Filtering by Tag: LISTS
My Year in Review: 2025
Here are 10 20 things I did in 2025, listed in no particular order.
I learned Transcendental Meditation at the David Lynch Foundation.
I read a lot of books.
I published my newsletter.
I walked a lot.
I published a short story about a sexagenarian who discovers an adult movie is being filmed in the house behind his.
I was interviewed about writing fiction.
I wrote about Anton Chigurh.
I was in The New York Times Magazine.
My memoir was a New York Public Library book of the day
I listened to this song.
A photo I took on an adult movie set in 2024 went viral.
One of my photos was in a group art show.
I visited David Lynch’s grave.
I traveled.
My photos were on a television show.
I worked on my novel.
I worked on my nonfiction book.
I saw a lot of art.
I ate a lot of food.
I remained cancer-free.
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Things in New Orleans That I Should Be Writing About Since I've Been Living Here for Six Weeks But Haven't Done So Yet
This story was written by me when I was living in New Orleans and published on Pindeldyboz in March 2004.
1. The Cat Riding on the Back of the Dog. Actually, I did not see this. A man I know who I talked to before I moved here saw this. I want to see it. I want to see a cat riding on the back of a dog, for no reason.
2. The Cab Driver Who Crossed Herself Every Time We Drove by a Church. What the hell? I grew up in Berkeley. I was born and raised to be an atheist. Who is this woman driving my cab and what is she doing? It is sort of romantic, I suppose. What it is designed to prevent or conjure, I have no idea whatsoever. There are churches everywhere in this city. Doesn't her hand ever get tired? I want to know this.
3. The Person Sleeping on My Doorstep. I felt no sympathy for this person, at the time of our encounter. I was drunk. I assumed the Sleeper was, too. I stepped angrily over the Sleeper's head to get in my door. I was not very careful. Every day, I try to find the time to feel bad about what happened. I have not been able to make the time yet.
4. The Mississippi River. This seems a necessary subject. Today, I may ride my bike out towards it. Maybe then, the muse will crawl up my ass as I bounce along the pavement running next to it. Or, I might get hit by a train on the way there. I can't make any promises. Last weekend, some anarchists with no deodorant gave me a sticker for my bike. It reads, "This Bike is a Pipe Bomb." Ol' Miss is not a pipe bomb.
5. The Things Men Call Me. Baby. Darling. Doll. Sweetie. Honey. Precious. Other names. Sometimes all these words in the course of one or two or three sentences. My favorite is Sweet Girl. I am, after all, not a Sweet Girl. I have a sour expression and a rotten attitude. They don't seem to care.
6. The Train. I love the fucking train. The wail of it. What do you call that? Its whistle. The sound is different here, I swear. More bleating, almost. The other day, I saw a big white bird with a giant wingspan and a long beak flying out across the train tracks. It hung out in the grass next to the train. I was on my bike. For a moment, I felt sad, looking at it.
7. The Mardi Gras Beads Hanging From the Trees. They are like a cliché wrapped inside the metaphor in which I now find myself living. They're like this city's answer to the outlying plantations' Spanish Moss. When I first moved to this place, I thought about living in what they call Slave Quarters. But, it didn't seem like a good idea. You know?
8. Ernie K-Doe Mother-in-Law Lounge. Writing about this bar would be pointless. No matter how many rocks I overturned in the corners of my head, I would never be able to find the right words. I could never come up with the correct number for all the paper stars hanging from the ceiling, or the proper adjective for the wooden figure of Poor Dead Ernie propped up in the corner, or the best phrase to guess at what the hell his widow is thinking when she hands me my fucking drink. To say it is an immortal shrine to a no-longer living legend would be like calling Bugs Bunny a rabbit. Or something.
9. The Paint. It's everywhere, chipping and flaking and peeling. If I were to become smaller, and eat some of it, maybe I would die. That has not happened at this time.
10. The Smell of Funk in My Bed in the Morning. God knows what the hell I dream about in this place. When I wake up, I feel so bad, I'm glad I don't remember. I get shitty coffee around the corner. When I come back, it reeks in my bedroom. My pillows are covered with whatever black primordial crap has oozed out of my ears while my brain was allowed to run off its leash. I don't know what it means. I don't want to.
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Fuck You, Pay Me #14: Cranking the Flywheel
This is part 14 of “Fuck You, Pay Me,” an ongoing series of posts on writing, editing, and publishing.
What am I working on these days? A good question. When you’re a writer, you tend to have a lot of pots on the stove. Here are a few things I’m doing, may be doing, am going to be doing, should be doing, want to be doing. The point is to generate momentum and get the proverbial word-based flywheel turning.
“A flywheel is a mechanical device that uses the conservation of angular momentum to store rotational energy, a form of kinetic energy proportional to the product of its moment of inertia and the square of its rotational speed.”
In early October, I’ll be attending the Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma’s 2024 Reporting Safely in Crisis Zones Course for Freelance Journalists in New York. From the course description: “While most hostile environment training for journalists deals with ducking crossfire and kidnappers, this course will teach you how to avoid unnecessary peril through preparation and planning before, during and after assignments.” I’m really looking forward to doing this, and I’ll share how it went afterwards.
In late November, I’ll be a resident at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts in Nebraska. From KHN’s website: “The mission of the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts is to support established and emerging writers, visual artists and composers by providing working and living environments that allow uninterrupted time for work, reflection and creative growth.” I can’t wait to do this and will report back on the experience when I return.
I’m continuing to post on Forbes.com, where I cover the business of sex. So far this month, I’ve written about the return of Playboy magazine as an annual print publication and what happened when Etsy banned the sale of adult toys on its website. I’ve got stories in the pipeline about strippers, AI smut, and escorts, to name a few.
“In recent decades, Playboy has struggled to find its footing in a changing media landscape. When Hugh Hefner, the magazine’s founder and editor-in-chief, who died in 2017, launched the first issue of Playboy in December 1953 with a nude spread featuring Marilyn Monroe, the competition was limited to other adult magazines.”
I changed the format of my newsletter to The Reverse Cowgirl Diaries. “From my recent sexplorations to my current obsessions, this weekly newsletter takes you into the mind of someone who has seen too many porn movies,” pretty much sums it up. It also includes weird pitches I get from publicists trying to get me to promote their sex products. And other things.
Lately, I’ve been writing a new short story. By the end of today, it’ll be two-thirds done, and it’ll likely be finished by Monday or not long after. The main character is a man, and suffice to say it has a pornographic element to it. The entire tale takes place in the San Fernando Valley, which is my Yoknapatawpha County.
“To the sympathetic critics Mr. Faulkner dealt with the dark journey and the final doom of man in terms that recalled the Greek tragedians. They found symbolism in the frequently unrelieved brutality of the yokels of Yoknapatawpha County, the imaginary Deep South region from which Mr. Faulkner drew the persons and scenes of his most characteristic novels and short stories.”
Speaking of porn, I’m working on two books: “a novel set in the adult movie industry and a nonfiction book about the pornography business.” The novel has a male main character, and the nonfiction novel has a female main character who is me. Both are set in the present day. The novel is funny, and the nonfiction book is more serious. The novel will be around 250 pages, and the nonfiction book will be around 400 pages.
This fall, there are a handful of sex-related books coming out, so I pitched a story about them and what it means that they’re all by women and in some ways about the female gaze. I sent that to the Los Angeles Review of Books and will probably pitch it a few other places, as well.
“Last month's New Yorker profile of Anderson revealed that the book is in part a modern-day version of Nancy Friday's 1973 best-selling anthology My Secret Garden. But Want's publisher has "placed off limits" any confessors' erotic fantasies that were too extreme. What happens when the outer limits of female sexual fantasies end up on the cutting room floor?”
Things I’m waiting to hear back on: if a panel I pitched to the 2025 AWP Conference & Bookfair has been accepted, if any of the six other writing residencies I applied to earlier this year have accepted me, and if I got a writing grant I applied for.
Last year, I read exactly zero books, so this year I made it a point to read at least a book a month. Follow along at Books I Read. The books include fiction, nonfiction, memoir, photography, and graphic novels. So far my favorite has been Victory Parade.
“It's an electric, searing, beyond Spiegelman's Maus anatomical and artistic investigation of the twin traumas of war and violence, the nightmares that haunt survivors' waking and sleeping lives, and the banality of evil's horrifying consequences to the human soul.”
And, as usual, I’ll be taking lots of photos along the way.
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My All-Time Favorite Movies (in No Particular Order)
These are some of my all-time favorite movies, listed arbitrarily. (A single director can only get one mention.)
Amélie
The Wizard of Oz
Reservoir Dogs
No Country for Old Men
Goodfellas
Sixteen Candles
Moonlight
Grey Gardens
Apocalypse Now
Black Swan
Léon: The Professional
Meshes of the Afternoon
The Zone of Interest
Hustlers
I Am Love
Eastern Promises
La La Land
The Truman Show
I Am Not Your Negro
Sexy Beast
Death and the Maiden
Blue Valentine
Metropolis
Cast Away
Past Lives
Bonnie and Clyde
Un Chien Andalou
Daughters of the Dust
Tár
Sweetie
Blade Runner
Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles
Do the Right Thing
Spring Breakers
Mulholland Drive
The Royal Tenenbaums
Body Double
Children of Men
American Psycho
Dior and I
The Shining
Moulin Rouge
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Magnolia
Irreversible
Brazil
Magic Mike
Alien
Suture
Nomadland
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Fuck You, Pay Me #1: How to Become a Writer in 12 Easy Steps
The writer at 4
This is part 1 of “Fuck You, Pay Me,” an ongoing series of posts on writing, editing, and publishing.
1. Get lucky. Be born. Have English professor parents. Be read to a lot. Learn to read. Read a lot. Go to a weird kindergarten that lets you sit in a box all day, reading books. Be taken to the library. Be taken to bookstores. Watch your father write books. Spend a lot of time on your own in your room, reading books. Cultivate an expansive imagination. Make up stories in your head. Listen to your father crouched down on the floor next to your bed making up bedtime stories that you’ll wish you could remember as an adult but can’t. Decide books are your friends.
2. Look for the helpers. Go to grade school. Go to high school. Bond with various English teachers along the way who tell you or suggest to you or make you feel like you are a good writer and think to yourself: Maybe I am. Drop out of high school in your senior year to the disappointment of pretty much everyone. Attend community college. Transfer to U.C. Berkeley as a junior. Major in English at the same university where your father is a professor. Fall in love with James Joyce. Fall in love with William Faulkner. Fall in love with Jacques Lacan. Consider becoming a writer.
The writer in Austin, Texas
3. Write a lot. Get accepted to a graduate school master’s degree program that is 50% literature and 50% creative writing. Move to Chicago. Make friends with other writers. Read more. Write more. Pen academic essays and short stories in which strange things happen. Graduate. Return to the Bay Area. Have your father die. Realize that you want to be a writer, now that your father (the writer) is dead. Start an online magazine about post-feminism with your friends from graduate school. Interview a porn star. Get invited to a porn set in Los Angeles. Move to L.A.
4. Find a niche. Become a sex writer. Write about the porn business. Appear on TV. Write for glossy magazines. Get hired to be a reporter on a Playboy TV show that’s basically “60 Minutes” on Viagra, a gig that takes you around the world and results in you visiting the Playboy Mansion three times. Date a famous comedian who dumps you. Date an artist who makes fire-breathing robots. Start one of the first sex blogs, which is called The Reverse Cowgirl; the tagline is: “In which a writer attempts to justify the enormity of her porn collection.”
5. Sell out. Leave L.A. for reasons you’ll be unable to understand later. Move to New Orleans, Louisiana. Publish a collection of short stories with a small publisher. Identify Hurricane Katrina is on its way to where you live and leave. Move to Norfolk, Virginia. Sell freelance articles, generate blog posts, and try to write a novel about the porn business but fail repeatedly. Move to Austin, Texas. Become a copywriter. Get hired to be the voice of Pepto-Bismol on social media, something at which you are good. Wonder what you’re doing with your life. Feel unsure.
The writer in Naples, Florida
6. Give up. Move to Chicago, Illinois. Get married. Get breast cancer. Feel like maybe you’re going to die, or maybe you’re not going to die, but either way the chemo makes you feel like you’re dying so what’s the difference. Survive. Write for the Forbes website. Try intermittently to stop writing about sex because you’re married and it seems unseemly. Keep writing about sex anyway. Move to Naples, Florida. Become extremely unsure who you are or what your life has become or what you’re going to do next. Get divorced. Move back to L.A.
7. Try again. Pick up the pieces of your life, attempt to arrange them into something else, and identify it looks like a mess. Start a strategic communications consulting business that you describe as “I tell C-suite guys what to do.” Decide that you’re going to write the memoir that you were trying to write when you were married, which is about how you were a human lab rat in a 30-year longitudinal study of personality starting when you were a kid. Apply for an investigative reporting fellowship at U.C. Berkeley, which is where the study was conducted, so you can research the book. Tell everyone you’ll never get the fellowship. Get the fellowship.
The writer in an experiment room
8. Face your fears. Move back to your hometown. Rent an in-law apartment in a house that’s less than a mile from the house in which you were raised. Start your investigating. Visit the preschool where you were studied. Explore the building in which you were studied. Take a selfie in one of the one-way mirrors through which you were spied on in an experiment room. Begin to wonder how this experience of being studied shaped the person you became. Wonder if people are who they are or if life changes people and if the latter is true, can writing the story or your life change you, too?
9. Write a book. Return to L.A. after the fellowship ends. Craft a book proposal about your human lab rat life. Acquire a literary agent. Sell the book on proposal to one of the big publishing houses on the other side of the country. Watch as the pandemic descends on the globe. Debate the point of writing anything, seeing as the world is coming to an end. Spend a long time writing the book. Have your mother die. Write your mother dying into your manuscript. Hire a freelance editor who helps you finish the book and whom you refer to as your “book doula.” Wait for the book to be published.
10. Believe in yourself. Get the book published. Appear on some book lists. Get some good book reviews. Have an article about you and your book published in a newspaper in which your photograph appears. Promote your book on social media. Do some interviews about your book. See your book in some bookstores. Thank people for buying your book. Hold your book in your hands and experience a mix of pride at your hard-won accomplishment and the clarity that it is far too late for either of your now dead parents to acknowledge it. Put the book on the shelf in your living room. Consider what to do next.
The writer in The New York Post
11. Question everything. Turn into the living embodiment of that meme in which a dog is sitting in a room that is afire and the words say: “This is fine.” If this is a midlife crisis or an existential crisis or some other sort of crisis, it is the quietest crisis ever, a kind of imploding. Who are you and what are you doing and is this who you are supposed to be? These are the same questions you have been asking yourself for a long time, and you still don’t have the answers. Interviewers want you to give them a happy ending to the story of your life when they ask you about your book, but this is your reality. Life goes on.
12. Start all over. Think about how over two decades earlier, you stood on the set of a porn movie and thought: I should write a novel about this. Think about all the times you have tried to write it and failed. Try to write it again. Fail again. Try writing it another way. Fail again for a second time. Think of another way to write it that is new, an idea that sounds like a terrible idea because maybe no one will read it because it’s so totally out there. Think about how the way you shouldn’t do things is exactly how you should do things. Try writing the novel that way. Love it. Keep writing it. Feel better. Keep going. You’re a writer now, after all.
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Data Baby Is One of the Best Psychology Books of 2023
The Next Big Idea Club has named my new memoir, DATA BABY: My Life in a Psychological Experiment, one of “The Top 50 Psychology Books of 2023.” You can also read and listen to me talk to The Next Big Idea Club about “Lessons Learned From Growing Up as a Test Subject.” You can buy DATA BABY here.
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2020 in Review
The Successes List
Image via Tart
A month or so ago, I stopped writing to-do lists and started writing successes lists. Instead of writing a list of what I was supposed to do, I started doing the things that I knew I needed to do, and then, as I completed them throughout the day, I wrote a successes list. Everything and anything that was positive and or productive went on the successes list, from doing Pilates to finishing a draft to creating a blog post. I found this to be a helpful trick that converted the day’s “musts” into the day’s “mission accomplisheds.”
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Me, by the Numbers
Me, by the numbers:
Twitter: 4,569 followers
This is not a bad number. I like Twitter. It’s word-based. I’m good with words.
Instagram: 1,123 followers
This isn’t a very good number. I haven’t been on Instagram as long as Twitter.
Facebook: 135 friends
This is one of the few places on the internet where you can’t read it unless I make it public, which I usually don’t. Mostly, my Facebook friends are people I actually know in real life. If you ask to be my Facebook friend, I will probably delete you.
Forbes: approximately 100,000 unique visitors this month
I’m on track to do about 100,000 unique visitors to my Forbes blog this month. I believe that’s the number I’ll hit, or close to it. Page views are around 100,000.
Substack: 70 newsletter email signups
This number is so embarrassingly low that I can’t believe I’m sharing it. Subscribe! I haven’t been doing it that long, though. In fact, the number is very in line with this popular newsletter writer’s growth.
LinkedIn: about 2,700 connections
This number has no intrinsic value whatsoever.
Website: around 3,000 unique visitors a month
The number of people who visit my personal website is growing steadily.
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Things I Did While Self-Isolating
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Revised a podcast series proposal
Wrote a book proposal
Started a novel
Wrote a short story
Wrote a podcast episode pitch
Launched a newsletter: “The Valley”
Wrote a submission for a “Modern Love” New York Times series on self-isolating
Took a lot of photographs
Posed naked on the internet
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Week in Review
This week, I:
Had a Skype audition with a reality TV casting director
Posted more pandemic fictions
Updated this blog daily
Wrote a short story and submitted it to an online publication, which rejected it
Was approached by a producer to create a pitch for a podcast episode, which was rejected
Was rejected for a national fellowship I applied to months ago
Continued reading Jerry Saltz’s How to be an Artist
Started doing yoga again
Posted a series of freelance writing tips to LinkedIn
Worked on a book and a podcast that I can’t talk about yet
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What to Watch
Over on my Forbes blog, I wrote about nine movies that offer the opposite of social distancing: intimacy. From hustling strippers to star-crossed lovers, it’s a list that provides a refreshing alternative to the six-foot rule. I hadn’t posted on my Forbes blog in a while, but I’ll be doing so more regularly moving forward. If circumstances change, the best strategy is sometimes a shotgun approach: Just aim and fire.
The Operation (1995)
Arguably the best explicit film ever made, “The Operation” is truly unlike anything you’ve ever seen. Essentially, it’s a porn movie shot with an infrared camera. The effect is haunting and otherworldly. Starring Otto Wrek and Gina Velour and directed by Jacob Pander, this is just about the most interesting thing you’ll see while isolated.
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Things I Thought Watching Myself in a Video From 2018
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I have terrible posture.
I get why that guy I went on a date with implied I had a drug problem because I do sniff a lot, but that is due to a minor nasal issue, not a cocaine issue.
I am incredibly tall!
I talk like a robot.
I say “um” too much.
I’m hilarious!
I was thinner then.
Those pants are awfully tight.
I didn’t realize those boots looked like that.
I have a big butt, but I don’t know that that’s a problem. Or is it?
[Image from my Instagram feed]
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Stars in LA
Celebrities I’ve seen since moving back to LA
Pete Townshend
Rachel Dratch
Tobey Maguire
Halsey
Riz Ahmed
Jodie Foster
Mick Fleetwood
John Cho
Stassi Schroeder
Michael Yo
Gerard Butler
Marilu Henner
Ken Todd
Stephanie Allynne
Domhnall Gleeson
Alexis Ren
Noah Centineo
Paula Newsome
Oliver Hudson
Celebrities I haven’t seen since moving back to LA
Brad Pitt
George Clooney
Idris Elba
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To Reach Your Goals, Count Backwards
As pointed out by Scott Galloway, this list has some interesting, counter-intuitive strategies for reaching your goals. My favorite one is #11: Counting Backwards. Instead of propelling yourself forward through time, it asks you to set a future goal and strategize backwards. You may have done this before, but this method suggests you break things down by the numbers, including, at the end, what your goal is for this minute.
“11. Count Backward
You can use simple numbers to help you visualize your goals and make them into actions. Starting with five, come up with a goal you have for five years from now. Move down to four: What do you want to have accomplished four months from now? Three weeks? Two days? One day, one hour, this minute? How do these activities relate to each other? This number-goal-puzzle can give you clarity when everything else is unsteady.”
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5 Wikipedia Pages Upon Which My Name Appears
Get a copy of my acclaimed story, “The Tumor.” It’s “a masterpiece of short fiction.”
Things That Make It Easier to Write
Wearing hats
A room with a view that doesn’t entice one to leave it
Your blancoat (a coat that is so warm and cuddly that it feels like a blanket but has sleeves and a hood so that if you leave the house for food you appear to be dressed like a normal person)
No headaches
The vague belief that well-told stories manifest their fictional realities
Caffeine of choice
An internal sea of self-dissatisfaction
Somebody else’s beautiful creation (ie “Roma”)
Talent
Lying to yourself: “You’re almost done,” “You can do this,” “This is going to be amazing”
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How to Work on a Long Project
I've been working on a longer project these days, which is new for me, and here are some things I've learned.
Quitters never win. It really is true: The only difference between success and failure is not quitting. But that's not exactly right, is it? The fact is that on the way to success, you will quit many, many times. I've been working on this project for over four years. I have quit several times. Now, I am close to the finish line of one stage of it. I will never give up. One day I will win.
Form a team. No one person can help you on your way to your destination. It's more like a road, and there are various people along the way. One points you in the right direction. The other hands you a bottled water. Another dusts off your butt when you fall on the ground. You will only recognize your team when you look back and see them lining the path you're on, waving you to the finish line.
Keep your eyes on the payoff. One thing that's cool about working on a longer project is that you exchange the shallow payoff of immediate gratification for the deep win of long-form evolution. When you stick with something for years, it changes you, shifts your makeup, alters your brain. This is a good thing. Without this kind of protracted commitment, you're a dog whining for a bone.
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I Am Fat
Image via Xpresso Fix
Somewhere along the way, I gained ten pounds. Here's what I'm doing about that.
More yoga: I'm a Gordian knot.
More walking: I'm a flaneur.
More exercises: I'm a machine.