Welcome to WISLY

First of all, I love you. The title of this Substack isn’t a suggestion that that will change. But that I’m aware of how my relationship to art and in particular the art I make shifts and grows. I thought of doing some kind of blog space during the years of pandemic and leading into the launch of my second book. The novel was five years into production and it had become my daily challenge, my morning mediation and, in some ways, my best friend. And since I knew it wasn’t my first time around the block so to speak, I was aware that shit would change. The book would go from being just mine, to mine and my agent’s/editor’s, then it would be mostly in the hands of the publishers and marketers. Then, it would belong to the world, to you. And my love of the book would be different than it had been. I’d love it through how it made you feel, as opposed to this very intimate, special, one-on-one thing I’d had for years before. So when I say, “While I Still Love You,” what I mean to say is, while I still love you in this particular way that feels sacred and special although the love I will feel later on is also real, just a different kind of holy. But WISLY sounds better than WISLYITPWTFSASATLIWFLOSAR,JADKOH, which is, I guess the true spirit of this Substack.

I’m choosing to do this, finally, after considering it for years because I wanted a somewhat centralized place to share shit. Obviously I have ideas about writing and I’m looking forward to doing some breakdowns of some of my short fiction and writing here. I also want this space to be a site of conversation about craft. So I’ll make spaces for you to be heard. I want to talk to you! I also make music and do photography, so maybe I’ll share some of that too. I’ll also do some podcast like posts where I talk through some creative or cultural things that are on my mind. I think I’ve been missing the feeling of direct contact. By the time my fiction usually reaches you I’ve worked on it for several years, and so now I’m getting back to something I felt like I lost.

My commitment is to keep this up for at least a year. I’ll try to keep a mix of free and paywalled content but, at least right now maybe the more crafty things will be behind the wall? I don’t know. Ideally I’ll aim for four to six posts a month. If you want to be more fully a part of this space but the price is a challenge we can almost certainly work something out.

So yeah: What to what to expect this first year:

Personal reflections on my life as a writer

Craft focused considerations on the practice of writing

Retrospective close reads of published work (mine and others)

Audio recordings of conversations and audio versions with Director’s cut commentary will be for paid subscribers!

Music and behind the scenes looks at music making

Videos about music and writing as a craft

Writing prompts

Interviews with publishing professionals

Thanks for being here. Hope you stay a while.

-N

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