Looking around the room, it was as if she’d turned her ex-boyfriends into things. The vase was from a brash man who played rugby and stuttered in bed. She poured Lady Grey from a teapot bought by a financial advisor from Crawley, who liked Dan Brown books and cocaine. She’d expected more from life than an empty bed with fancy sheets, a gift from a man who was terrified of his allergies.
Background
This piece was written at the creative writing workshop I used to run, Not for the Faint-Hearted. It involved showing photos to a group, asking everyone to write a story in three minutes, and then sharing what we’d done. Some people hated the idea but those who came along seemed to enjoy the sessions. During the pandemic, I ran the events weekly, but it burned me out. I closed the workshop and deleted the mailing lists.
I still love the energy of writing fast. Last week’s story, the 4th Film, was written in about an hour, inspired by a sentence in a book I was reading. All of my favourite work was written fast, but I’m always scared of not coming up with an idea, and fall back on working-and-reworking old ideas. I should play more. I should delete those old ideas that never seem to work to make space for new ones.
Meta
tldr; thank you for reading!
It’s now a year since I started sending stories out on this list, the first being The Lost Village. Since then I’ve sent out something out every Thursday. I’ve loved producing and sharing work this consistently. Sending directly to an audience allows me to produce the size and story I want to, without worrying about considering which submission guidelines it fits.
The one big problem with writing online is the analytics. Substack is eager to show me exactly how many people did, or didn’t read each piece. The constant drive on the web is that audiences should be growing. A month or so back, I was finding these analytics so wearisome that I considered closing the list. For me, the important thing is the responses to the stories - the occasional comments from readers, online and off, are more important than numbers.
The big danger of analytics is that you start to chase the hits rather than your creative desires. You can look at the statistics on what worked and interpret it as a call for more-like-that. You craft things specifically to make the numbers go up, and don’t repeat the things that didn’t work.
I’ve decided to keep this newsletter going, but to ignore the numbers and write what excites me. Some of it will be weird and experimental short horror fiction, but there are other things being worked on too. In the background, there’s an amazing secret project which is almost finished and should be out in November (you have no idea how much I’m struggling not to let the cat out of the sack about that one).
Thank you to everyone for reading, particularly those who have liked and commented on the stories.
Fuck the analytics. And that's coming from a digital marketer. Please keep writing for yourself and please don't stop these mailings. Your short whateveryoucallems are the bestest, freshest and often the most unsettling thing I've read in years. And that's coming from a horror fan.
Thanks for resisting the urge to grow according to analytics... I think the received wisdom of trying to get as much reach and exposure as possible for your 'product' is really unhealthy, possibly even a gateway to evil, in the way it hooks a hungry ghost into some fundamental needs, and it massively diminishes the quality of connection these platforms can facilitate. It is good to see it challenged: the value of these gifts you are sharing with the world is infinite and subtle. Please keep it up! X