I’ve started writing on Stranger Fiction again. And some of the mammoth essays I’ve been editing for here over the past four weeks are nearing completion as well.

I wonder why I have created 10,000 edited words that haven’t been shared with the good people here. Hope I develop the discipline to build, as a fellow startup founder and business collaborator said, ‘in public’.

Here’s the article. For paid subscribers, I write in an unedited way writing.

I reference Verlyn Klinkenborg’s book right at the start of that article. I’ve really been thinking about that book a lot. Books and records are the two major indulgences I continue to allow myself despite being three-odd months into forsaking a salaried life for a riskier – and so far, more fulfilling – life.

That means my ‘bookshelf’, which is an out-of-commission fridge, overflows.

And the backdrop of the photo of the Klinkenborg book I reference is also littered with books.

It also means I cannot find the television remote under that pile of books and have to use my smartphone as one. Of late, I’ve been reading a lot more about writing.

There’s something about how writing, even if it’s about Blind Melon’s debut album, helps clear out the mind. If there’s one thing I recommend for anybody whose life involves creativity – be it as we traditionally define it (writing, making music), or in the way that I think it should be defined (running a business is a creative act, white-collar commercial work is a creative act) – it is writing.

Writing, not for publishing, but for its own sake. Writing as –

a flush for the mind.

• a form of practice of the magic that is our ability to string together syllables in our head to make concrete ideas in black-and-white.

• a matter of private record.

Since I published that piece, I’ve received positive feedback about my writing about ‘writing as a gerund’. About how wonderful it must be to feel these feelings about writing. Truth is I, once again, have accumulated thousands of edited words to publish over the past month of ‘building in private’. I can’t wait to share.