StoryShedding: #14
A formerly fortnightly, now monthly, digest of StoryShed Media for July 11, 2026
EXECUTIVE DECISION MOMENT: StoryShedding’s cadence is downshifting from (roughly) fortnightly to (mostly) monthly after this issue.
Reason? Well, it’s summer and I’m writing bottom drawer stuff, so takin’ my foot off the accelerator for Season 13: Nightwalking which will be a step back to essays Substack probably isn’t familiar with: my blog Completely in the Dark on WordPress, republished here with extra texture.
It’ll be fun (see below in Story Stackin’). You know, like summer is “supposed” to be—FUN.
Warm Bake > Hot Take
THIS SECTION OF StoryShedding is reserved for long, thoughtful, smoky gazes into what’s going on and why that might be not worth—wait. I said this before. Déjà vu, baby. Oooooooh, spooky.
Start again.
Hot takes are assumptions nearly everyone makes. I suppose the more thoughtful among us stop and consider alternatives to hot takes, what I call “warm bakes.” Mmmmmm, nothin’ says lovin’ like somethin’ from a warm oven. Here’s an example.
Hot take: James L. Brooks’ Broadcast News (1987) is a storytelling masterpiece.
Warm bake: Why is this film a masterpiece? Well, I wouldn’t have said that when I first saw it, in the theaters. I distinctly remember feeling “meh” about its ending, how no one seemed to “win out” in the competition between the leads Aaron Altman, Jane Craig, and Tom Grunick. You see, that was my “hot take” and over the years, I’m ready to deliver a warm bake: Broadcast News seems to be about competition, but it’s about growth—over time. Altman, Craig, and Grunick display different forms of intelligence, some cerebral and knowledge-based, some kinetic and soulful, and some cosmetic and appealing. All of these are just different forms of intelligence when used in the proper context.
This is a tough sell in 2026, as it might’ve been in 1987. Not much has changed, unfortunately. :-/
What Is the Sound of One Substack Clapping?
I HAVE BEEN so so lax here. This is not to say I haven’t been reading great shit on Substack—I have! It’s a goldmine of sweet reads.
One stuck out to me and I want to share it here because its author did something I wanted to do (and still might) but did it in a way that cut to the chase (a very important one for the entire world, but particularly for confused Americans just now) and it needs to get wider distribution. It is worthy of deeper study for those fascinated (as I am) by the subject.
Here it is, with some salient passages:
This is how the current U.S. government nonsense MIGHT end. Carlyn Beccia‘s essay “Has America Crossed the Asshole Threshold?” is more than a great read. If enough people get with the program, it could be groundbreaking and even life-changing—for everyone.
As a historian, Beccia digs deep and has a super sharp eye for developing narrative to retell that history. I immediately subscribed to her Substack. In this essay, she breaks down what the GOP has been doing since the late nineteenth century (I was noodling Teapot Dome Scandal as a start, but you could probably go back earlier in that century. My follow up would’ve been Watergate, then Iran-Contra, and now this Nazi crap.)… She writes:
“There is a line. Cross it, and the arithmetic flips. The people gaming the system start to outnumber the people holding it up. Every honest person left standing starts to feel like a sucker. Then that person stops being honest, which moves the line again. Then the next person adjusts. Then the next.”
It’s a chilling story, well told. Go read it now.
Story Stackin’
STORIES ALWAYS GET stacked over here.
They form piles and I have to dig through the piles and find out what needs to stay, go, or get worked on. It’s a mess. Still, I think I came up with a wise plan for the rest of this summer of ’26.
When I was much younger I was happy to talk about these stories. Nowadays I only do that if I’m researching or getting direct feedback, and the writing (at least in draft mode) has been completed. The “kid me” received stories and told stories, and writing was just another way of getting them out of my system. I was never “mentored” in formal writing education; I just did what I had to do to get it out and, well, reading books—that was my main teacher.
How, I wondered, did the big dogs do it? They read too!
I got lit up by an old story that, while I thought I had a file folder for it in the ol’ story box, there was only an essay and some typed out notes. These were helpful, but not necessary since I hadn’t started a draft and had no initial “plot.”
Then I realized it could be grafted on to another story cycle for which I did have drafts (and somewhat fleshed out characters) so that’s what I did. And I got more excited by that prospect since it kinda “killed two birds with one stone.”
Highly recommended, this “graft something on to something else” concept. If you’re feeling lost, it’s worth a shot.
As mentioned, StoryShed Season 13: Nightwalking, with four episodes, the first of which will drop next week, is a dip into previously published WordPress posts that revolve around the subject of Nightwalking. Each will have a brief 2026 intro, but mostly Ur stories from Completely in the Dark. I’m doing this to take a break from original Substack posts so I can focus on writing projects both client-paid and spec creative work. Man, I needed the breather! Thanks for hanging in there.
All-new stuff in Season 14: Stargazing, probably September.
The Morning Muse
WHERE O WHERE art thou, my Muse? Bringer of Fire and Ideas, Lover of Amusement and Delight? Are you in the kitchen with Dinah? Preparing my warmish mineral bath in the littlest room in the house? Out on the street near a bus stop smoking a cigarette and waiting for a friend?
Maybe me? Are you waiting on me?
So, without further ado, here’s the Morning Muse from the past [couple] weeks:
Rainer Maria Rackem
“Since when did you take such an intense interest in personal grooming?”
Why you and why now and where are my socks?
Our brain-dead batshit overlords
Talk me through it, Squeezy
Torn, sofa-tossed, flecked with sleep, cranky
A saddle of beef
some guy named Howard Schwand
Our chickens will cluck their way into your heart.
“Hey Lester?”
“Yeah, Jack?”
“If—if you have to think that hard about something… just… Just don’t do that.”
narcoleptic salad shooter
You can stick yer riggies up yer hoo-haw
it’s Ted Danson Average Smell-o-vision Ingestion Time!
He’d rather be a big fish in a small pond than a small fish in a small pond but that’s neither here nor there or anywhere that’s square.
“Put away that strawberry jam, you paw-lickin’ mongrel!”
There’s pickles in your rickets and so lighteth the way for dusty dogs
Yabbo dabbo, sez musey Muse
“My late parents gave me a marvelous gift and some days I’m overwhelmed by it: my life. However, living in a family wasn’t a cakewalk for me. So I was happy to avoid creating my own.”
Thought for the Week
“…the tiresome thing about ignorance is precisely this: that a man who possesses neither beauty nor goodness nor intelligence is perfectly well satisfied with himself, and no one who does not believe that he lacks a thing desires what he does not believe that he lacks.”
—Diotima, c.a. 400 B.C., from Plato’s The Symposium (translated by Walter Hamilton, 1951)
“She said, ‘You’re not too smart, are ya? I like that in a man.’ Sugar, you may be a lot of things to a lot of people but all I know is I like a man who likes that.”
—Professor Diane Olivia Tima, Philosophy Department, some midwestern university August 1985, from Untitled New Project by me, 2026
Tuneage for You
“Sweet Pea” Tommy Roe (Televised in 1967, Santa Monica, CA; songwriter: Tommy Roe)
In one respect this video is creepy (Tommy Roe preening and pawing at the girl). But if you’re of a certain age (like, mine) you remember being that girl and milking the pure joy of singing along to your favorite song.
I’d say focus more on the latter and less on the former. Just for now.
