Negative space is important. When I teach students to read critically I advise them to look for what the author isn't saying just as carefully as for what he or she is.

The brand is lying about something, or at least misrepresenting it. When I read a bottle of shampoo or moisturizer or other beauty product, I always perceive a dark subtext. The words haunt me. It comes across as humorous to the reader/audience, but in fact the words really do make me a little bit queasy. Nothing is as easy or natural as consumer brands want us to think - no problem is as resolvable. Your hair will fall out, eventually. Yet we do have these brands, and we line our shelves with them. There's an inherent irony.

Negative space is important. When I teach students to read critically I advise them to look for what the author isn't saying just as carefully as for what he or she is.

Nothing is as easy or natural as consumer brands want us to think - no problem is as resolvable. Your hair will fall out, eventually. Yet we do have these brands, and we line our shelves with them. There's an inherent irony.

The language itself is what gets me interested in writing. It's weird to me that words exist. Never a dull moment with words. They're a layer between our minds and the physical reality around us, obviously, but the layer seems like it's always in flux, like an asteroid belt, constantly moving.

I gravitate toward the larger worldview questions such as, Why are we here? What are we supposed to be doing? What does it mean to know another person? To love someone? Of course, those questions are sort of in the background as I'm playing with language in the foreground, but those are the informing questions.

I want to leave my readers with a sequence of ideas/phrases that makes them question something they'd taken for granted. Or that confuses them to the point that they laugh, but contains one or two phrases/lines that stick in their minds.