StorySledding: #1

A weekly digest from StoryShed Media for the week of Dec. 8, 2025

Dec 13, 2025

HOT OUTTA THE GATE here we go—into StoryShed’s weekly digest debut: StoryShedding!

You: But it says sledding. StorySledding.
Me: Hey. It’s wintertime. There’s snow on the ground. We’re going sledding.

“ROSEBUD…”

Crap. There goes another perfectly good snow globe.

Stick around to see what develops after we clean up the mess!

And maybe you’ll find some things that help you attain anything you’re hoping to create, or just for you to freakin’ enjoy.

It’s all good.

Warm Bake > Hot Take

WE HAZ THE MEATS!

So, apparently Substack Notes (which, is of course “social media”) is eating some creators’ brains. I must confess that the addictive nature of Notes can be at times overwhelming and are sure able to pull an honest creator away from the task at hand (writing, editing, and publishing their ’stack).

I am from the sticks, so grateful just to be here.

When one hails from Puppy Funeral, Minnesota, addiction comes with the territory.

Outside of that, no warm bake this week. Maybe later.

What Is the Sound of One Substack Clapping?

Sort of the Shouts ‘n’ Murmurs of Substack, y’all. Who’s doin’ what on Substack that you might’ve missed!

Let’s get to it…

This was fascinating: “If you pander to idiots, you will make yourself dumber in the process.” — Rob Henderson

“The idea of sitting in a dark room with two hundred strangers and somehow being moved or transported by what happens on a screen … to me it’s like someone trying to get one over on me. I never wanted to impose that on anyone else.” —Film director Bill Forsyth from Ray Banks’ essay on his film Comfort & Joy (1984).

I love Comfort & Joy even though it’s no Local Hero, which is a small masterpiece. To each their own. Personal trivia: I THINK I was at a party in Glasgow in 1982 with my then-girlfriend Abigail and Altered Images lead singer (and Forsyth ingénue) Clare Grogan was also there. Don’t think we spoke two words together.

My friend Beth Lisogorsky has a charming new logo for her Substack and I wanted to share it since it screams fun and excitement—truly! (Way to go, Beth!)

…moving on…

Into the Shack

Yeah you got it…let’s see what ChatGPT can do for us…

…uhhhhh …NOPE.

So by Friday, a Creative Mornings participant turned me on to Gemini’s Nano Banana and I asked IT what it might come up with…

Gemini’s Nano Banana imagines (or hallucinates) The Shack in StoryShedding (screengrab from Nano Banana).

Welp, that seemed like a step up (or down, whatever your reference point is), but I asked it, “Why is he feeding the badger a cup of tea?”

Here’s how it responded:

…to which I responded: “OK now you’re just being lazy!”

It added more light in the forest and books floating like falling leaves…

I quite like this, given its proximity to “Deus Ex Machina” (yet another screengrab).

—that’s when I decided I’d had enough playtime with AI for the day.

Hey kids! I was doing my drip coffeemaker all wrong!

Here’s the scoop: When I grind fresh coffee beans (about 2-3 cups worth is all my system can handle in a morning) I was piling the ground beans in a conical-shaped pile in the cone-shaped coffee filter, and then making a divot in the top so the hot water could brew down and around the grounds, thinking it would make for a uniform brew.

How wrong I was. Leave the pile conical! Let the hot water do the work. My coffee this morning was much brighter and “coffee-forward” so now this is the way. If you stop over for a cuppa, this is what you’ll get.

Just sayin’.

“A trifle underdone” aka the Morning Muse

play me baby…

A 10-minute “art project” I did on Friday, Dec. 12, 2025 at Minneapolis’ Jungle Theater (photo by StoryShed Media).

This section is for stuff I used to do on Medium and early Substack (2020-22) prior to the current StoryShed seasonal calendar. Maybe they will inspire other writers or totally put readers off—I don’t know.

Thought for the Week

“WE HANKER TO GO ON, even in the face of plain evidence that long, long lives are not necessarily pleasurable in the kind of society we have arranged thus far. We will be lucky if we can postpone the search for new technologies for a while, until we have discovered some satisfactory things to do with the extra time. Something will surely have to be found to take the place of sitting on the porch re-examining one’s watch.”

—Lewis Thomas, from The Lives of a Cell (1971)