We were supposed to be building, but some of us wanted to learn to drive the Bobcat instead. To the site, we’d brought one pallet of arch brick, two pallets of straights, and were more or less camping out on land owned by a friend of a friend, in Northern Iowa, a space left unglaciated for the last 12,000 years or so, which meant there were hills, little ripples of prairie with grass five feet tall, big clumps of blackeyed susans and oaks and splashes of purple loosestrife, invasive and stunning. This was where T was going to have her new anagama, a wood kiln, and we were there to build it. Anagama’s the Japanese word, but this type of kiln originally came from China, then Korea, thousands of years ago. Anagama means cave kiln—and this was the best way to describe, probably, what we were doing there: we had carved a little square into a hillside, stacked bricks for the base, more bricks for the firebox, and the kiln tech, Reggie, had made a wooden frame for the top of the kiln. It was a parabola, a continuous curve that would hold itself up once the frame was removed or burned beneath. The top pieces—keys—would keep everything in place. Translated from Chinese, an anagama is called a dragon kiln—with a mouth for a firebox and a body that snaked up to a chimney tail. Once finished, firing a kiln this size would take somewhere around 36 hours to reach temperature, fed with tiny bits of wood into the firebox at the base of the kiln. The smoke would climb up through the chamber and exit via the chimney abutting what was left of the hill, but not before settling ash on each of the pots inside. There were six of us, plus Reggie and Chuck, and occasionally T, who was funding this operation. Reggie had built a lot of kilns with Chuck before, including the train kiln, and the climbing kiln—a multi chambered noborigama—back at the studio. Chuck directed, shouting obscenities or pushing bricks off a row in one sweep of his hand, if we did it wrong, which seemed frequent. Reggie ended up driving the Bobcat, but not before almost flipping it into the ravine. After, we’d meet at George’s in Iowa City, the bar for grizzled alcoholics. The fact that some of us were underage didn’t really register; we just got a pitcher of beer and the corner booth in front and he passed out papers, so we could take a final exam of sorts, there, no calculators, just arithmetic and graphs and physics, trying to figure out the best curve of the kiln, to understand the most effective firing process on paper.

Why am I telling you all of this?

A few days ago, I was talking to some folks about community and writing, and it made me want to write more about this topic. I have spoken some about this before, but I think it’s important to revisit this discussion. In a sense, potters have community baked in. If you are firing a wood kiln, you need an entire group to do so, somewhere between three and 25 people, depending on how long you fire, the size of the kiln, and how sleep deprived you want to be. Ceramics folks share space, equipment. They fire kilns together. They load and unload work in groups, share glaze recipes and techniques. It’s expensive to have a slab roller or an extruder or a pugmill by yourself; many have cooperatives to share risk and costs. And without proper dust extraction, you could put yourself or your community at risk.

Potters are also pretty chill overall, especially compared to writers. Potters have thoughts like “Can I make this big pot? I can make this big pot!” Sometimes there is ceramics drama, but it’s something like “So and so didn’t clean the clay mixer well enough,” or “This person didn’t put my pot in a good place in the kiln, and now I am going to have to refire.” Maybe the occasional “They’re so grumpy today.”

When I went to the clay supply store, the day after the inauguration, the place was packed and smelled strongly of weed. People were chatting, buying materials, trying to figure out what they were making in the new year, before the threat of tariffs loomed large. It was clear: the only way through fascism was to get a little fucked up and make art.

Writers, by contrast, tend to worry a lot if people like them, and to worry, generally, about everything. We can be competitive with one another, instead of cooperative. I am guilty of this, too: probably I am too weird, too neurotic, to be a full-time potter. But there are lessons we can learn from potters. It’s why I keep telling everyone to do writing dojo, where we make work together, separately, quietly, at a coffee shop or wherever else. You just show up and write. You don’t talk to anyone, just get coffee and stay offline and write or make art. Maybe you write a book over the course of a summer or a semester. It feels possible with dojo, somehow.

In many ways, we are in a weird, deeply upsetting place right now. The horrors of the news cycle continue to accumulate. More than ever, it’s important to keep watching—we need people who are here to bear witness and write about what is happening every single day, to remind us to talk about everything in the group chat (ideally in Signal, with disappearing messages; please don’t discuss sensitive information in places that are not secure) and not on social media. To keep an eye on what is happening as it happens. This is vital work; without this information, we have no record of what has transpired. As artists, we need to keep making the work, to document, to keep pressing on. And we need to be there for people, now more than ever.

It is super hard to be a writer, especially lately. I feel constantly distracted and pulled by the internet and various work and life deadlines. I have been traveling some for work this spring, and that’s been particularly exciting, but it also means that some of the editing is being done on planes or in hotel rooms. I probably do my best work in strange places, to be honest, but it’s a switch from working at home. I am trying to repost what I can, read what I can, participate as I am able, but I also try to turn off the news sometimes, so I’m just looking for a few minutes each day (you can use Freedom to block all sorts of websites temporarily, or to limit your access using other tools (Apple phones and Androids can do this too)). Containing or compartmentalizing one’s dread can be really helpful, I think, even for a little while.

I’m meeting with my new editor at the end of the month. We had a little introductory phone call a couple weeks ago, and I’m thrilled with her ideas so far. I think it’ll be good. I feel like the book is fresh again, possible again. I am trying to embrace my potter side, to be open, calm, less anxious, more engaged in the work. And for a bit each day, I can block out the constant horrors and revise the book, or spend time in the studio, making pots, all the while periodically talking with other people about art as community, as creative resistance, and that is great.

PS, my first book, Cost of Living, is now three years old (!). It’s been great to look at Facebook memories from this time—to see what folks wrote about it, to remind me that it’s still out there, somehow. Still a thrill.