StoryShedding: #11
A fortnightly digest from StoryShed Media for the week of March 29, 2026
IF YOU’RE NEW HERE, StoryShedding is an every-two-week digest of things I’ve found on Substack and stuff mulled at the StoryShed HQ (that be me, too) for subscribers to enjoy or discard at will.
Your choice!
That said, here’s a—
Warm Bake > Hot Take
SOMETHING, I DON’T KNOW what, is happening to (at?) Substack. Good? Bad? Indifferent? You tell me. That’s as close as I come to a hot take these past two weeks.
Either it’s undergoing explosive growth (which accounts for the flatlining of new free or paid subscribers) or we have an infusion of Nazi infiltrators stalking Notes, DMs, and comments.
Again, you tell me. No clue.
So, warm bake, which is where I normally dwell: Wrapping up Season 11: Stargazing (the first episode of which is below) and it feels like I’ve been at it forever and will be relieved to move on to Season 12: Daytalking (a sample follows), which seems to be a subscriber favorite because there’s mutual love for collaborations and that’s what Daytalking essentially means.
Daytalking = relationships.
Also a warm bake: Are you feelin’ the AI heat yet?
Here’s to hoping you’ll stick around!
What Is the Sound of One Substack Clapping?
I’VE DISCOVERED A NEW workflow for this section of StoryShedding: revisiting restacks from the previous two weeks! Usually I only restack a post if it’s something I feel others might enjoy, and putting those restacks here is for the late-to-the-party, I-must’ve-missed-it crowd (no worries, I’m late to every party I’ve ever attended, eventually).
Here’s what went down:
L.E. Mullin’s “Ignore the genre. This is what happens” spells it out bluntly. Genre-bending is possible, but there’s a price. There’s also an “in,” which is best achieved by deft signaling: “People want a romance when they buy a romance novel. But they also want to feel they’re inside someone else’s mind.” Go check it out.
“The First Draft Is You Telling Yourself The Story,” by J. Penberth Rabold of The Writer’s Table, knows where it’s at: “…audience comes later. In revision. When you take what you discovered and shape it so others can discover it too.” Rabold states. “But you can’t revise what you never discovered. You can’t polish truth you never wrote in the first place.” Don’t be afraid of drafts. Also, don’t sweat editing. Go in with an open curiosity, a dash of wonder, and then mold it, refine it, as only you see necessary.
SERIOUSLY THE BEST THING you will read on Substack so far: “Honesty Makes People Uncomfortable and Rock and Roll Was Always Supposed to Make People Uncomfortable” by Jason Thompson of Ear Candy Update. “Almost Famous is a movie,” he writes, “about the dangerous, ridiculous, holy business of loving something that cannot love you back.” I’m fuckin’ hooked.
Think that’s just schmaltzy? Try again cupcake: “Sentimentality is only a cheap word people use when they are afraid that tenderness might have structural value.” And this hit me like a gut punch—something every creator needs to deeply consider: “A lesser movie would use the backstage world to punish fantasy. Almost Famous does not do that. It insists that fantasy is how a great many people survive their ordinary lives, and that the abuse of fantasy does not cancel its necessity. The disaster is not that the dream exists. The disaster is when the dream gets detached from the human beings who made it possible in the first place. When that happens, everybody starts talking about authenticity like it’s a brand and not a moral problem.” Bravo, Jason.
DAYUM. We gotta up our game over here!
Into the Shack
THIS PAST MONTH I’VE tried something different and it’s been an adjustment: Writing all my long-form essays NOT on Substack but in Scrivener, the word processor I’ve had for years. I just updated Scrivener and it’s a lot to wrap your head around with new bells and whistles, but it’s perfect for keeping long-form stuff in one place, including research, image assets, notes, and, well, drafts.
In fact, I’ve started binder folders for long-term StoryShed projects (ones I hope to publish myself or find a publisher for) that are fiction I’ve been sitting on for too long. Our Substack friend Ellen from Endwell might be pleased to know one of these binder folders is a new draft of my novel Monster Road, which is a sequel to a novella I wrote when I left high school eons ago, The Crowded Room (Phlegethon Publications, 2005—yes, self-published, AHEM). Stay tuned, El. I wanna know how it turns out too!
A couple new StoryShed biz-related news bits: StoryShed Publications is planning sometime later this year to roll out a 2nd Revised Edition of The Encyclopedia of Necessary Atrocities. What the hell is that? you might wonder. Essentially inviting 26 independent writers to contribute to a book-length project. Stick around and find out! The other subsidiary, DOPA (Department of Personal Archaeology) is getting some needed branding and design from our friends at Smart Set in Minneapolis. Look for news on that wicked lil’ baby beast also this year.
Lastly, the final episode of Season 11, Stargazing #4 is still in draft mode, but I’m setting a due date for publication of April 15. Then a short break and on we go to Season 12: Daytalking.
Grateful to my free or paid subscribers! If you have the resources, please buy me a coffee:
The Morning Muse
LOOK, OUR FRIEND THE Muse has been dipping in and out lately!
It’s sort of like that house cat you can’t find, and then you look in a closed dresser drawer and—BOOM, there’s the damn cat, blinkin’ up at you like it’s never seen you before (though you feed it every day).
So here she comes again shakin’ everybody’s circuits…
Without further ado, the Morning Muse from the past week:
Felix Cadaver
Marsupial baggage moments
At the crest of Alley-oop
Generational silos
Tim Robbins as the Producer who murders the Screenwriter. I can relate to that on so many levels.
No Greg It’s Not Just You
Casket Punching Bag, soda, potato chips, naptime plushie
Expectational Serendipity (aka “hope”?)
Paramecium pie
You’re a handful for no compelling reason, amirite?
All the Clouds of Indiana
Avery Blandhurst Pinero
I’ve discovered a portal to the Muse—the bathroom! :-O
Thought for the Week
“After Edith’s death more than fifty years later [Tolkien] wrote to his son Christopher, explaining why he wished to include the name “Lúthien” on her tombstone:”
She was (and knew she was) my Lúthien. I will say no more now. But I should like ere long to have a long talk with you. For if as seems probable I shall never write any ordered biography—it is against my nature, which expresses itself about things deepest felt in tales and myths—someone close in heart to me should know something about things that records do not record: the dreadful sufferings of our childhoods, from which we rescued one another, but could not wholly heal wounds that later often proved disabling; the sufferings that we endured after our love began—all of which (over and above personal weaknesses) might help to make pardonable, or understandable, the lapses and darknesses which at times marred our lives—and to explain how these never touched our depths nor dimmed the memories of our youthful love. For ever (especially when alone) we still met in the woodland glade and went hand and hand many times to escape the shadow of imminent death before our last parting.
—J.R.R. Tolkien: A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter, HarperCollins Publishers paperback, p. 105.
Tuneage for You
“While You See A Chance” Steve Winwood (1980; writers: Steve Winwood and Will Jennings) <3
My new decade (1980-1989) began with this very song. I went from living on my late parents’ hobby farm in the sticks to writing my first spec screenplay and traveling to the UK (twice that decade, actually) and landing my first apartment and full-time job. It was my power era. Everyone should have one, IMHO.
You are very kind to me, brother. Cheers!
I am staying tuned, Michael. That is excellent news about Monster Road.