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Hello, yesterday I sent out my first Tiny Letter—Sheila Heti's Pigeon. Please subscribe. I am trying this out in 2015 instead of the usual social media, and am  enjoying it. I will send out (not too frequently) little updates and pieces of writing, and welcome replies. Happy Thanksgiving!

First copy of the book arrived in Heidi Julavits's home!

Think of a problem in your life, then read this...

Sheila Heti and Ted Mineo's adaptation of The I Ching hexagram #9: The Small (from a work in progress).

Dense rainclouds fill the sky, but no rain falls. This is a time of potential being restrained. The best one can do when the rains threaten to fall but do not is to nurture the smallest things—whatever glitters in the soil, whatever expects rain but isn’t being watered. Big things cannot happen now. You have to attend to the smallest sprouts, though you may wish to climb to the tops of trees. One cannot force the rains to come. So spend your energies nurturing the things which still need help. 

Display only your best qualities at this time and hide from the world your worst. Refine your environment and settle debts. Familial loyalty is the most prized virtue; display it if you can. Be as gentle, agreeable and pliant as possible. You can only influence people subtly, through gentle penetration, or possibly not at all. You cannot win great victories for your side.

It is an emotionally unsatisfying time; full of stifled expectancy. Heaven’s possibilities can be felt all around you, but heaven cannot be inhabited. The sky remains dark with clouds. 

This time has been brought about by the smallest things, which have accumulated and are expressing themselves now. It is because of the small things you have nurtured—in your environment, in yourself, and others—that the clouds are full to bursting. Keep inside your heart your highest goals for yourself and the people around you, while remaining quite silent. Set aside your greatest hopes, gestures, and ambitions for the moment. Such contemplation will only compel you try and force things ahead of their time. To do that would only cause conflict, not real change. Yet keep those visions within sight of your heart.

Make everything smaller. Tend to children, small animals, or to those activities which are like the tending of the smallest sprouts, animals, children. Help other people. Spend your energy on productive refinement, not upheaval. 

Rehearsal pic from my play, ALL OUR HAPPY DAYS ARE STUPID. Michael McManus as The Man in the Bear Suit. Naomi Skwarna as Ms. Oddi. He offers her a cigarette in Cannes.

The cover of the German edition of How Should a Person Be? to be published by Rowohlt in Spring 2014.

Perfect.

There couldn't be a better book about how to do something right.

Jonathan McAloon interviews me for The Spectator. You can listen to the audio here.

I'm at the Sydney Writer's Festival this week, and I'm so excited to see the British poet Kate Tempest read this afternoon. Here is her powerful performance of her piece, 'Icarus'. And here is some beautiful advice she has for young poets, playwrights and performers:

"Finish things. That's how you develop your voice. Whether it's a poem or a short film or a painting or a piece of theatre, whatever it is, finish it. Let it go and move onto the next thing. Lots of the stuff I've done I think is really, really shit but it's fine because it's finished. You've got to try to be a better artist today than you were yesterday. And if you never finish anything that's hard because you're always trying to be the best artist that's ever been."

- Sheila Heti

"We live in a place where the official rewards aren’t so grand, but that means something else happens: Artists slide between mediums, they work on each others’ projects, and new forms emerge."

The American paperback comes out in June! I really love this gentle new cover.

And a question for you: Should I be on the Times 100 list? Vote here.