The platform offers writers the opportunity to create newsletters featuring their work. Newsletters have become more of a thing lately. I send out my BRW posts this way. I hope to expand my audience with it.
Substack writers offer paid subscriptions as well as free ones. The paid ones often provide exclusive extras. The whole thing is still very new to me, not unlike the first time I created a blog.
Will I get anywhere with this? We’ll see.
Fiction
Back in the spring, I had to do some hospital time (I’m okay now), so I didn’t write any new stories. Now I’m moving back in that direction.
I discovered a Substack group called
Fictionistas that writes flash fiction stories on a monthly basis. The first one I wrote with them was weird. It was based on prompts chosen at random—but at least I had time to revise it. The finished product turned out better than I thought.
I’ve decided to include this and future flash fiction stories in my Substack newsletter. If you wanna read them, be sure to subscribe.
The novella
I discussed my novella here last time. Here’s an “outtake” from it that I liked enough to keep, though not enough to include in the book. It’s a bit of monologue involving a bad guy character, a cop speaking to the protagonist:
“I’ll let you in on a secret. When you people started moving into the Heights, I was against it. Truth. But when I realized you were just people, like me, I thought giving you a chance was the right thing to do. And I’ll tell you, I did not make a lotta friends with this decision, either, but I don’t carry the shield to make friends. Believe that. And I never had cause to regret that decision until today.
“Now my captain loves living in the Heights. It’s a nice neighborhood and he wants to keep it that way, dig, so he’d rather lock you up and throw away the key. That way his blood pressure won’t act up and everybody can go on living life like normal in this nice little neighborhood. But I still have this crazy belief that you’re just people, that you don’t mean any harm. You just can’t help acting the way you do sometimes. It’s in your blood.
“So here’s your chance, boy. Give me a reason to believe I won’t see you in my station again after today. Just one reason.”
I’m taking my time with publishing the novella because it would be my first book and I wanna get it right. Also, I wanna start work on the sequel first. I’ve already begun sketching the plot. Mostly I’m still researching.
I’m still looking for beta readers. Anyone interested? Email me and we’ll talk.
Miscellany
I listened to a podcast recently that discussed a sub-genre of writing called
creative nonfiction. The speaker believed writing essays in this style would help improve one’s fiction.
As I understand it, CNF involves approaching nonfiction with a more literary bent. Looking at my notes from the podcast, among the things she emphasized included:
- imposing a structure (i.e. an approach to one’s essay) and writing within the limitations of that structure
- limiting the word count and thinking about the question(s) one’s essay explores
- writing in short sprints and working within time constraints
She stressed process, form and craft as the keys to approaching CNF. I may experiment with this in my work (not here). Anyone out there familiar with this sub-genre? Is my assessment of it accurate?
Also, I’m currently in the middle of a three-day writing seminar designed to cure writers of perfectionism, or at least curb it. I’ve written some pieces, both here and elsewhere, that were put together at the last minute. I’m uncomfortable with them.
I hope to rid myself of this discomfort with this seminar and to not care if a piece is a hundred percent “perfect”— as long as it’s out there.
We return to our literary tour of the Hudson Valley in two weeks, on the 16th.
@byrichwatson
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