How a book becomes voice and the creative process

On travel, reading speed, and who's watching you. The military and unconventional skills. Bonus - book recommendation. Learn more at TreeHouseLetter.com

An ancient tale. Toolbox for writers: Murder your darlings.

"Sometimes I make things more complicated than they have to be." Learn about David Whyte's poem and a podcast on writing. Moreover, what is it you revere enough to pay daily homage?

Grief meets gratitude in a Queens market, a raw Thanksgiving letter, and how writing can create a kind of Deja Vu. Michelle Zauner, CS Lewis.

On the death of a parent, buddhism, and a return to the TreeHouseLetter. How three sentences from Salman Rushdie's memoir provide comfort after losing my mother.

The Prologue of my upcoming memoir opens on the embassy roof as my father escapes with the U.S. Ambassador on the last helicopter out of Saigon in 1975. This is my origin story. Just how will those final hours and the iconic and tragic end of an era in U.S. history figure into her life and her daughter’s?

Listen to this excerpt of Raising Athena, a Memoir; A Mother and Daughter Attend West Point 30 Years Apart.

German romantic poet Friedrich von Hardenberg on teachers, Mathematics, and love, as highlighted in Penelope Fitzgeral's masterpiece, The Blue Flower.

On drifters and jobs, on Satoshi Yagisawa and David Foster Wallace, on the bookseller and the accountant. Learn about finding "the job" from both authors, about certain truths, about what real courage is. And study the Music in Prose in passages from their books.

On the yoga headstand and what I learned about writing. "You can only do so many things great, and you should cast aside everything else." Tim Cook