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Fuck the algorithm. Make what matters.

Have you ever browsed the web in a dream? I haven’t. Which makes me wonder if digital life registers as actual experience at all, or if it’s some strange limbo our psyches can’t even digest into dream material.

I’m concerned about what we’re trading away. The woman walking her dog while watching a video on her phone. How corporate life systematically eliminates the conditions for flow states while claiming to want innovation. Attention isn’t something to be hacked, optimized, and monetized.

Here, I write about sustained attention as a creative practice and a way of living.

I’m a ghostwriter. I help people find their voice and get their ideas into words. I also write my own books, which means I live the tension between commercial work and sovereign creative practice. I’m grateful to have been successful despite not having a massive following and not optimizing for reach.

What TMMW is about

The kind of focus where transformation happens. Sometimes it doesn’t manifest until you’ve worked on something for three hours, when you’ve pushed past the surface.

What’s worth doing versus what’s merely optimizable. Physical books matter. Good sentences are worth fighting for. Choosing obsolete practices are essential. Life hacks won’t cut it.

Ancient wisdom applied to modern problems. Why sustained attention builds what skimming destroys. How to stay yourself when everything wants you to sound like everyone else.

Each article concludes with The Understory, a collective area to share works-in-progress. The messy middle. What you’re making before it’s ready.

My book Deep Freewriting offers a method for sustained creative work—the principles behind writing for hours at a time, how to build momentum, and what happens when you push past the surface.

Try this

Spend 20 minutes writing from direct observation. Describe everything in the room you’re in right now—textures, light, sounds, the quality of air, how you feel. See what your attention reveals when you give it the directive to linger. Then come back again and do the same exercise tomorrow. See how things deepen.

What you’re joining

Personal narrative that opens into cultural criticism. Writing about creativity by being in the process. Observational, philosophical, sometimes ornery.

If you make things, or if you suspect that life itself might be a creative act, this is for you.

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Paid support keeps independent writing alive—no sponsors, no optimizing for brands, just the work itself.

Reach out if you’d like to explore working together. I work one-on-one with writers and makers who want to develop their practice.

—Stephen