I'm just writing to think

I wrote the description below in late 2022. It's accurate as of that time. [shrug] I might eventually update it, I dunno. I do like when people read my stuff, but mostly I'm just trying to keep an intellectual life, um, alive despite various distractions and obstacles. People reading stuff I wrote in the past is kind of irrelevant to that (no offense! I do like if you like stuff I wrote in the past - there are few bigger compliments than someone occasionally finding my writing good to think with! - but that's just not related to my fumbling attempts to keep being something of a writer in the present and future. Anyway...) A little more recently I've started a newsletter of shitty first drafts, for the same basic purpose of writing to think. If that's of interest to you, it's here: https://buttondown.com/nateholdren/.

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If you're wondering "what's this then?", well, as the site's name says, the point of writing these occasional posts is to write in order to think about stuff. I also hope that writing might tend to lead to writing - I like writing, sort of, and want to do more of it. If that's all you wondered then that's you told. Now move along.

If you're still here, you may have some passing interest in other stuff I wrote (at least in a perusing the menu before deciding you're not in fact hungry sort of way). For you then, here's links to my various stuff, from least to most academic.

For a while I was writing record reviews with some regularity, which I enjoyed and at the time of this writing (late November 2022) I feel like I should make an effort to get back to - which doesn't mean I actually will...! Most of my reviews were for the blog Birthday Cake for Breakfast, here. I have a very infrequently updated other blog I set up to help myself get back into new music by thinking about music, where I also occasionally have reviewed records that aren't new anymore. Of the things there that I like most, I wrote a post there about why I like record reviewing, a post about getting old and liking midwestern despair punk, and a review I was pleased with of the incredible Bruxa Maria record, "Human Condition."

I also sometimes make poorly executed computer music (finished-ish stuff goes here and stuff that's still in flux goes here), some rough stop-motion animation for some of that music. A friend and I have started a small tape label for noise and noise-adjacent music. We also did an occasional online/streaming gig series called FEAST, which was tons of fun. I also occasionally put up photos of drawings and collages and whatnot that I did on twitter and on instagram. I don't make any claims that any of this is worth your time, but making it is absolutely worth my time. I spent years wanting to do and make stuff but not doing so because I thought I sucked at it. Now I figure I'll just make stuff even though I feel like I suck at it because that feels better. It's fun to make stuff, regardless of the product, and it's ugly that so many of us learn not to do so.

Getting more academicky...

I keep an occasionally updated and very whiny writing diary, based on John Steinbeck's very whiny writing diary and the advice of Joli Jensen's excellent book Write No Matter What. I don't know that it's worth anyone's time to read the diary, but it helps me feel accountable to have that link there.
 

I wrote a series of blog posts mostly focused on my writing life and feelings (writing is hard! I feel like I'm bad at it! I got writers' block and it was awful!) and the ways I organize my writing and revision process.

I've been a guest on some podcasts talking about my book and pandemic stuff. In case that's of interest, those are here: Reel Abstractions, Working People, No Easy Answers, Left Anchor, New Books in History, Work Stoppage, Unscripted Moments, Death Panel (talking about my book), Death Panel (talking about an essay I wrote on social murder), Death Panel (talking about an essay I wrote on pandemic nihilism). I was also once on a panel once with some really insightful scholars (and also I was there), talking about Marxist approaches to law.
 

Getting even more academicky...

I've done some angry writing about aspects of the covid pandemic at Bill of Health, Academe, fifteeneightyfour, the LAWCHA newsletter, and a colleague and I had an article about the covid pandemic in Time Magazine. I've written some things on law at the Law and Political Economy Project, some of which is pandemic-related and some of this is Marxism-related. I've done more Marxy stuff for the Marxist legal theory web site Legal Form. I've also written some polemical Marxy/union/labor law stuff at the excellent Organizing Work blog.

 

I like writing book reviews, and I like all the books I've reviewed. I might eventually go through and put in links for each of these. For now, books I've reviewed: Ronald Schatz, The Labor Board Crew; Jennifer Delton, The Industrialists; Rose Parfitt, The Process of Legal Reproduction; Dan Bouk, How Our Days Became Numbered; Elizabeth Anderson, Private Government and Chad Pearson Reform or Repression; Charles Romney, Rights Delayed; Paul Longmore, Telethons.

And now getting most academicky of all...

I co-wrote an essay on law and Marxism. I wrote a chapter for an academic edited volume on law and Marxism and an academic article on the history workers' comp law and employment discrimination, some of which ended up in my book.

LaborOnline kindly did a roundtable on the book, including a response from me at that link. My book is on employee injury law and capitalism in the early twentieth century US (the short version: things used to be terrible, and worse than you think, but then later they became differently terrible, and worse than you think). The book won a couple prizes and has been favorably reviewed several times, all of which was unexpected and very cool. I like talking with people about my book, so if you're someone who does interviews or podcasts or whatever, or if you're assigned my book in a class or something and would like me to talk with your students via teleconference, please get in touch with me - I'm on twitter or probably google-able.