Naked in Public: Substack Yearly Review

A review of my second year writing on Substack

Welcome from the CEO

To those who subscribed to, commented on, shared, and read my work during the last year: thank you! Like an ointment, your continued support soothes my broken ego. And to those who unsubscribed: go to hell. A joke of course. They won’t see this post so I’m more than happy to curse them to a fiery pit.

Before writing this post, I thought my last twelve months had been a failure, but now I know it. Another joke. Apologies. In all seriousness, I did consider the last year a failure before writing this post, but now I am happy with my progress and quite motivated to continue. So, if nothing else, this exercise has helped me a lot.

Similar to the review of my first year on Substack, this post will cover:

• Performance

• Lessons

• The Year Ahead

Performance

By the numbers

In the last 12 months I released 18 posts, including:

• ten short stories (my favourite here)

• a satirical three-part documentary about Fujitsu

• a 2000-word, single-paragraph monologue or ‘rant’

• a poor attempt at flash fiction

• three post-releases ‘reviews’ of my own work

Outside of Substack, I wrote a longer story which I’m trying to get published, and I progressed a novel (a satirical political thriller—think Manchurian Candidate meets 1984, but funny). In terms of subscriber numbers, my count grew by 56 to 164. This figure includes 10-20 lost subscribers, so I probably had more like 70 new subscribers.

The chart below shows new subscribers gained across the year. Comparing the years, it’s clear I grew slower than last year. Disappointing. This failure was a source of my pessimism. I believed I would grow quicker. I thought my subscriber numbers would compound. (One of my goals was to hit 300 subscribers and I didn’t reach 200.) But if I challenge that thought, well, I still grew, and subscriber numbers are not the best performance metric. What really matters is more substantial and long-term.

Before discussing a more holistic form of progress (meaning less defensible and more ego-protective), I’d like to mention a shot not taken.

The investor Warren Buffet once said investing is not like baseball: you don’t have to swing at everything. Writing is no different. So, a success this year was not releasing my story about a Nelly Furtado PhD who, with the help of an aggressive ant eater, tries to seduce Greta Thunberg on an iceberg colony in the year 2075 on the 100th anniversary of the Vietnam War’s end. In case you think I’m joking; I’ve added some of the banner art I created for that piece below—third image is an ant eater on an inverted iceberg. Why? I don’t know.

Art for the Nelly Furtado/Vietnam War/ant eater/environmentalist fiction piece

Performance reframed, consulting-style

To judge true performance, I think it’s important to know intent. Maybe it also helps to have a roadmap, some horizons, a handful of KPIs, corporate values, a white paper... Okay, I’ll stop because I’m getting aroused. I’ll keep it simple. I started this Substack for two reasons: (1) to build a readership, and (2) to improve my writing.

I’ve discussed the readership numbers above, but in terms of (2) improving my writing, Substack has helped me in the following ways:

1. Improved technical ability. By regularly writing, editing, polishing, publishing and reviewing my work, I’ve gained experience. Each story is an opportunity to experiment and practice. Each piece usually centres around one technical aspect. So, 100 pieces written = 100 techniques improved, 200,000 words of experience.

2. Gained confidence. Posting anything was initially a big step. And while it doesn’t bother me now, I still struggle against softening or self-censoring my work. I fear judgement. But great writing—that unique ‘voice’—requires honesty, and honesty requires confidence. Substack is helping me gain that confidence in a paradoxical way. When I publish something that’s honest (or close to) and people unsubscribe, then I remember the world doesn’t end, and most people stay, and the people that like the piece like it in a deeper way. Honesty helps you find the right audience.

3. More professional. Without the expectation to post there’s a temptation to edit a piece until you die. Substack has taught me to push hard, get the worked out, and then accept that whatever I post is the best I could muster at the time.

4. More attentive to an audience. On Substack I get to see how my work is received. Readers email and text me or post their thoughts on Substack. I then get to interpret those comments to better understand what is and isn’t working. It’s not about pandering, but better understanding your affect/lack of.

Taking the above into account, I’d say my performance this year has been positive. My work is of a higher standard, more me/my voice, is developed more efficiently, and is being received more enthusiastically (admittedly by a small section of my audience).

Lessons

The process works. You just have to keep going. You just have to work…

I’ll use learning the guitar to explain this lesson.

Even learning a basic technique like how to play the C major scale requires a lot: fretboard knowledge, scale patterns, how to pick, how to hold the guitar… These elements are all explicit and teachable. Playing the scale well, however, also requires the muscles in your fingers, hands and forearms, and the tendons and ligaments to work in a certain way—a way you can’t ‘teach.’ It’s feel. A virtuoso can’t explain to you how to find the perfect touch on the frets, and you can’t read it in a magazine. You just have to practice, practice, practice until your brains creates the neural pathways. Well, a lot of what I’ve learned this year feels more like that.

By way of process, I read better writers than me, take note of the sentences they use, drill them for practice, include them in my pieces, and then review—what worked, what didn’t. At some point, that sentence type—like a musical scale or phrase—becomes something second nature, something learned. By practicing and reviewing every sentence, a greater array of techniques has been transferred to my subconscious. I can now improvise more freely, so to speak. (As an aside, reading great work is also inspiring because it shows you what is possible and helps you loosen the reigns.)

This process comes from viewing writing as a craft. I don’t believe that whatever you feel is instantly good. There are also skills to learn, and my lesson this year is that the process works. I just have to keep actively reading, drilling, stealing, and reviewing.

Use structure and principles like gutter railing on a bowling alley

There are lots of different story structure templates. This article includes seven and I could name another two. This year I learned a lot about story structure, and in several stories, I tried to improve a specific structure element, whether that be by including a more powerful resolution, a stronger beginning hook, a good mid-point, etc.

But the way my brain works, I like to also understand the why of something. In general, I like to be guided by principles and values above specific rules. Or, at the very least, I like to know why those rules exist.

Take music for example, blues music generally follows a certain structure: 1-4-5. If you write a I-6-2-5 progression, then it’s not the blues; it’s probably gospel or jazz. This is the equivalent of learning story structure. But there is more beneath the progression—not contradictory to, not separate from, but underlying.

In blues music, this underlying thing is tension and resolution. The 1 chord is home, it feels nice. When we go to the 4 chord it creates tension. So we go home again and get some release, but then we fly to the 5, to the most tension, and we beg to go back home. Tension, resolution. Rhythm, harmony. These forces underpin the structure of music. Understanding those forces can help you write compelling music. You have access to a greater array of creative choices if you understand those forces.

This year I’ve tried to define those forces. So far, I have the following:

• Tension. Similar to music. We like tension, unease. Tension between characters, internal tension, societal, environmental. We like unanswered questions, mystery, conflict, unstable people, friction, drama. ‘Everyone got along’ is boring.

• Movement. We like things that change. We want things to become more extreme, more severe, more dangerous, more exciting. Stakes should rise, drama should climb, movement, movement, movement.

• Surprise. Not just movement, but movement in an unforeseen direction. We don’t want to guess the entire story from the start. Whatever your beginning hints at is the one place you can’t go. Same with the ending—it can’t be the obvious ending. The obvious ending is non-permissible. Twists, turns, betrayals, pivots…

• Meaning. We want to understand why this all matters, what’s at stake. We want to be able to map it onto our own lives and the lives of those we know. We like things that are intelligible, that make sense. We don’t want random events happening to random people for random reasons causing random consequences.

Things are never completely good, they never stay still, you don’t know where it’s going, but you know it matters—that to me is the core of a yarn, a joke, a story.

Begin with theme

My biggest mistake this year was giving insufficient time to thematic questions. I took the core of each story for granted (even the silly ones) and went straight to structure. Or I went structure-out: I tried to derive the theme/purpose from the structure—what does this situation mean to this character who is insecure and likes dogs? But I can see now that some (maybe half) of my stories have no clear dramatic question at all. They might have a quirky premise, a funny character, an interesting world, but they lack a core, a beating heart.

Here I’m speaking for me. There are better writers—much better writers—who go character first. But when I think of the books and stories I love, what stays with me are the themes, the meaning, the messages. In these works, characters and plot appear to be vehicles to explore answers to thematic questions. While that could have happened by chance, I believe the authors probably started out with a core question or issue to explore and then created characters to serve that end. The characters’ actions and choices were therefore shaped by their thematic role.

I have a friend who claims the desire to create realistic characters is even missing the point. We are not shooting for realism—whatever that means—but symbolic meaning.

The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway is a great work of fiction because it explores love and masculinity in an insightful way. The character Jake Barnes—his specific handicap—is a vehicle to explore what it means to be a man in that time and place. In The Great Gatsby, the character of Jay Gatsby is theme personified. Clarissa Dalloway in Mrs Dalloway was a wealthy woman for a reason. Her status helped Woolf explore the state of British society from multiple angles. The tensions with the Doris Kilman only matter because they occupy different social roles, and so on…

When I think of Douglas Adams or Thomas Pynchon, what they convey is a certain sensibility, a world view. Their characters are not the driving force. I doubt they start with a character in mind, or even let that character, once created, dictate what happens. What happens seems instead to come from a cosmic logic which forms their thematic questions: What governs the world—luck or conspiracy or fate or absurdism—and what happens to people in that environment?

Anyway, all that to say that next year I will put more focus on the thematic stuff. I think this is really central to a writer’s voice. A voice is maybe the sum of what a writer is trying to say (theme, message) and how they say it (their style).

The Year Ahead

I just want to say thanks again to those who read my work this year, particularly those who reached out via messages, comments, texts. Those comms motivate me a lot.

This next year I have a few goals:

• Finish the satirical political thriller/conspiracy novel. If you like egomaniacal self-help gurus, insane bureaucrats, and you have a sense that the modern technological and bureaucratic world is kind of strange, then you might enjoy it.

• Reach 300 subscribers.

• Finish four longer stories for publication elsewhere (1/4 already done).

• Post another 12 pieces of fiction on Profitron (0/12), with theme in mind.

• Continue to develop and improve my style.

• Read a lot.

Last year I finished off by saying that anyone thinking of trying something new or creative would not regret the effort, even though they might look like a fool in public. Well, I’d like to reiterate that. Another year in and I have no regrets doing this. So, if there is some passion you’ve got, then give it a go. Why not?

Lastly, I’d like to make a final plea to please share my Substack. That 300-subscriber goal will be impossible to reach without your help. If you have strange mate who is not quite right in the head—yeah that person—then send it to them.

Me (right) and Shrek at Luna Park on Halloween

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Short stories, fiction. Original absurd, satire and humour writing. Influences include Pynchon, DeLillo, Vonnegut, Adams, and Norm Macdonald (all lovers of SEO).