Author:Chip Von Gunten

Word Grit an attempt to give language back to people who feel flattened by it. Not inspiration. Not advice. Just words that can sit with you when things are heavy and don’t pretend otherwise. Short definitions. Fictional vignettes. Characters under pressure. The kind of writing that doesn’t solve your problems but names them clearly enough that…

Replace self-help books? Easy. Replace them with mirrors. Real mirrors, the kind that don’t lie about the cracks in your hands, the tremble in your voice, or the rust in your heart. Stop reading advice from a rich stranger who’s polished their misery into a bestselling blueprint, in between sessions with their personal trainer and…

Word Grit an attempt to give language back to people who feel flattened by it. Not inspiration. Not advice. Just words that can sit with you when things are heavy and don’t pretend otherwise. Short definitions. Fictional vignettes. Characters under pressure. The kind of writing that doesn’t solve your problems but names them clearly enough…

You can’t have a breakthrough without something first breaking. Breakthroughs don’t happen suddenly. They happen after sustained pressure over time, then all at once. They’re the accumulation of invisible work finally becoming visible. You work and work and nothing happens. You push and strain and it feels pointless. Like you’re pushing against a wall that…

Writing a book is like trying to lasso a ghost: every time you think you’ve got the shape worked out, it slips through your fingers and laughs on the way out. You sit there staring at the page, writing a bunch of bullshit that doesn’t make sense, and you wrestle with structure and chapters and…

Words are small.But they don’t act small. A word can walk into a room before you do.A word can stay long after you leave.A word can carve clarity out of confusion, or turn fog into form.A word can punch the table, lift a spirit, start a fight, or end one. This is Word Grit—the belief…

Determination doesn’t care how you feel; it only cares that you move. Determination is an engine that keeps running long after the crowd goes home. It’s not hype or motivation—it’s the stubborn heartbeat underneath exhaustion. It’s that low growl inside you that says, “I’m not finished,” when everyone else calls it a day. Determination is…

People think writing a book is some glamorous lightning-strike inspiration. Cute. I’m here in the trenches, crossing T’s, dotting I’s, and wrestling spreadsheets like they owe me money. The manuscript is alive, breathing lists and nerdy details, and I’m chasing every last one into order. Step one: Apple Pages. Why? because that’s the computer I…

Sometimes you look back at the weird little spurts of creative combustion you’ve had across a lifetime and realize they weren’t random phases at all—they were breadcrumbs leading you right here. I think about my early twenties, when I was lugging gear into sticky-floored bars and swapping instruments like a guy trying on different skins,…

I’m not giving up. This is my gift and I am giving it to you. If you resonate, you are my people. If you don’t, that’s none of my business. I am waking up, dragging myself into the thing – and writing. A writer writes, yeah? And I know the coffee gets cold, but I’m…

Futility is that cold little voice that shows up after the third try, the fifth setback, the tenth slammed door, whispering that nothing matters and you’re better off calling it. It’s the ghost that moves in when effort feels pointless, when the world shrugs at your work, when progress drips like molasses and hope feels…

Some mornings arrive soft and unhurried, like they know you’ve earned a little breathing room. Today is one of those mornings. I’ve got a small window before my wife and I head downtown—our ritual escape from the grind, those rare days off where we get to walk slow, talk long, and remember we’re human beings…

The strange thing about chasing a book dream is that sooner or later it stops being just you and the page. You can hide in the drafts, dance with your ghosts, polish sentences until they shine like new chrome, but there comes a day when the work taps you on the shoulder and says, “Alright,…

I’ve been walking this book through the dark alleyways of my own intentions for a long time now, dragging drafts like stubborn luggage, rewriting chapters that don’t know they’re already dead, and learning the hard way that nobody warns you how much of writing is really demolition. You think you’re building a cathedral, and then…