“When I’m not working on a specific project, I write two hours before bed and I spend two hours in the morning trying to make at least one decent paragraph out of the mess I wrote before bed. I’ve become obsessed with paragraphs in my old age. I try to create one dope paragraph every other week and trust myself to organize those somewhat dope paragraphs into a revelatory piece that means something to someone somewhere.
I listen to a lot of Jay Electronica, Janelle Monáe, and Kendrick Lamar. I hear and see their verses in paragraphs. I love to imagine myself in a paragraph contest with those three. I published about twenty thousand paragraphs last year and maybe fourteen of them were on par with the best paragraphs Monáe, Electronica, and Kendrick routinely produce. This year, I’m going for fifteen. I think I can do that.”
—Kiese Laymon, author of Long Division (Agate Bolden, 2013)