Nothing warm in that windowless house. But the myth is stickier than the intent. That’s how cultural memory works—it keeps what flatters, trims what cuts, and calls the final version truth.
CROSS-REFERENCES:
Category D7, Quiet Dissent Absorbed Into National Branding
See also: Norman Rockwell (adjacent effects: nostalgic anesthesia; sentimental camouflage)
Also: Entry 014, The Aestheticization of Moral Simplicity
LEGACY INDEX ENTRY #002 — VAN GOGH, VINCENT (STILL BLEEDING)
TYPE: Posthumous Commodity Conversion
RESIDUAL HARM INDEX: 4.9/5 (Myth Overgrowth, Extreme Sentimental Harvesting)
DESCRIPTION:
Primary contaminant: The narrative of the tortured genius. Secondary contamination: the Starry Night shower curtain. Tertiary: every café that sells sunflower-printed mugs and calls it homage.
Van Gogh’s life was collapse. His work was fever, rupture, a howl in oil. We turned it into dorm-room decor and empathy porn.
Cultural side effect: He was devoured by loneliness, poverty, and untreated illness. Now his pain is framed in brushed gold and sold as comfort. His agony has been licensed, reproduced, color-corrected, and flattened into a brand. A gallery of misery repackaged to soothe.
NOTES:
We only learned to adore him once he stopped being inconvenient. He died poor, discarded, hallucinating crows in wheat fields. Now we sell tote bags with his face and call it healing. We whisper that he was misunderstood, but we understand him just enough to keep profiting off the shape of his suffering. It’s not a legacy. It’s a scavenger economy.
We say he was ahead of his time, but we’re still not ready. Not for the illness. Not for the failure. Not for the way he refused to make beauty safe. He didn’t suffer for art. He suffered in spite of it. The tragedy isn’t that we misunderstood him. It’s that we found exactly the parts we could sell.
CROSS-REFERENCES:
Category E4, Marketable Melancholia
See also: Entry 039, The Monetization of Madness
Also: Correction Memo 011, On the Ethical Disposal of Artist Remains
LEGACY INDEX ENTRY #003 — STRAUSS, JOSEF (UNCLAIMED FILE)
TYPE: Undervalued Elegy
RESIDUAL HARM INDEX: 2.6/5 (Structural Obscurity, Passive Overshadowing)
DESCRIPTION:
Officially the other Strauss. The quiet one. The restrained one. Now increasingly regarded as the most musically gifted of the family, though that didn’t help him much while he was alive. His work was precise, aching, lyrical in a way that left no room for parade. His waltzes don’t twirl. They breathe in before they speak.
Cultural side effect: History remembers the spectacle, not the nuance. Johann gave the world bombast and branding. Josef gave it grace. Guess which one made the souvenir mugs.
NOTES:
Legacy is loud. He wasn’t. His melodies carried more sorrow than triumph, more hush than grandeur, and we filed them behind the cymbals. He never gave us a myth to repeat. No drama, no scandal, no heroic death. Just music that asked you to listen closer. Most people didn’t.
We tell ourselves legacy is earned. But some of it is just volume. Some of it is spectacle. Josef’s silence didn’t fit the narrative arc we wanted. He didn’t self-mythologize. He didn’t perform his suffering. He just wrote the kind of beauty that doesn’t beg for recognition. That’s what made him forgettable. That’s what made him extraordinary.
CROSS-REFERENCES:
Category C2, The Beautiful Ones Who Whispered
See also: Entry 005, Silence Mistaken for Absence
Also: Correction Memo 022, Misfiled Contributions in Patriarchal Systems
LEGACY INDEX ENTRY #004 — DEGAS, EDGAR (SURVEILLANCE MODEL)
TYPE: Detached Precision Instrument
RESIDUAL HARM INDEX: 3.7/5 (Emotional Withdrawal, Spectator Contagion)
DESCRIPTION:
Primary contaminant: Distance disguised as discipline. Degas painted dancers, laundresses, bathers, women in intimate poses—but always from just outside the frame. A voyeur’s vantage, wrapped in aesthetic rigor. His brushwork was exquisite. His empathy stayed in the hallway.
Cultural side effect: He gave us beauty without connection, motion without tenderness. Audiences fell in love with the technique and never questioned the gaze. Legacy rewrote him as a chronicler of grace, not a technician of detachment. He showed us the body and taught us not to feel anything about it.
NOTES:
Some artists dissect what they love. Degas dissected what he wanted control over. His paintings don’t admire. They monitor. They pry. His dancers were subjects in a study, not people. The work is brilliant, but the gaze is surgical. Detached. Extractive. He didn’t need to understand the women he painted. He just needed them still long enough to take.
CROSS-REFERENCES:
Category F3, Aestheticized Detachment
See also: Entry 021, The Artist as Window
Also: Correction Memo 003, On Sanitized Voyeurism in Canonical Work
LEGACY INDEX ENTRY #005 — [DATA CORRUPTED]
TYPE: [REDACTED]
RESIDUAL HARM INDEX: ∆/err
DESCRIPTION:
[Record compromised. Initial metadata mismatch. Subject filed under multiple classifications: Genius, Predator, Innovator, Liability.]
File integrity degraded. Entry opened at 02:17:43 and auto-flagged for unresolved contradictions.
Key phrases extracted:
— "revolutionized form"
— "manipulated everyone around him"
— "line between discipline and cruelty never clearly drawn"
[Visual references removed for sensitivity compliance.]
[Cross-indexed testimonials present conflicting emotional residues.]
NOTES:
Entry unstable. System cannot resolve contradiction between influence and damage. Each recovery attempt introduces more loss. Classification errors multiply. Narrative collapses under weight of impact.
Recommendation: quarantine entry. Burn transcript.
CROSS-REFERENCES:
[ACCESS DENIED]
See also: Entry ???, The Artist Everyone Warned You About
Also: Correction Memo 000, On the Limits of Legacy Reconciliation
LEGACY INDEX ENTRY #006 — SHELLEY, MARY (MISATTRIBUTED INVENTION)
TYPE: Authorial Displacement Pattern
RESIDUAL HARM INDEX: 4.6/5 (Narrative Seizure, Gendered Reframing, Romantic Parasite Residue)
DESCRIPTION:
Primary contaminant: The monster swallowed the maker. Secondary contamination: decades of attribution drift, footnotes that mention her husband before her name, academic shorthand that turned her grief into genre.
Cultural side effect: We teach Frankenstein as allegory, sci-fi origin, Gothic curiosity. We forget it was a love letter written in ash. Shelley gave us a story about abandonment, obsession, and the horror of losing everything you’ve made. We turned it into a Halloween costume.
NOTES:
She invented the genre and we gave the credit to men who came later with less to say. Shelley wrote the blueprint in blood and grief. Wells added gadgets and got the title. We teach Frankenstein like a precursor, a rough draft, a fluke of genius that came too early to count. She built the foundation. They built the furniture and got the deed to the house.
We didn’t just minimize her, we rewrote the syllabus around her absence. We called her work foundational, then removed her from the foundation. Every time we say “the fathers of science fiction,” we bury her again. Not for lack of merit. Not for ambiguity. But because legacy favors those whose names fit cleanly on the spine. And hers never did. She wasn’t building monsters. She was naming systems. We didn’t miss her brilliance—we misfiled it deliberately.
CROSS-REFERENCES:
Category B3, Inheritance by Erasure
See also: Entry 018, The Genre She Didn’t Mean to Invent
Also: Correction Memo 025, On the Misfiling of Authorship Under Marriage
LEGACY INDEX ENTRY #007 — CHRISTIE, AGATHA (ERASURE BY FAMILIARITY)
TYPE: Saturated Misclassification
RESIDUAL HARM INDEX: 3.8/5 (Narrative Simplification, Cultural Defangment)
DESCRIPTION:
Primary contaminant: Oversaturation through adaptation. Secondary contamination: myth of the cozy mystery. Tertiary: legacy absorbed into teatime television and paperback racks with softened fonts.
Cultural side effect: Her work was clinical, cunning, often brutal. We turned it into comfort media. We gutted the tension, scrubbed the social decay, clipped the coldness from her prose and replaced it with doilies. Christie didn’t write to console. She wrote to dismantle. We just kept filming the garden parties.
NOTES:
She built intricate machinery and we treat it like décor. Her characters lie, cheat, spiral, disappear. Her plots run on cruelty, arrogance, and desperation. But we remember Miss Marple’s wallpaper instead. We like our legacies gentle. We like our detectives maternal. We like our discomfort disguised as charm, packaged for syndication, softened until it slips past without catching.
Christie left knives on the table. We replaced them with biscuits.
CROSS-REFERENCES:
Category C5, Artists Smothered by Affection
See also: Entry 036, When Exposure Becomes Erasure
Also: Correction Memo 019, On the Overdomestication of Literary Legacy
[System interruption detected. Compliance memo inserted midstream.]
CORRECTION MEMO 030 — LEGACY INDEX COMPLIANCE ADJUSTMENTS
TO: All Archival Personnel
FROM: Office of Narrative Integrity and Cultural Alignment
RE: Messaging Protocols and Unauthorized Deviations
This memo supersedes prior guidance. Legacy Index entries are subject to mandatory tone recalibration in accordance with cultural clarity standards and institutional messaging expectations.
Use of terms such as “erasure,” “complicity,” “damage,” or “sanitization” constitutes narrative bias and undermines public trust. Approved alternatives include: “adaptive legacy repositioning,” “interpretive elasticity,” and “enhanced contextual framing.”
Statements implying harm, misconduct, or institutional failure are inappropriate for public dissemination. Messaging should emphasize complexity, not accusation. If discomfort arises, the language—not the legacy—requires revision.
Subjective phrasing, emotional descriptors, and tone irregularities are under review by the Office of Content Discipline. Language previously approved under legacy protocol may no longer reflect current messaging standards. Personnel are reminded: clarity is not neutrality. It is insubordination.
Entry #005 remains sealed under Authority Code C-17. Unauthorized reference may trigger compliance flagging and internal audit. All mentions must be expunged from future drafts. This is a preservation directive, not a punitive measure.
All archival language must reflect confidence, coherence, and unity of purpose. The Archive is not a site of personal opinion. The Archive is not a site of re-litigation. The Archive is a site of alignment.
Deviation from approved messaging will be recorded.
Compliance is not optional.
EXHIBIT TAGS — CLASSIFIED ARTIFACTS (RESTRICTED ACCESS)
Item #041: Audio recording marked “inappropriate tone.” Redacted.
Item #022: Signature removed for clarity. Attribution reassigned.
Item #073: First edition with all references to protest scrubbed.
Item #009: Photograph of a dissident mislabeled as archival staff.
Item #115: Transcript altered to suggest cooperation.
Item #198: Apology issued on behalf of the wrong department.
Item #134: Gallery contract missing. Credit assigned to next of kin.
Item #059: Manuscript flagged as inflammatory. Never opened.
Item #147: Revised score. Dissonance removed. Author listed as anonymous.
Item #083: Surveillance footage marked “interpretive artifact.”
Item #121: Memorial plaque engraved posthumously by committee.
Item #032: Teaching materials revised to exclude names.
Item #150: Name abbreviated until indistinct. Removed for formatting.
Item #199: Empty case. Classification: Obsolete Narrative. Disposal pending review.
INVENTORY OF MISSING SUBJECTS
Gentileschi. Misattributed.
Still. Omitted.
Cahun. Decorated, then discarded.
Boulanger. Pre-dismissed.
Mahler. Minimized.
Savage. Defunded.
Price. Posthumously fashionable.
Joplin. Backgrounded.
Cotten. Mislabeled.
Tharpe. Stolen.
Unfunded.
Unpublished.
Unaccredited.
Unarchived.
Unspoken.
Unremembered.
Unwelcome.
Unseen.
Known.
Erased.
This section is not authorized for public release. Refer to approved entries only.
Ballad of the Straw Knight by Yon Unnamed Stable-Boy, Who Didst Pine in Silence
I wrote this medieval ballad for a themed call for submissions to Ballads of Medieval Devotion by Ruchi Acharya (Author, Editor). As far as I know, while the collection is now available for purchase, there isn’t an online version so I’m publishing my piece here for all of my “fans.”
Ballad of the Straw Knight
by Yon Unnamed Stable-Boy, Who Didst Pine in Silence
O gather ye round and mark mine song,
Of a straw-stuffed knight I’ve loved full long.
His jaw be straw, his gaze askew,
But no heart beateth half so true.
He standeth tall by training field,
Unmoving aye, but never yield.
Whilst others fled or mocked my name,
Sir Dummy held his stance the same.
By day I mucked, by dusk I trained,
Through rain and mud, through knees near sprained.
He watched me swing, he bore the blows,
A truer friend no stable knows.
The squires laughed and outgrew dreams,
Took horses, titles, velvet seams.
But thou, O oak with padded brow,
Didst never flinch nor leave me now.
Thou spokest not, nor ever stirred,
Yet in thine hush I heard each word.
No cruel rebuff, no lover’s slight,
Just steadfast spine and shoulders right.
Aye, thou art naught but nails and rope,
No lips to smile, no hands to hope.
Yet in thy stillness I found grace,
A soul-shaped void, a resting place.
I know thou wilt not turn to me,
Nor ride, nor speak, nor ever see.
But when the world grew harsh and dim,
I stood by thee—and thou by him.
Porch Light
One more “retiree” for the journal submission home.
Porch Light
It wasn’t even a good shirt. White with some kind of lion thing on the front and a last name in curly fake calligraphy. I didn’t recognize the name, but I recognized the box: plain brown, sitting on my neighbor’s porch for three days. Long enough to feel like a free-for-all. I was twelve. I wanted something that felt like treasure. I stole it, opened it, and wore it around the neighborhood like I was the heir to something.
The first time he saw me in it, he asked what my shirt meant. I said I wasn’t sure—it was just a shirt. He asked where I got it. I said something about a thrift store, or maybe my cousin. I don’t remember which lie I picked. Either way, I didn’t finish it. I took off before he could press further, which must have told him everything he needed to know. The next time I saw him, he was on our porch talking to my mom.
I had to apologize. My mom stood behind me with crossed arms while I mumbled something about being sorry and not knowing it was important. He nodded like a disappointed teacher and said he didn’t want the shirt back. “I want you to think about what you did every time you put it on,” he told me. That was too much. I wasn’t a hardened criminal—I was a dumb kid who wanted a new shirt. I folded it up that night and buried it in the bottom of my closet like evidence. I never wore it again.
It stayed buried for years. Every now and then I’d spot a corner of it beneath an old backpack or forgotten homework folder, and I’d get that same lurch in my stomach. Then I’d go do something worse. The shame wore out faster than it should have.
I thought it was going to change me. I really did. The apology, the speech, the folded-up shirt like a cursed object in the bottom of my closet. It felt like a turning point—like one of those after-school special moments where the kid realizes he’s gone too far. But I didn’t stop—not really. Not yet. It was the last time I stole something off a porch, but the first time I felt the slow heat of being caught. That stuck with me. I stopped stealing things I had to look at later.
Ask a Man Who's Done Everything Wrong
Like DJ Khaled, “Another One!”
Ask a Man Who's Done Everything Wrong
Q: What do I do when I feel like everyone’s moving forward except me?
– Left Behind in Louisville
A: Pretend it’s a parade. That’s what I used to do. Back when I was still sleeping in my car and the only thing I had forward momentum in was spiraling, I thought everyone else had a map. Some kind of shared choreography they’d learned while I was out sick. They moved with direction. I moved mostly by accident. Turns out that’s enough to fool people if you keep going long enough.
But here’s the trick I eventually figured out: parades look organized only from a distance. Get close enough, and it’s just chaos. Frantic baton twirling, blisters, teenagers trying not to cry in mascot suits.
Progress isn’t graceful. It’s just noise and awkward timing. Sometimes, standing still is the only way to realize you’re not on their route at all. You’re building something different. You just haven’t seen the float yet.
Maybe there was never a parade. That would explain the looks. Either way, it’s gotten me this far. And hey, sometimes getting lost is the only way to find out you never really had a destination.
Q: How do I know if I’m making the right decision?
– Treading Water in Tacoma
A: You don’t. Not really. You just make it and see how much of a mess you’ve got to clean up afterward.
I used to think there’d be a feeling—some click, some cosmic signal. But mostly, it was just me staring at ceilings, running pros and cons like logic ever stopped me. I made the worst decisions of my life with certainty, and some of the best by accident. If there’s a system, no one shared it with me.
The truth is, I still don’t know what I’m doing half the time. But here’s what I’ve learned: mistakes are proof you’re doing anything at all. So, screw it. Make the decision and see what sticks. Just don’t expect it to stick the way you want. That’s the fun part.
Q: Is it normal to miss people who were bad for you?
– Sentimental and Stupid in Seattle
A: Yes. Missing them is the easy part. Not texting them—that’s the miracle.
I still miss people who chipped away at me, then wondered why there was so little left. And I let them. I told myself if I stayed still long enough, they'd run out of things to take.
Memory’s a liar. It skips the parts where you flinched and plays back the time they kissed your forehead like that made up for it.
Missing someone doesn’t mean they were good. It means something in you still wants the version of them that never existed.
You’re not stupid. Just slow to stop hoping. But maybe that’s the only way you get to feel anything real.
Q: What if I never become the person I was supposed to be?
– Running Out of Time in Reno
A: Then welcome to the club. We meet Thursdays. Bring snacks.
I used to think there was a final version of me—unlockable if I made the right choices, married the right girl, got the right job. I did that part. But the person I was “supposed” to be? Turns out he’s just the guy who lets the dog out and tries not to forget the groceries.
There is no gold star. No final form. Just you, getting less wrong over time.
And if you’re stuck with that version of you? Maybe that’s the only one you ever needed.
Q: What if I’m just not good enough?
– Doubtful in Denver
A: You might not be. I’m not, most days. But sometimes not being good enough is what makes you real.
You don’t need to be perfect. You just need to show up. And if all you can do is show up messy and uncertain and tired? That still counts.
Q: What if everyone else has it together and I’m the only one falling apart?
– Out of Sync in Albuquerque
A: They don’t. I promise you, they don’t.
Most people are just better at hiding the cracks.
Falling apart means you’re paying attention. That’s what scares everyone else: the truth that nothing holds together the way we pretend. But at least you’re honest enough to notice.
Q: What if I don’t know who I am anymore?
– Missing the Map in Madison
A: Then you’re right where you’re supposed to be.
I’ve felt like I was wearing a costume of my own life, waiting for someone to call my cue.
But the truth is, figuring out who you are is just a long series of guesses. You don’t need to “find” yourself. Just stop searching for what you think you should be.
And if you’re reading the map? You’ve had it upside down all along. Maybe that’s the only way to find your way.
Nine Attempts
Continuing our journal submission graveyard theme, here is another piece that is unlikely to find a home out there. Now it lives here, with us.
Nine Attempts
You: reading Camus on the bus.
Me: holding myself inside my own seams.
We never looked up. I still inventory strangers for you.
—
You: tucked a note into a returned library book.
Me: left it blinking in the dark.
I keep it in my wallet and it hums up my spine.
—
You: wore grief like a high-visibility vest.
Me: recognized the uniform.
We nodded, two emergency exits disguised as men.
—
You: said you didn’t believe in signs.
Me: wrote this anyway.
In case you decided signs were allowed after all.
—
You: smelled like cinnamon and winter storms.
Me: followed you for two blocks, pretending I was headed that way.
Even now, every first snow pulls your scent through the streets.
—
You: mouthed “Are you okay?” across the bar.
Me: nodded, leaking smoke through the cracks.
I was a structure already condemned.
—
You: dropped your wallet in the rain.
Me: picked it up and kept walking.
Your kids still stare up at me from a cracked plastic frame.
—
You: stopped your car and asked if I needed anything.
Me: said no with my mouth and yes with my whole body.
Your headlights were the last search party that ever found me.
—
You: reached out first.
Me: let it ring, hands full of splinters.
I flinch when the dead number rings inside my chest.
None of It Will Save You
Some pieces don’t land where you hope they will. This one didn’t find a journal to call home, but I still believe it’s worth reading. So I’m sharing it here instead.
None of It Will Save You
Begin early. Begin while it’s still quiet enough to pretend you’re choosing this. Keep a notebook nearby, even if it’s only to feel like the kind of person who keeps notebooks. Don’t worry if the first twenty pages are blank. Worry when they’re not.
Practice endurance before it’s noble. Fail before anyone is watching. Fail when no one cares. Fail again when someone finally does. Be gracious. Be polite. Swallow the lump. Say thank you. Say it again. Say it through your teeth.
Invent a routine. Wake up early, even if your best ideas come at 2 a.m. Pretend structure is a form of devotion. Make tea. Don’t drink it. Stare at it like it might reveal something. Try again.
Write something terrible on purpose. Then write something worse. Call it a warmup. Call it a purge. Call it a necessary shedding of ego, even if you secretly hope someone will stumble across it and call it raw genius. Keep going anyway. Keep writing until the sentences feel like dead skin, peeling off under your fingertips. Keep writing until you forget which one was supposed to be the joke. Keep writing until the joke sounds almost plausible.
Start a spreadsheet. Give it a name that makes it sound like a way to stay organized instead of a graveyard. Call it Progress Tracker, or Submission Log, or The Year of Forward Motion. Color code it. Add filters. Create tabs for drafts, responses, timelines, goals. Pretend it’s data, pretend it matters. Pretend each rejection is a milestone. Pretend you're collecting them on purpose, like pressed flowers or parking tickets. Count them. Record the dates. Tell yourself there’s a pattern forming. Tell yourself it’s not just noise.
When someone asks how it’s going, smile. Say “good!” Say “getting close.” Say “this one feels different,” even if it doesn’t. Especially if it doesn’t. Don’t mention the one you deleted without backing up. Don’t mention the one you submitted under a fake name just to see if the silence would sound different with a different name. Or if your name was the problem. Or if any change would change anything.
Build rituals. Light a candle. Blow it out. Light it again. Touch the same corner of the desk three times before opening your document. Not two, not four—three. Keep a charm nearby: a rejection letter folded so many times it’s almost soft. A lucky pen that ran out of ink six months ago. A stone you found on the day you almost quit and didn’t. Line up your notebooks in descending order of failure. Don’t touch the red one. The red one ruins things. Offer small sacrifices: a clean desk, a skipped meal, a sleep debt you’ll never repay. Pretend these things matter. Pretend they keep the work safe. Pretend they keep you safe.
Invent gods, if you have to. The Patron Saint of Almost. The God of Partial Requests. The One-Who-Replies-in-May. Light a match for the ghost of a piece that never landed. Pray to the algorithm. Whisper to the inbox. Offer tribute in wordcount. Offer tribute in blood, if it comes to that. Keep going. Keep believing. Keep pretending belief is the same thing as progress. It isn’t, but never admit that.
When inspiration fails, try momentum. When momentum fails, try caffeine. When caffeine fails, try a walk, or a new playlist, or rearranging your bookshelf like it’s an act of creative alignment. When that fails, try rage. Try muttering. Try panic. Try bargaining with a universe that has never once responded to negotiation. Then go back to the page. Not because it’s working. Just because you don’t know what else to do. Nothing like no other choice to make a thing possible.
If someone says, “you’re still doing that?” smile like it’s a compliment. Nod slowly. Say “always.” Say “it’s what I do.” Say it like a vow. Do not blink. Do not flinch. Let them understand. Or let them worry. Either is fine. Let them think you’re dedicated. Let them think you’re possessed. Let them think you’re strange. You are. Or at least you’d better be.
Keep going. Even when the words are ash. Even when the structure collapses. Even when the piece you loved turns on you mid-sentence and refuses to come back. Keep going when it’s joyless. Keep going when it’s embarrassing. Keep going when it feels like you’re writing in a language no one speaks anymore. Especially then. Especially if you’re the last one. For posterity.
Outlast them. Outlast the trend. Outlast the silence. Outlast the friend who pivoted to ceramics and suddenly got a residency. Outlast the influencer who wrote a book in two months and got a six-figure deal because her dog has a million followers. Outlast your own better judgment. Outlast the version of you that once thought this would be easier. Outlast everything that was supposed to happen by now. If you don’t, what was it for? Outlast whatever it was for.
Keep the draft open. Even when you’re not writing. Let it hum in the background like a low-grade fever. Click over to it during lunch. Scroll through it while the pasta boils. Highlight a sentence just to feel like you touched it. Add a comma. Delete it. Add it again. Proof of life.
Keep it nearby. Let it live on your desktop, pinned open, always watching. Not to work on it—just to know it’s still there. Like a half-tamed animal you don’t quite trust to stay. Don’t close it. Don’t let it rest. Let it flicker at the edge of your day, holding space for what still needs saying. Let it remind you what you haven’t done yet. Just in case.
Revisit the old drafts. The ones you swore you’d buried. Or hurled off the Tappan Zee into the Hudson. The ones with titles that gurgle and choke. Drag them up dripping. Get them on the table. Find the one sentence that still twitches and sputters. Copy it into something new. It earned a second chance. Call it salvage. Call it resurrection. Call it a mistake you’re willing to make again.
Keep sending the work out. Even the broken ones. Even the stitched-together ones made from parts of better things. Send it limping into the world anyway. Tape a cover letter to its chest like a name tag. Tell it to be brave. Tell it not to flinch. Tell it to come back with good news or not at all.
Refresh your inbox. Again. Again. Again. Check the spam folder. Check the submission portal. Check the calendar to see how long it’s been. Count the days. Count the hours. Check the inbox again. Tell yourself it’s not obsession, it’s vigilance. Tell yourself it’s not desperation, it’s discipline. Tell yourself there’s a difference even though there isn’t. Not for this.
Stay up too late. Wake up too early. Let your spine curve toward the screen like a plant reaching for a flickering blue sun. Forget how long you’ve been hunched like this. Forget why you started. Remember only that you haven’t stopped. Not yet. How can you?
Keep working. Even when it’s not progress anymore, just motion. Even when it’s not hope anymore, just habit. Even when the only reason to continue is that you already have. Keep working because stopping would mean admitting it might not matter. You might not matter. And you’re not ready for that. Not yet. Are you?
Keep going. Not because it’s noble. Not because it’s brave. Not because you think this time will be different. Keep going because there’s nothing else left to do. Because you’ve tied too much of yourself to this to walk away clean. Because you’re afraid you wouldn’t be you anymore. Because you’re more afraid you would be.
Keep building. Keep stacking the drafts, the emails, the unread responses, the half-finished notebooks, the unopened files. Let it become a monument. Let it become a burden. Let it become a life. You didn’t mean for it to go this far. But now you’re inside it. Now it’s inside you. And maybe it lasts. And maybe it doesn’t. Maybe no one ever finds the shape you meant to leave behind. Maybe it all disappears the same way it came—quietly, without notice. Maybe the work was never the legacy. Maybe the trying was. Or maybe it’s all bullshit.
Keep showing up. Even when you have nothing left to offer but the shape of your presence in a chair. Even when the sentences clatter out empty and cold. Even when your own voice sounds unfamiliar. Keep sitting there. Keep holding still. Keep giving the work a place to land, even if it never comes. Even if it never was.
It really is all bullshit.
You will lose things for this. Time. Sleep. People. You’ll forget how to answer messages. You’ll stop calling back. You’ll burn through weekends and miss the part where life was supposed to feel like one. You’ll trade hours for sentences that go nowhere. You’ll trade years for silence. You’ll give up things you didn’t even know you had until they’re already gone. And for what? Another paragraph that almost says it right.
Words. Bullshit.
Keep moving your hands. That’s all it is now. Muscle, not meaning. Reflex, not inspiration. The body goes on writing long after the mind has stopped believing in it. Type something. Erase it. Type it again. Erase that too. Stare at the blinking cursor until it starts to feel threatening. Keep going. Not because it’s good. Not because it’s true. Just because it’s yours and you have to be left with something.
That’s the secret, if there is one. You don’t finish because you believed. You finish because you ran out of reasons not to. Because the alternative is silence. Because you’re already in too deep to claw your way out clean. You finish because you’ve given too much not to leave something behind, even if it’s rubble. I mean—what would you tell your wife? What would you tell yourself? What’s it all been for?
Maybe the sentence doesn’t save you. Maybe none of them do.
But you write it anyway. You write it again.
And you keep going.
Because you have to.
Even if no one ever sees it.
Even if you hope they don’t.
Even if you can’t stand the sight of it.
And you’ll keep calling it a choice.
And none of it will save you.
The Book That Taught Me How to Write the Book
When I first started writing The Mess That Made Them, I thought I had a clear idea of what it was. It would be a book about artists, composers, and writers who struggled. Not just misunderstood geniuses, but real people who failed, got back up, and made something lasting. That was the pitch. That was the vision.
What I didn’t know was how to tell it.
The early draft was, if I’m honest, a well-meaning encyclopedia. I knew a lot about the people I wanted to write about. I knew which myths I wanted to correct. I had folders of research, a spreadsheet full of story beats, and a voice that sounded like someone trying to prove they belonged in the room. Which, of course, I was.
It wasn’t bad. It just wasn’t alive yet. It read like someone smart had done their homework. But it didn’t feel like anyone needed to say these things. It didn’t yet sound like me.
Two agents passed on the book, but both sent generous notes. One told me, bluntly, that the structure wasn’t working. That I was trying to do too much and saying too little in the process. Another said it felt like I was writing around something instead of into it. She asked what I was scared to say. I don’t think she meant it as a challenge, but it landed like one.
I sat with that for a while. And then I threw out most of the manuscript. Not the research. Not the core ideas. But the scaffolding. The tone. The version of myself that was trying to sound impressive instead of clear.
What emerged, slowly, was a different book. A sharper one. A quieter one, at times. And more honest. I found six core pressures that kept surfacing in the lives of these artists: refusal, containment, survival, exile, darkness, and reinvention. They became the spine. Each chapter found its place under one of those. Not perfectly. Not neatly. But with just enough gravity to hold everything together.
I stopped trying to include every fact. I stopped worrying about whether someone more qualified had written about these people before. I started asking why these lives had stayed with me for so long, and what they might offer to someone feeling stuck or too late or not quite good enough to begin.
The artists in the book stopped being subjects. They became mirrors. Not because I saw myself in their talent, but because I recognized something else: the uncertainty. The feeling of wanting to make something real without knowing if anyone would care. The slow erosion of confidence that happens when the world keeps asking you to be more manageable, more correct, more like what it already understands.
I didn’t want to write tidy legacy stories. I wanted to write about the people who made something lasting before the world said yes. I wanted to understand why they kept going when the outcome was uncertain. And I wanted to offer that to anyone else still wondering if the risk is worth it.
This book taught me how to write it. And not just in the structural sense. It taught me to stop performing. It taught me that voice is not what makes you sound smart, it’s what makes you sound true. It taught me that insight matters more than cleverness, and that clarity is harder than complexity.
It taught me that telling the truth, even in third person, even through someone else’s story, still costs something. And it’s still worth it.
So if you’re in the middle of a project that isn’t quite working yet, I’ll just say this: it might still be the right book. You just might not be the right writer for it yet. That doesn’t mean you’re not ready. It means the book might be teaching you how to become the person who can tell it right.
It took me longer than I wanted. I’m still not sure I got everything right. But I know what it’s about now. I know what I was trying to say.
And that is worth everything.
The Book Is About Persistence. So Was This.
Yesterday, after four months of querying, I received an offer of representation for The Mess That Made Them, a narrative nonfiction book about artists, outliers, and cultural figures who created something lasting not because they were chosen, but because they kept going when everything told them to stop.
I started sending queries in January. Here's what it took to get to this point:
208 queries
10 full manuscript requests
1 partial
25 proposals
2 phone calls
78 rejections
I’m sharing this not because I think these numbers are impressive, but because I remember reading other writers' posts like this when I was discouraged and wondering if it ever gets better. I needed to see that persistence was not just a theme, it was the path.
I give agents a hard time sometimes (guilty), but the truth is, two of the rejections I received earlier in the process came with notes that fundamentally changed the manuscript. They helped me turn what I now recognize was an encyclopedia draft into an actual book. The version that’s getting offers wouldn’t exist without their push, even though they passed. I owe them more than I expected.
And if I’m being honest, six months ago, I knew I could write this book, but I wasn’t sure it would be any good.
Getting an offer today, and having three other agents request time to consider offering as well, is already beyond anything I imagined. Maybe it’s silly, but I want to celebrate this moment. Not with fanfare. Just with honesty.
Because I didn’t get here by being the best writer in the room. I got here by not giving up.
Or to put it another way:
Wrote a nonfiction book about persistence.
Persisted to find an agent who believed in it.
Was relieved to discover the book was, in fact, nonfiction.
The numbers matter less than what they represent: every rejection was a chance to refine the project. Every full request was a vote of interest in something that once lived only in my head. Every draft brought it closer to what it needed to be.
Starting around 1990, my parents tried, repeatedly, to get me to see myself as someone who could have a career as a writer. They saw something I couldn’t. Neither of them lived to see this day. But I know without question that they would’ve been proud.
So if you’re querying, revising, hesitating, or hanging on by a thread, here’s what I can tell you: persistence isn’t just a virtue. It’s a strategy. The whole book is about that. Turns out, the process of trying to publish it is too.
Thanks for being part of it.
—Ryan
Between Projects, Between Outcomes, Between Everything
You ever hit that strange nowhere space where you are technically busy, querying, submitting, planning, but every part of you feels like it is just waiting?
That is where I am.
I have a Zoom call with a literary agency in an hour. It is the kind of call I would have celebrated not long ago. I should be excited. I am excited. But I also know it might be another maybe. Another almost. Another stretch of silence that feels like possibility until it doesn't.
While I wait, I have started to think about the next book. Not casually. Not in a someday way. I am starting to wonder whether it is time to begin again for real. Whether there is something inside me urgent enough to shape a new project around.
This space between endings and beginnings is not empty. It only feels that way. It is full of nerves and drafts and unanswered emails. It is the hallway between the room where something happened and the room where something might.
I used to think success would feel like a door swinging open. It turns out it feels more like knocking with one hand while revising with the other.
So that is where I am.
Not stuck.
Not soaring.
Just suspended.
And honestly, I think that is where most of us live. Somewhere between what we have done and what we still believe could matter.
I Caved. There’s a Website Now.
Listen, I know no one was out there refreshing their browser, thinking, What I really need today is an author website from that guy who writes about Caravaggio murdering people and artists getting repackaged for sale. But I made one anyway. Because the day is coming. And when it does, now there’s a place for people to find an ephemeral representation of who I was willing to tell them I was.
Is it polished? Sure. Is it a living document that will probably change weekly as I second-guess every choice? Also yes.
There’s a book page for The Mess That Made Them. There’s a bio where I try to sound like a person. There are links to essays, updates, and projects in motion. And eventually, there will probably be a newsletter, because I hear that’s what people do when they have something to say and a deep-seated fear of social media algorithms.
So if you're curious, or just want to see how a website looks when built by someone with equal parts sincerity and caffeine, it's up. I’m findable now. Sort of. Let’s call it a soft launch.
http://www.ryantpozzi.com/
Thanks for being here. Thanks for caring. Or for pretending to. Honestly, I’ll take either.