welcome to annotations
a newsletter loosely about how stories work
annotations is a newsletter about how stories work.
Each Friday, I send a collection of:
Things I’ve read recently: magazine stories! essays! blogs! tweets! books! whatever else has words that enter my eyeballs and linger in my cranium, but honestly probably mostly online articles.
One link to a longer feature copied and pasted into a doc with my personal annotations about the writing and structure and other observations. This is great if you, like me, are interested in close reading for craft or for enjoyment, or if you are out of free articles for a site like the New Yorker and are looking for a novel way to skirt the paywall (but really, please pay for journalism if you are able to, haven’t you heard this industry is fucked).
Occasionally, additional thoughts about writing, or contained rants about how exactly this industry is fucked.
Links to my work, if I have anything new out. This is rare.
Who am I? A writer, a hack. I work at Slate and used to work at Eater. I am a professional trafficmonger but personally would like to become a magazine editor or a critically acclaimed and outrageously wealthy author, I haven’t decided yet. I am not that other Jenny Zhang, to my own displeasure.
This newsletter is largely an exercise in equal parts self-discipline and self-indulgence, but I would enjoy the company if you’d care to subscribe. Thank you. See you soon.
jgz (@jennygzhang)
