Author: Lancelot Schaubert

  • Kumbaya, New York, Kumbaya

    You know what big cities don’t have? Good camp songs. I mean, you need like a camp fire and an open night sky full of stars and grass and room enough for a circle. Closest place would be Coney Island in NYC and that’s just… well YOU try making a good bonfire at Coney. Camp…

  • Finishing Touches

    I never understood why professional painters will just add another layer of pigment on top of their mistakes until I realized how easy it was to tie a double windsor.

  • Diabetic Jokes

    Diabetes gets old. Diabetic jokes do not. I still laugh when my wife says, “I’m low,” after having a needle in her all day. Or, after having a bout of sugar-related uncontrollable emotion, yelling, “I’m so high right now!” People have asked her in restaurants if she’s playing video games and I almost lose my…

  • Only a Person Can Make a Promise

    Only a Person Can Make a Promise

    If forgiving is the only remedy for your painful past, promising is the only remedy for your uncertain future. … When I make a promise I bear witness that my future with you is not locked into … the fateful combinations of X’s and Y’s in the hand I was dealt out of my parents’…

  • Soda Jerk

    The guy who ran the old soda fountains at the old diners used to be called a Soda Jerk. And I know, deep down, they named it for the motion, but what if they didn’t? What if somewhere there was the archetypical man who served soda at a pharmacy? “Yeah, what do you want?” The…

  • Blades

    It’s amazing to me that we used to make these fans with metal blades with like a single strand of barbed wire surrounding it, as if that would protect the fingers of a small child. It’s almost as if someone got stoned up at the GE design lab and said, “You know, when I put…

  • Basic Needs

    In Carthage, Missouri, every once and awhile you’ll catch people bringing mattresses in the beds of their trucks to the drive in theater. They get frisky, but mostly just make out. If they do anything else, it’s not like the squeaking of truck suspension interrupts you while watching Pixar films with the kids. They just…

  • love of the the way he tells

    “It is the subtlest of all snares. Every poet and musician and artist; but for the grace of God, is drawn away from the love of the thing he tells – to the love of the way he tells it. ‘Til down deep in hell he cannot be interested in God at all but only…

  • Failure is an Option

    Over on NPR via the Burgetts — Failure can be devastating, but it can also make us stronger and smarter. TED speakers explore how failure clears the way for success, in our everyday work, and our innermost lives.

  • Our Deepest Fear

    Our Deepest Fear

    “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.…

  • Why My 4th Novel Failed

    Why My 4th Novel Failed

    2024 author’s note — If you’re arriving here from F.C. Schultz’s wonderful first video, you need to know a few things (1) I now run a substack that, among other things, will offer a library of free advice to writers (2) I have a massive free resources page for writers (3)  the book I started after…