Gary Glass
@garyglass.bsky.social
🇺🇲 🇪🇦 Writer. Photographer.
http://thebookthatatemylife.com/
http://garyglassbooks.com/
http://shutterglass.com/
http://thebookthatatemylife.com/
http://garyglassbooks.com/
http://shutterglass.com/
December 1, 2025 at 5:49 PM
Point-Of-View Is An Illusion
Point-Of-View Is An Illusion
Is every story a just-so story?
open.substack.com
November 18, 2025 at 6:48 AM
Point-Of-View Is An Illusion
November 11, 2025 at 2:09 PM
How making it worse made it better. Because writing a book is weird.
The Alchemist's Apprentice: Part 2: Rubedo
How the Red King met the Black Queen and the author lived happily ever after.
open.substack.com
October 29, 2025 at 1:48 AM
How making it worse made it better. Because writing a book is weird.
October 7, 2025 at 2:21 PM
I estimate that before it’s done, I will have spent at least 20,000 hours working on this novel. If I cannot finish it, if breath or strength or sanity should fail me, as one day it must, I fear I will regret the time spent on unfinished work. #writing 😟
I Won't Live Long Enough
I'm too damn old for this.
open.substack.com
September 22, 2025 at 3:24 PM
I estimate that before it’s done, I will have spent at least 20,000 hours working on this novel. If I cannot finish it, if breath or strength or sanity should fail me, as one day it must, I fear I will regret the time spent on unfinished work. #writing 😟
The white pieces are all coded male, the black pieces female. It follows then that the White Queen and Black King must be trans. #booksky #writing #writers
open.substack.com/pub/thebookt...
open.substack.com/pub/thebookt...
Queering The Text, Part 1
How LGBT themes weave through the novel.
open.substack.com
September 9, 2025 at 8:28 PM
The white pieces are all coded male, the black pieces female. It follows then that the White Queen and Black King must be trans. #booksky #writing #writers
open.substack.com/pub/thebookt...
open.substack.com/pub/thebookt...
Intermezzo: On structure, discursions, and breath
I have a mental defect that makes me type FAULKNER every time I mean to write STEINBECK. I mentioned STEINBECK several times in this week's Substack—I wrote FAULKNER every single time. You know, the author of The Grapes Of Wrath!
#booksky #writing
I have a mental defect that makes me type FAULKNER every time I mean to write STEINBECK. I mentioned STEINBECK several times in this week's Substack—I wrote FAULKNER every single time. You know, the author of The Grapes Of Wrath!
#booksky #writing
Intermezzo
On structure, discursions, and breath
open.substack.com
September 2, 2025 at 1:19 PM
There are in this sublunary life countless causes for fear — from caves, clowns, ravens, and roundabouts to imaginary numbers, irregular corners, and preachers’ kids.
AN ANATOMY OF TREPIDATION
open.substack.com/pub/thebookt...
#writing #writingcommunity
AN ANATOMY OF TREPIDATION
open.substack.com/pub/thebookt...
#writing #writingcommunity
August 11, 2025 at 4:44 PM
There are in this sublunary life countless causes for fear — from caves, clowns, ravens, and roundabouts to imaginary numbers, irregular corners, and preachers’ kids.
AN ANATOMY OF TREPIDATION
open.substack.com/pub/thebookt...
#writing #writingcommunity
AN ANATOMY OF TREPIDATION
open.substack.com/pub/thebookt...
#writing #writingcommunity
August 4, 2025 at 4:00 PM
The novel has many motifs. The mirroring motif is a primary one and it recurs relentlessly, compulsively. The novel itself is a literary hall of mirrors — which is a recurring image: one of the many ways in which the text reflects on itself.
open.substack.com/pub/thebookt...
open.substack.com/pub/thebookt...
July 28, 2025 at 5:31 PM
The novel has many motifs. The mirroring motif is a primary one and it recurs relentlessly, compulsively. The novel itself is a literary hall of mirrors — which is a recurring image: one of the many ways in which the text reflects on itself.
open.substack.com/pub/thebookt...
open.substack.com/pub/thebookt...
If we can’t think past the received verities of our cultural legacy, then the real world will certainly crush us. In short, dogma destroys.
#writingcommunity
open.substack.com/pub/thebookt...
#writingcommunity
open.substack.com/pub/thebookt...
Swimming In The Semiotic Sea
On the uses and abuses of allusion.
open.substack.com
July 7, 2025 at 3:20 PM
If we can’t think past the received verities of our cultural legacy, then the real world will certainly crush us. In short, dogma destroys.
#writingcommunity
open.substack.com/pub/thebookt...
#writingcommunity
open.substack.com/pub/thebookt...
And I think that, in a sense, the work is just the spontaneous activity of this strange being which imagines it is me. This particular work is just what happens to be going on here in this neck of the woods.
The Potlatch Novel
On art as giving.
open.substack.com
June 30, 2025 at 3:37 PM
And I think that, in a sense, the work is just the spontaneous activity of this strange being which imagines it is me. This particular work is just what happens to be going on here in this neck of the woods.
One of the hard-learned lessons of writing the experimental Swan is that I must keep re-inventing my approach to it as it keeps shifting and doubling back, restlessly undermining itself. It’s a continual, nerve-racking, and exhausting struggle.
Am I Making It Too Hard?
On the vices and virtues of difficult text
open.substack.com
June 23, 2025 at 3:15 PM
One of the hard-learned lessons of writing the experimental Swan is that I must keep re-inventing my approach to it as it keeps shifting and doubling back, restlessly undermining itself. It’s a continual, nerve-racking, and exhausting struggle.
As for me, lately there are days when I am so panicky I cannot work at all. Many another morning I go to the desk full of anxiety, fearful even to look at what I wrote the day before. And few are the days I don't despair of ever being able to finish the “the damn book”, let alone publish it …
Imaginary Problems
The privilege of creativity
open.substack.com
June 16, 2025 at 6:33 PM
As for me, lately there are days when I am so panicky I cannot work at all. Many another morning I go to the desk full of anxiety, fearful even to look at what I wrote the day before. And few are the days I don't despair of ever being able to finish the “the damn book”, let alone publish it …
These selves we think we are, are like houses built of words, mortared with grammar, whirling in a tornado. The writer’s work is to pull these bricks in mid-career and rearrange them. Perilous creativity! These days, writing a mad book in a mad world, I feel myself, with our hero, coming unjointed.
"Our Book"
Book the 10th of 14
open.substack.com
June 9, 2025 at 3:46 PM
These selves we think we are, are like houses built of words, mortared with grammar, whirling in a tornado. The writer’s work is to pull these bricks in mid-career and rearrange them. Perilous creativity! These days, writing a mad book in a mad world, I feel myself, with our hero, coming unjointed.
So it was that in the summer of the 2,014th year of the Common Era I embarked upon my fifth novel. Hey, I'd already written four books — I thought I knew what I was setting up for. Oh hell no.
thebookthatatemylife.substack.com
#WritersCommunity
thebookthatatemylife.substack.com
#WritersCommunity
The Book That Ate My Life | Gary Glass | Substack
Dispatches from a literary odyssey. Click to read The Book That Ate My Life, by Gary Glass, a Substack publication. Launched 4 days ago.
thebookthatatemylife.substack.com
June 6, 2025 at 3:54 PM
So it was that in the summer of the 2,014th year of the Common Era I embarked upon my fifth novel. Hey, I'd already written four books — I thought I knew what I was setting up for. Oh hell no.
thebookthatatemylife.substack.com
#WritersCommunity
thebookthatatemylife.substack.com
#WritersCommunity
So it was that in the summer of the 2,014th year of the Common Era I embarked upon my fifth novel. Hey, I'd already written four books — I thought I knew what I was setting up for. Oh hell no.
thebookthatatemylife.substack.com
#writing
thebookthatatemylife.substack.com
#writing
The Book That Ate My Life | Gary Glass | Substack
Dispatches from a literary odyssey. Click to read The Book That Ate My Life, by Gary Glass, a Substack publication. Launched 3 hours ago.
thebookthatatemylife.substack.com
June 2, 2025 at 5:36 PM
So it was that in the summer of the 2,014th year of the Common Era I embarked upon my fifth novel. Hey, I'd already written four books — I thought I knew what I was setting up for. Oh hell no.
thebookthatatemylife.substack.com
#writing
thebookthatatemylife.substack.com
#writing
So it was that in the summer of the 2,014th year of the Common Era I embarked upon my fifth novel. Hey, I'd already written four books — I thought I knew what I was setting up for. Oh hell no.
Preamble
In the summer of the 2,014th year of the Common Era I embarked upon my fifth novel. Hey, I'd already written four books — I thought I knew what I was setting up for. Oh hell no.
open.substack.com
June 1, 2025 at 6:04 PM
So it was that in the summer of the 2,014th year of the Common Era I embarked upon my fifth novel. Hey, I'd already written four books — I thought I knew what I was setting up for. Oh hell no.
Our works are gifts we give the world. Every story, every song, every dance and picture is a gesture of lovingkindness. No act of grace, however insufficient, goes to waste. And what is grace but art? And what is art but any work well done?
April 18, 2025 at 12:45 AM
Our works are gifts we give the world. Every story, every song, every dance and picture is a gesture of lovingkindness. No act of grace, however insufficient, goes to waste. And what is grace but art? And what is art but any work well done?
I never imagined I'd live to see the downfall of the United States.
March 27, 2025 at 3:15 PM
I never imagined I'd live to see the downfall of the United States.
If price is value, then value cannot be distinguished from values, then wealth is virtue, poverty is sin, profit is law, and power is proof. We have substituted enterprise for democracy and called it efficiency. We have sold our consciences to the highest bidder and called it grace.
March 21, 2025 at 9:44 PM
If price is value, then value cannot be distinguished from values, then wealth is virtue, poverty is sin, profit is law, and power is proof. We have substituted enterprise for democracy and called it efficiency. We have sold our consciences to the highest bidder and called it grace.
Reposted by Gary Glass
I think Dems should not go to the Joint Session Congressional address next week. (Term of art for SOTUs given in first year of a term.) Just don't show up.
Convince me that I'm wrong.
Convince me that I'm wrong.
March 1, 2025 at 2:33 AM
I think Dems should not go to the Joint Session Congressional address next week. (Term of art for SOTUs given in first year of a term.) Just don't show up.
Convince me that I'm wrong.
Convince me that I'm wrong.
I didn't expect that when America fell it would be so fucking boring.
March 1, 2025 at 4:41 AM
I didn't expect that when America fell it would be so fucking boring.