Literary Salon #6
A Substack Week-in-Review
When The Britches Get So Tight You Lose Your Voice
Two new subscribers to the Literary Salon have been acting as beta readers for an article, and their single most helpful note was that I didn’t sound like myself. I’ve been invited to write for one of those Substack magazines. It’s the second such invite in recent weeks, and the first one resulted in a rejected submission. I’m trying very hard to make sure this one is what the editor’s looking for. I was trying too hard. In nice ways, my beta readers told me I was trying to sound smart and impress my audience. In the colloquial, I was getting too big for my britches and had lost my voice.
I’ve written a couple of articles lately about my efforts to improve my essays; I was expressing the desire to bridge the gap between what I see in my own work and what I see in the work of the professionals. The truth is, while we can always improve, the people who come to us aren’t secretly wishing we’d sound more like someone else.
I never much appreciate the advice to write the way you talk. I believe in practicing techniques that are unique to the page. At the same time, my essays are a (rather one-sided) conversation between me and my reader—and if you like reading the Literary Salon, you probably don’t want to see that disappear.
The conversational style has any number of benefits, but the one I’m thinking about now relates to genres of Youtube videos that I’m slightly embarrassed to admit to liking. It’s not the nature of the video itself, but the reason they’re such a draw.
I noticed it first with the old Cracked “After Hours” videos. It was a scripted series in which four people hang out in a diner and talk about pop culture. I’ve noticed it again in my fondness for the show “VFX Artists React” by Corridor Crew, where three guys sit on a couch a nerd-out about how movies are made, for better or worse.
Back in the day, I watched every single “After Hours” video more than once, and these days, I probably watch at least one “VFX” video every day. The reason is the same. They remind me of my friend groups from when I was younger, and the experience of watching the videos tricks my brain into thinking I’m living those days all over again.
I often get irritated when people talk about Substack being social media. Notes is Substack’s social media, but the newsletter remains its own thing. Or does it?
Yeah, it does. Our newsletters don’t change in nature because we engage in Notes.
HOW-the-HOWEVER…
That experience of getting to know a writer carries over, and as I write this, I’m wondering if that explains some of the popularity of essays and the resistance we face with our stories. In fiction, the author buries himself behind layers of characters and narrators. In our essays, there’s no such barrier. The parasocial dynamic builds in the best way possible.
It’s like sitting down with a friend.
—Thaddeus Thomas
Literary Salon #6
A comment from
regarding 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.”Now is the perfect time to commit to a new relationship with the Literary Salon.
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Today’s Reading
Headline Article:
When Your Britches Get So Tight You Lose Your Voice
In the Stacks:
Reviews:
- reviews a book by
Fiction:
- at Persona Non Propia.
Essays
The Forever Dying and the Always Dead, or Literary Fiction and the Novel by
at Counter Craft- at Woman of Letters
From the Literary Salon:
For Music Lovers:
For Readers:
The Last Temptation of Winnie-the-Pooh. Chapter Five. Based upon the works of and including passages adapted from A. A. Milne. A serial.
Reviewstack: Why you should read Andy Futuro’s Vaquera by
For Writers:
Programs at the Literary Salon:
The Franklin Project / Open-World Fiction: a joint venture with
MmmFA (Mighty Fine Arts): Holding one another accountable for getting that book written. See our Slack Forum.
Reading Groups: Currently reading Empire’s Daughter by
; see our Slack Forum.
Closing Article:
From Notes: About Community by Thaddeus Thomas (see below)
From Notes: About Community
Cultivate relationships of all sorts, but the ones who will move the needle for you are accounts of influence within the community. Those with more influence will have an impact on you, and you’ll have an impact on those with less. And there isn’t just one fiction community here.
I have a group who have been with me since the beginning, and that’s a miracle. There’s a group of literary-minded slipstream writers (And slipstream is probably outdated and none of them call themselves that, but they’re outside the normal confines of literary fiction, outside the mainstream, mixing up a love for fiction of all sorts and for brilliant prose) and I have a role in that community because Emil Ottoman took an interest on my essays on prose.
Before that, the big change for me was Clancy Steadwell agreeing to let me interview him. More recently, it was the opportunity to critique Pablo Báez .
We need layers of community, and there are key players as these layers build.
Larry Hogue was one of very first people I reached out to when forming Literary Salon. He’s been there through it all.
Marian L Thorpe has done more to keep me going than I’ll ever be able to express.
M.P. Fitzgerald makes me feel at home, and and now Miguel has gone out of his way to bridge the gap because we were part of the same community but never quite connecting.
played the role of moderator and saved us a rupture within the author community. has driven meaningful, effective actions to impact the lives of authors in this community who faced difficult time, and he’s a cool guy and great fantasy writer to boot.This isn’t an exhaustive list.
Haly, the Moonlight Bard ✒️ has done more than team up with me for one endeavor. She’s an important part in my efforts to connect better with more people though our fiction accountability group and the book club. (If either of those interest you, look for the Forum tab on my website.
I’m currently pursuing another layer to reach more readers. A traditionally published author recommended my essays to her subscribers. She asked me to write something for her, but what I turned in wasn’t quite what she was looking for. A few days later, a Substack essay magazine asked me to write a piece—and I’m working on that now (and trying not to lose my voice in the process.)
Cultivate relationships. Become a part of the communities. We can focus so hard on the technology of growth, but people are the key, not only to finding your audience but to making all of this worthwhile.
Thank you for another great week,
—Thaddeus Thomas
Great piece, man. Thanks for sharing.