Literary Salon #3
A Magazine for Readers and Writers
We Read What’s Valuable
We Must Write What’s Valuable
If you’re a reader, not a writer, Literary Salon offers you fiction and the opportunity to discover new talent. You can toggle your account to receive only those sections pertaining to readers.
For Readers:
Games: this is an outlier. Toggle if making board games is of interest to you.
Serials: these are table of contents that are only sent out when a new serial begins. It’s not the serial itself, and I highly recommend everyone subscribe to this section.
Short Stories, Flash, Substack Authors, Re:Read: these are all reader-specific sections and highly recommended.
Reviewstack: My “reviews” tend to be critiques that breakdown a work technically to suggest better options for the author. As a reader, its relevance to you will depend upon how interested you are in the fine details of the writing—but it’s a great way to find promising new writers. I only do this where I see potential.
The various serials: Each serial has its own section. If one is running and you want to stop receiving those chapters, just toggle it off.
For Writers:
Not too long ago, I shared on Notes how I felt the need to improve my article writing to be able to reach a new level on Substack. My audience disagreed with me, but I’m going to say it again. The most important factor for our readers is the quality of our work, and the most vital aspect of that quality is its importance to them.
Eight months ago, I tackled the issue of prose quality, and you’ve told me your fiction has improved as a result. You’ve said my library on line-level prose techniques is the best you’ve found.
I want to do the same for article writing—to improve my writing for my readers and to help you do the same for yours.
On top of that, the Literary Salon has a busy summer planned. Below, we’ll talk about the various projects that are just beginning, but I want you ready for the articles coming. We’re going to write essays that command attention and get talked about and shared.
We’re taking this to a new level, and we’re going to start right now.
The University of Chicago has a program that teaches academics how to write, not the students but the professors, and when you ask yourself what Story Club with George Saunders is doing that we’re not doing, it’s the same thing taught by the Chicago program. In his most recent post, answering a reader’s question about hope, Saunders follows the University of Chicago’s line of thinking. For all the good work that we do, for all the wonderful fiction and all the thoughtful essays we produce, if George Saunders and the University of Chicago are in agreement about what makes for good writing, maybe we should pay attention.
Saunders knows his readers. They write to him, and he knows the problems they’re interested in solving because they tell him. He addresses the problem by telling his readers what wonderful, smart people they are, and then he shows them the instability in their current situation and brings them out of that instability to a point of stability. As Sean Connery said in The Untouchables, that’s the Chicago Way.
“What an interesting question…” You’re so smart and clever.
“There are a few embedded assumptions in the question we might want to unpack a little.” There’s an instability in your thinking.
That’s Saunders demonstrating that his writing is valuable. He identifies a problem that’s important to his readers, and he sets about to change how his readers think about that problem.
Some of this you’ve probably heard before, and you rejected it because it sounded like a bunch of buzzwords presented by someone who was regurgitating what some other blogger had already said. Here’s the shocker. I’m not here to tell you something new and original. These points have already been made by Larry McEnerney, the director of that aforementioned writing program. He’ll tell you originality isn’t the point; it’s easy to write something new and useless. Publication, he says, depends on writing to your reader in the code of that community, communicating your appreciation for their brilliant mental hygiene, and then telling them they’re wrong—again, in the code of that community.
It’s a fascinating program, but to determine if his instruction for academics has any value for Substack essayists, especially those whose focus is fiction and literature, I looked up the most successful literature Substacks, chose one, and went to the most recent post.
What is George Saunders doing that we’re not doing?
He’s not writing to share his thoughts. As McEnerney says, your teachers were paid to care about what’s in your head. They taught you to write to reveal your thinking so they’d know you understood the material and could grade you accordingly. That instruction was helpful to them but deadly to your ability to write with power.
If you’re really good, you’ll hype the cost.
Larry McEnerney
If we don’t learn the difference between what we write and what the masters of the craft write, we’ll always struggle for readers, because we’re fishing with bad bait. You can’t hook a reader with bad bait. List your hopes, dreams, and all your reasons for being here. Name them. Every single one begins with hooking a reader.
Readers care about what’s important to them, and when you present a fault in their thinking and back it up with an argument, now you have more than their interest. You’re making an impact.
We’re going to start making a bigger impact on more people, starting today.
—Thaddeus Thomas
Literary Salon #3
A comment from a reader of my upcoming book: Deeper Stories. “This section [on sentence length] might be the best piece on the craft of writing I’ve read in any trade book.”
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Today’s Reading
For Readers:
The Last Temptation of Winnie-the-Pooh. Chapter Two. Based upon the works of and include passages adapted from A. A. Milne. A serial.
Zachary Dillon, Championed by Amanda Coreishy
In the Stacks:
- (serial)
- (short)
- (first in a series of shorts)
For Writers:
Deeper Stories: themes, meaning, and Groundhog Day. (Section—Re:Write)
What Should be Our Goal and Why are We Here? Information for writers new to Substack and existential angst for the rest of us. (Section—Goal:10k)
A Must-Read for Participants in Project Franklin by
June Events: in this event roundup, we discuss…
The Last Temptation of Winnie-the Pooh
Chapter Two
That day, being yesterday, the sun came back over the forest, bringing with it the scents and sounds of gathering flocks, and in the warmth and quiet of the Wood a lamb tried out his voice and listened to see if his mother would answer; turtledoves complained gently to themselves in their lazy, comfortable way that it was the other fellow's fault, but it didn't matter very much. On such a day as this, Pooh went down to Eeyore’s house by the river, because that was the best place to be, if one was looking for Eeyore.
To read the chapter, visit the original post.
Zachary Dillon, Championed by Amanda Coreishy
Writer:
Broadcast to Alex: We’ve Been Watching You
We’ve been watching you Alex, because Zachary Dillon had a story to tell and he figured he could tell it better if he put you at the centre of it.
And he lets you tell it, placing us deep in your head space, so when the voices begin, we hear them too. We’re minding your own business with you as you jerk off to porn. One hand gets tired so you switch hands.
‘Stranger,’ says a voice.
For more, see the original article.
Thank you for another wonderful week,
Thaddeus Thomas
Lol. I'm frightened!
I never said this to you before, but I am really struck by your dedication and the length and breadth of what you get up to on Substack - and your mind is always working on how to make what you offer better and better! It's very cliché, but I'll say it anyway: service to many leads to greatness.