My reasons for starting on Substack were clear to me from the beginning:

1. build a mailing list
2. offer a low friction way for people to access my writing

My ultimate goal with all of this is to be, well, an author with a somewhat self-sufficient writing platform.

I say somewhat because I don't really have the desire to be a 'full-time' author as is the goal for many. I'm perfectly content with my life paying for my writing, rather than my writing paying for my life. Whatever muse puts the words in my fingertips is fickle enough without putting that kind of weight on her back.

What Substack Has Been For

Anyway, after a year and four months of dedicating my writing to Substack, I think I've built up a nice little catalogue for people to check out and get a feel for my style and voice, though I may have to return and prune some of them one of these days for aesthetic purposes.

I've been putting it off because I get nitpicky with that sort of stuff.

What I'm saying is, my Substack exists to earn trust, to be a place where people can go and decide for themselves if my craft is something they're willing to put their time into. I think there's enough substance now for me to ease off the gas, though not stop, by any means, and shift into a different gear.

The New Priority: Books

This brings me to the new priorities.

It's time for me to finally get some books out there. Published, I mean.

While it's nice to imagine one day being traditionally published, I think Indie-Publishing is more achievable and sustainable for me, given my contentment with my life funding my writing until such time that my writing can, at least in part, fund itself.

To that end, I'm going to be dedicating a lot more time and energy to long-form projects which I will, if they hopefully meet the bar, put through the wringer of polishing and publishing.

Writing Like I’m Running Out of Time

I've reached that age now where, although relatively young, I've begun to feel the sands of time slipping down the hourglass, or at the very least I've become aware that the sands are, indeed, slipping.

So many ideas, so many words, not enough time, so I suppose I'll make like Lin-Manuel Miranda's Hamilton and write like I'm running out of time.

I know, I'm far too young to be talking like that, but also too young to know better.

The Next Priority: Getting Eyes on the Work

The next priority, of course, is actually getting eyes on that writing.

Substack and its built-in features have done a decent job, and I appreciate every single one of my Quillfolk, but it's also time for me to do what all, okay, many, not all, writers dread...

audience building, dun dun dunnn.

I've been brainstorming and researching, and I think I've landed on some strategies. One of which, and you've heard it here first, is YouTube.

When it comes to social media, I think it's best to use that which you're most familiar with, and if I'm being honest, YouTube is my 'front page of the internet'.

So, I'll be starting a YouTube channel in the coming months, hopefully. I've already begun drafting what will eventually go on to be the main content pillar, which is where the second largest chunk of my writing time is going behind the long-form focus.

In regards to exactly what sort of content I plan to make, here's a list in order of priority:

1. Literary-philosophical essays - In my efforts to become a better, more thoughtful reader, I'm spending time grappling with the ideas presented in the novels I read and how they relate to lived experience in the form of essays, and that's what I'll be sharing. Less 'this is what this is saying', and more 'this is what I think I see here' (Yes, I know that last statement is written in the classic 'not this but this' form that sounds so AI but, I assure you, it's all me.)
2. Writer Vlogs - Video updates on the writerly stuff. In practice, this will likely end up being, for the most part, the main points in these written blogs re-said in the video format.
3. Narrated Short Story video - where I take my stories on Substack and narrate and package them with some visuals. This is last on the list because I'm not sure if I will do this, but if I do, it will probably be bumped up to the second position.

Now, to give you a clearer idea of the sort of essays I'm cooking up, here's the opening paragraph of one of them, pulling from the novel Demian by Hermann Hesse, tentatively titled:

The Sin of Being Yourself

Birth is a bloody, violent affair, and rebirth is a death before dying. A bird, for example, spends its first experience of life inside an egg, tucked beneath its mother. With the yolk, it never goes hungry, and under the maternal wing it’s always warm, never knowing fear nor discomfort. This is the egg, the egg is its world, and its world is good. However, as the bird grows, the yolk runs dry, and the shell tightens. Now the egg suffocates the bird. It needs to break free, or it will die without ever truly being alive. But the egg is strong, and the only way out is to fight with every ounce of strength in its hollow bones, and to succeed is to destroy the only world it has ever known. Becoming, then, is a rupture, a violent end to who, and what, was. Those who fight to be born must first destroy a world. And yet, to grow, to break free, to become who we are, why does it feel like sin?

This is still the first draft, but you get the idea.

Where Short Stories Fit Now

And so, on that list, short stories come third.

I will still work on them, and there will still be posts made, and I will try to keep it on some sort of regular basis. Hopefully, I'll achieve that when I hit a proper cadence, but third is third.

At this moment, the short story I'm working on is tentatively called Sea Beast, and it takes place in the same world as Gods, Monsters, and a Fuzzytail Book 1: Ashfall, the long-form work available on my Substack.

A New Way to Stay Updated

With all this in mind, I did some tinkering on my personal website and added two new features that bring a lot more transparency to what I'm doing.

On the homepage, if you look to the right, you'll find a tab labeled 'trackers' that reveals a side-bar with a live list of the various projects I'm working on in a given period and the degree to which they've been completed.

I've also jerry-rigged together a blog page I'm calling, for now, The Margins. It's not the most elegant thing (on the backend, I think the frontend is rather nifty), but it carries out its purpose as a way for me to release more frequent updates without polluting the newsletter with minutiae. If you want to stay up-to-date with that, I suggest following me (if you haven't already) on either Substack Notes or maybe X (Twitter), where I'll share new posts as I make them.

Thanks for Reading

Well, that's all I have to say.

Thanks for reading this and everything else.

Stay tuned for more.