M L Clark

authorsguild.orgAustralia May Legalize AI Training on Your Books. Sign a Statement Opposing It.The Australian government has announced that it is planning to introduce legislation that would change copyright law to allow AI companies to use authors’ work, without a license, to build their model...

I'm at the part in The Golden Notebook where our protagonist imagines reviewing her only novel - first, in the context of initial publishing, then years later. Lessing is acutely aware of how much our hopes of "making a difference" through fiction are often guided by sympathy masquerading as action.

M L Clark reposted

Kelly Robson

@kellyrobson.com

Sign this Authors Guild petition against the Australian government allowing AI to legally scrape books — any books, your books, even if they’re not Australian authorsguild.org/news/austral...

For today's #ArtBreak, Júlia Sardà (@juliasardaportabella on Instagram) is an illustrator who achieves that splendid goal of capturing the essence of other stories with a distinctness of style that is entirely one's own. We are all building on what came before - but with varying levels of elevation.

ocregister.comCalifornia publisher Catapult Book Group sold, staff to be let goNovelist Tod Goldberg, who published his Gangsterland series for the imprint, called the news ‘heartbreaking and devastating.’

I've been carrying so much anger lately, with nowhere to put it all. Tonight, though, I returned to #TheGoldenNotebook after decades, and it's hitting notes I didn't realize I needed to hear ring out again. I've got such strange manuscripts on the go. Maybe I can find my words again and finish them.

M L Clark reposted

Alex Segura

@alexsegura.com

Sad publishing news - www.ocregister.com/2026/10/22/c...

#ArtBreak Ivan Aivazovsky couldn't have know that his 19th C paintings would be bitterly fought over after Russia annexed Crimea. Both Ukraine and Russia claim him. But you can tell from the work that it wouldn't have surprised him. Nature and humanity were endless sources of struggle in his art.

R.S.A. Garcia (BUY THE NIGHTWARD)

Today, so help me, I am going to write again. Even though - and because - the world is full of cruelty and sorrow. #PoetryBreak

M L Clark reposted

@rsagarcia.bsky.social

YOU COULD WIN THIS QUILT! This Breast Cancer Awareness month I'm having a giveaway to help raise funds for the increasing costs of my breast cancer treatment. Every donation from today to Oct 31 will be eligible to win! See link for details! Kindly boost & share! www.gofundme.com/f/help-r-s-a...

I've been feeling pretty low, so I think today's #ArtBreak should be Elihu Vedder. This USian's classic style took a huge turn into esoteric myth during the Civil War. He left the US after it ended. Making art while myths of civilization shatter all around us is a distinctly human enterprise, no?

There is something deeply painful about working a long day in a highly privileged field like mine, only to find out that the teen ward you're trying to support while she's stuck solo in a remote pueblo can't even start school again because Venezuela's rolling blackouts are keeping the school closed.

Quick #ArtBreak before a meeting and more night work. Do you know Martin Lewis? He taught Hopper for a spell, and his own fine etchings give a sense of the perspective he imparted. Who are we to one another as artists? Where does our own quiet light offer a way for other lights to shine after us?

pca.stOn Politics: What is political writing?In What is literature? (1948) Jean-Paul Sartre argued that writers and artists have a responsibility to engage with political and social realities. But is it still possible for writers to have…

I wish I had time to reflect properly on this excellent episode of the @lrb.co.uk, but I do hope it's listened to by philosophical writers and readers. It observes how and why today's #Literature struggles to serve as a coherent project of social counterpoint. #Media #History #Podcasts #Philosophy

mlclark.substack.com“When Life Remove My Packaging”The Ongoing Struggle to Walk Humanely in Hard Times

I'll aim for an art break tomorrow. For now, here's a rough run-down of my last few weeks. It's been a tough one on this end, but we do what we have to do to keep the light alive for others, even when we've lost the spark in life ourselves. Thank you for everything *you* do where you are.

#PoetryBreak I think today is a good day for one of my favourite poems. I tend to get caught up in a sense of failure, constant failure, but... Nothing is constant. Not even failure. Even failure has its ebbs and flows, its highs and lows. So--try to remember we all fly a little, too, eh?

Stress nausea! So we're on to an #ArtBreak. John Atkinson Grimshaw (1836-93) was self-taught, and used camera obscura projections to help with staging and perspective. This caused many to feel that he wasn't a "real" artist, but just look at the lighting he achieved. The ache to create finds a way.

19 Sept

Anyhoodle - #ArtBreak! Photography today. This is Félix Thiollier, who came from a family of means and was able to spend his years in restful study of the world around him. If more of us were able to create without commercial pressure, where would our eyes turn? What would we notice, and set down?

19 Sept

Bipolar II is tricky. Even when you're living with it well, you can never trust yourself fully. Are you inspired or manic? Seeing the world clearly or in a downcycle? My lows have a massive tell: I can't stand myself, can't bear my voice, my sight, my worldly presence. BPII distorts everything. /x

19 Sept

But as an adult, I also know it's always my responsibility to manage the impact of both the up- & down-cycles. It sucks to go through life never fully trusting oneself, & always feeling like A Mess--but BPII kills, so sometimes it just has to be enough that I'm still here at all. One day at a time.

17 Sept

Today's #ArtBreak comes from Frances Broomfield, UK painter of the "idiosyncratic": more recently, bright portraiture where the subject is surrounded by the dreamscapes they inspired, but also, historically, a wealth of simpler paintings that also feel larger than (and just as surreal as) real life.

16 Sept

On the plus side, the kid is now enrolled in full-time school. We got her supply list filled today and she starts October 15, to finish in July, in Venezuela. FINALLY. How ridiculously long it's taken to get her a proper education. (She's excited and determined, though. She'll catch up. 🤞🏻)

16 Sept

I wanted an #ArtBreak that reflected my mood, so Walter Molino, famous mid-20th-century illustrator and caricaturist of disaster, seemed a good choice. I didn't want to share anything that might disturb your scroll, though, so here are some of his "lighter" scenes of lurid catastrophe. What a tone!

🧵 So I'm going to thread a bit. I don't usually do so on Bluesky, but it's not easy moving between worlds, & this past week was rough on the noggin. I thought about things I haven't thought about for a while--just a stress response, triggering mental habits familiar to anyone with BPII, but rough.

And when we can't? When we just find ourselves dancing on that line as best we can, between professional and real-life needs? That's how the breaking points arise. For me this past week, that's how they *did* arise. And mine have given me a lot to consider. But for now, I'll just say this:

If you sometimes have a hard time balancing the global-personal & the public-professional... You are not alone. You are not "failing". You are doing the best you can in the eyeblink of cosmic plot that any of us receives. And it's okay to grieve the mess of it all... So long as you press on. /🧵

But that two-worlds schism is real, & more of us are living with it than we like to admit. Whether it's being sole caregiver for a deteriorating loved one, or caught in a region where aid just isn't showing up. The weight of real suffering calls out to us: Be kind. Be kind. Be kind. And yet...

It's so easy to get lost in the "tormentas en un vaso de agua" that show up in our working lives, and on sites like these: platforms where many seek to answer the sincere ache for more sociopolitical agency in awful times through elaborate debates online. We all want *dearly* to be able to do more.

(I have said it before, and I will say it again: We are so, so privileged to be able to engage in creative practice in our lives at all. The world is so much bigger than all our books, music, visual art, and multimedia - and that expanse is populated primarily by subsistence-level want and need.)

Another privilege: Sometimes - especially when work has me down, and I'm living in a strange bubble of tempests in teapots - I berate myself for the "saviour" shtick. Lil' Mx ML, always going on about the need all around them. Having time to think about "optics" is a privilege too. Need is need.

--how hard it was sometimes to bear up to all the petty bickering he endured in his office job. And yet, the money he made there would go in part to things like making sure family wasn't burning toxic materials to survive winter in remote, blockaded villages. And that's an agony many humans know.

Now, I pour myself into work for a few reasons: 1) Because I like to think I'm building something that will help to sustain community for a complex world ahead. 2) Because sustainability in this work means having more personal agency to help the people I do, many of whom beg / lack key resources.

Right now, Venezuela is under rolling, relentless blackouts - all while the US robs the country of resources. Local deprivation makes life hard for average citizens. It's not the only place like this, of course. Human potential is routinely determined by access (or lack thereof) to basic resources.

So the schism I inhabit is not distinct to me. I know tons of fellow writers who move between two worlds: one, in which they are told that their families' lives, or the lives of people with the same cultural background, aren't as worthy as others. Years ago, a Syrian friend back in Canada told me--

And one way in which we improve mental health is with transparency. We have the conversation. So about those "two worlds": In one, I spend most of my time juggling a lot of extra tasks at work. In the other, the kid is in absurd limbo in Venezuela, and it's a daily fight to get her back on track.

Well, I *told* myself I wasn't going to buy anything, but then I found a beautiful indie collective from Bogotá that was all about connecting and uplifting Latin American writers with a humanist bent in hard times for the world, and of course I had to support their work. #IRegretNothing #Books

But easily one of the sweetest places is the secondhand section. You find more conversation, more deep quiet love, more historians of lit. I even had a great chat about Svetlana Alexievich with some teens here. *They* were excited to read her! 😮 #TheKidsAreAllRight #Colombia #FiestaDelLibro #Books

Fiesta del Libro y la Cultura de Medellín is always held in the Botanical Gardens, open to the public for those weeks. It's a beautiful thing to see nature & literature/art blended together so well. Definitely needed this return to pure creative joy. #FiestaDelLibro #Colombia #Books #Literature

🧐 Who let the majors in? It's funny. SF rarely shows up here. When it does, it's classics. There is also a wonderful display from the centre for memory, museums, libraries... Of course, my happy place was always among books about the heaviest themes. #Colombia #Books #Literature #FiestaDelLibro

There are a wealth of specialty and university presses here, and they all do such a phenomenal job of curating "book as art" and building excitement around the ideas each volume may contain. #FiestaDelLibro #Colombia #Books #Literature #Art

I'm in a very wobbly state, so today I'm spending a few hours at the massive Medellín book festival, which always rekindles in me the raw wonder of narrative, and how thrilling it is to create *anything* in this painful world of ours. Photos may arise as I wander. #Colombia #Books #Literature #Art

13 Sept

It's been a really rough week. I think I'm at a breaking point I can't afford, so I'm taking tomorrow off, but after working through a chunk of the night and still finding myself behind on key tasks for a ton of teams... I just needed to vent to the park horses first. Now home and back to it.

12 Sept

#PoetryBreak before the next round of coding and data entry. I'm out of words. Just tired. 🫂 Fill in the blanks here with something pithy, and be good to your weary noggins this weekend. (Andrea Gibson: August 13, 1975 - July 14, 2025)

9 Sept

Some days you just have to let the feeling of crushing failure wash over you. It will not stay forever, but sometimes you just need to be sad for a bit, & feel like you've failed everyone for a bit... so long as you keep moving forward, until you feel like you are large & contain multitudes again.

9 Sept

It's been a beat since my last #PoetryBreak, so let's return to one of the greats this morning. Thank you, Mary Oliver, for always reminding us that a life of wonder can and does exist even in a world that brings us so much stress and sorrow. May we find the hidden nests we need today.

Kiddo's having a rough time in the humble pueblo the Venezuelan courts thought would be a better option than emancipating her so she could return to my care. Live footage of me trying to get work done while worrying and planning next steps for her move to the big city in time for school in October.

Before my main job starts in an hour, I'm wrapping up a translation for a local company here, and it's a beautiful interview with a Colombian nonprofit that works with female sex workers and victims of sex trafficking. 1/3 #WritingCommunity

Sometimes I get deeply in my feelings about the "point" of story in our brutal age, but for so many of us, gaining agency over our stories is the only way out of hardship. There is real power to finding the right narrative, & community, for fellow humans in our hurting world. 2/3 #WritingCommunity

We are so fortunate to be able to do the work we do, and to extend the table of plenty where we can. May we go gently through this week together, holding firm not against fellow struggling humans, but against the real enemies of human dignity in our pursuit of a better world. 3/3 #WritingCommunity

I both did a lot and didn't do enough this weekend, so while I work on forgiving myself for not being a robot, here's an #ArtBreak for perspective. Nataliya Bagatskaya (Ukraine) leverages the mundane to heighten the surrealism of simply existing in today's cruel world. We are all doing what we can.

7 Sept

Man, I love this kid. I'm working through my Labour Day, but I just got a message: She's reunited with an old friend of her deceased father, an elderly man living in squalor, and just asked for help and permission to spend part of the week improving the dignity of his home. A good kid. #SuperProud