December Update
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If you would like to see last months Update, click here! If you would like to keep track of all my monthly updates, then here is a link to the tag I use for them!
State of Gibberish
November was a banner month for Gibberish, glory to God! I kept the serial “Duel” going, I published probably my best and most important story, “Father and Sun”, I participated in not one but two podcasts with
, and all in all just had a grand time bringing Gibberish to life for you. THANK YOU my friends for making this such a fun and wonderful endeavor. I am deeply grateful for every comment, like, subscription, etc—even if I don’t say much at the time, know that I see each and every one of you, and my cup of gratefulness floweth over in ways I cannot easily repay.I commented in the November Update that if I could survive November, I can survive every month. I believe the results are in and I should be just fine. The good Lord has sustained me through some challenges and I find myself charged up and eager to press on.
December And Forward
With so much going on, I believe out of necessity—both for rest and time—I am going to pause my weekly writing exercises through December, in order to focus work on a project I am excited to bring you in 2024—The Gibberish Anthology. More on this below!
What I’m Reading
On Substack I’ve been doing a lot of reading!
The Suff took the world by storm during November, so I have deeply enjoyed reading all the tales.
has ably recorded all entries into the lore at , you can read them here.Speaking of The Suff,
started a podcast called “Authors and Embers” at his publication, . Episode 1 featured myself and The Chronicler, but we also recorded a Suff Special which will be coming soon, featuring many of your favorite fiction writers including: , , , , and !
- started publishing audio-readings of his chivalric tale, To Kill a Queen’s Dragon at his publication, . He’s published
9 chapters10 chapters of text, but I plan to follow with the audio readings as he releases them! - has been dialing up the intensity in her ongoing serial over at called Remembrance! If you haven’t been following it, you are really missing out!
- posted his first Essay Club post at , which was about George Orwell’s “Why I Write”. You can still check it out! This is a fortnightly essay club, so the next essay will be
next weekTOMORROW and will be on CS Lewis’ “Humanitarian Theory of Punishment”. I think this is a great idea, a little more digestible than a book club, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the one essay and I’m looking forward to the next!
I’ve read a lot of great things, but these are a few that come to mind as I write this! I can’t list everything—please forgive me!
The Books I am reading are few but fair! Maintaining casual reading time has delighted me greatly.
The Fellowship of the Ring by JRR Tolkein - I was fairly far along when I picked it back up, so I am pleased that I completed it quickly. The story is wonderful, reading it was like taking a relaxing walk through a garden. I regret that it will take so long for me to get back to this trilogy, with two books interposing themselves between, but I am a man of my word and anyway absence helps the heart grow fonder. I will pick up the Two Towers as if visiting a long absent dear friend.
100% Complete
I promised
that The Story of a Soul By Therese of Lisieux would go next on the list! I have only just begun but I am powering through it. It was initially arresting—St. Therese is a Saint through and through and I had trouble finding myself, unsaintly as I am, in her story. But wow—the more I read the less I can put it down. I’m getting a lot out of this. I will have to make a post at the Peasant Times-Dispatch once I’m done!48.57% Complete
Dark Forest by Cixin Liu. The second installment, after his “Three Body Problem” which I finished in October!
0% Complete
The Two Towers by JRR Tolkein. Just establishing the reading list—with Fellowship complete, this is next!
0% Complete
What I’m Working On
Weekly Exercises - As I mentioned up top, I am going to PAUSE weekly exercises until the new year, in order to prepare some of my projects below!
Serial - DUEL has kept up the pace and turned up the heat! If you missed it, you can begin with Episode 1 HERE. If you would like to catch up, you can check out the Index HERE! Episode 5 drops at 5pm TONIGHT! I will keep episodes moving through December until the story is finished—looking like I might have more than 9 episodes but anyway it will go until the story is done!
Flash Fiction - Also mentioned up top, but I posted a very important short story called Father and Sun which was quite a sensation by Gibberish standards. The reaction to this story has delighted me beyond my biggest hopes, and I am deeply grateful for you all!
A smaller project, inspired by a post on Notes, I republished an old Vignette I had written in 2018 called What Love Is.
Collaboration -
initiated an idea for an Indonesian Space Empire, and I found it cool so we are world-building in public at ! Check it out to see, so far, passing notes in class; and eventually, the blooming of stories in a jointly-built world!Drafts - I won’t bore you with the same drafts you’ve already seen, but here’s a new one!
“blackwater” - this is a holding draft for my story which I intend to write for
’s open-world prompt, “The Blackwater Files”. If you would like to participate, be sure to click the link!I am reinvigorated to write a “writing about writing” post leveraging strategy lessons learned from when I did my MBA. I am trying NOT to make this the kind of ‘writing about writing’ that people hate, but rather a framework for thinking intentionally about how you approach your newsletter. Look for this in December.
Coming 2024
This is the part where I can get you excited for things coming in 2024. I have been very excited to bring these updates to you. Some of them are things I intended from the beginning, some are new—all of them are, I hope you will agree, rather exciting!
The Gibberish Anthology
I do not use a Seasonal methodology mostly because I cannot get myself that organized. But what I do plan to do is publish a hard-copy anthology of the stories I’ve published to Gibberish for each year. I will be spending December working on the 2023 Anthology, with hopes to release it early in 2024 for public consumption. The Anthology will include all of my writing exercises and all my short fiction published to The Volume. Sandbox Earth will remain separate, and Duel will also be excluded unless I think better of it.
Just a side note, over the summer
cooked up a BRILLIANT new cover and type-setting for Sandbox Earth, which I haven’t gotten organized enough to launch yet. I will be putting that together this December as well, for re-release as soon as it is done!Once I publish the Anthology, I will start putting old works behind a paywall on a rolling month basis. So if I publish in January 2024, January 2023 will go behind a paywall. In February 2024, February 2023 will go behind a paywall, etc. If you would like to keep access to everything I have published and read your favorite stories again and again—consider a paid subscription?
The Second Gibberish Writing Competition
The Gibberish Writing Competition was a rip-roarin success from this past summer. Several of you have asked me multiple times if I plan to do it again. With the “Big Splash” on the horizon, I couldn’t commit. Now, I think I can: Exact date TBD, but I fully intend to begin the second competition before the end of Q1 2024. There will be some changes from the last competition, so keep on the look-out for another announcement as I get my act together for this.
The Gibberish Feedback Party
Because people really enjoyed the Gibberish Writing Competition, I wanted to offer an opportunity for Paid Subscribers to receive Competition-style feedback from me, without all the hassle of competing for it. The idea is that Paid Subscribers can send me their stories which have already been published to Substack, and I will read carefully and offer feedback in the same format that I provide feedback for the competition. This will likely come after the Competition, so be on the lookout for more information about this.
Another Serial?
I love writing serials. Sandbox Earth was published before I had 100 subscribers, and before Notes launched. Duel was really the first serial I published with an audience, and your feedback from this has been heartening. SO! Duel will inevitably come to a conclusion, and I will have to think on what to write next. I am not committing to a timeline, only to a principle: In 2024, I will publish another serial, and this time I have resolved to do a Fantasy serial finally bringing Byron the Blackpage to the silver screen.
Scoot: Author, Voice Actor?
In response to the two recordings with
, some of you expressed an appreciation for the quality of my voice and voice acting. I was taken completely by surprise, and lest the fans get restless, I decided to lean into it! Keep an eye out for audio-readings of my own stories, and hanging a shingle to offer to read your stories too. If that kind of thing interests you, please let me know!
Thank you for sticking with me through lean times and times of plenty in equal measure, my friends! I hope this update gives you a good sense of what’s coming down the pipeline—not just for the month to come, but looking into 2024 as well.
Happy writing, have a wonderful December, and God bless!
- Scoot
Yaaas! Let’s do the first iteration and see how that comes out!
Oh and thank you for the shout out!